Personal Literacy Narrative Essay

To start out with, I do not want this to be a normal essay about how I love reading and writing, and how I read in my free time and practice perfecting my English every time I get a chance to. I say this because in all reality, that’s just not who I am, and I’m not going to fake it to anyone. What I will do is explain to you all the ups and downs I personally have had throughout my eighteen years in this world with language, and how better understanding the different types of English has molded me into the person I am today.

Being a military kid, I traveled pretty much everywhere throughout my childhood. My parents were both enlisted in the Air Force and met at a base near Lakenheath, in England. They were complete opposites, but opposites attract right? My Mom was born in the Philippines, stayed there until she was a toddler, and then moved to Anaheim California, where she spent the entirety of her life. She doesn’t like to say if often, but she grew up in a higher middle-class society and went to a big private high school where she was top of her class, earning the valedictorian her senior year. This was all due to her parents who were first time immigrants in the United States. They worked extremely hard to get my Mom and Uncle the opportunities they were given. My Dad was born in a small town in North Carolina called “Cove City”. He grew up on a farm, went to a small public school, and was super into sports and lifting heavy weights. I’m sure you could have gotten the hint that he had a bit of “country” in his English. They eventually got married and had me, Ethan Smith, and my younger brother, Koen Smith. We were both born in Virginia, where we lived for a brief time before moving to the place we both call home, Hawai’i. Growing up in Hawai’i is what molded and formed my personality. I picked up on the language fast and fit in with the locals so well. My family lived in Hawai’i for ten years, and then moved to Germany for six. I graduated high school and then we moved back to Hawai’i again. I know it may seem like I’m just explaining my life story to you, and all the cool places I got to go to and you’re completely right. I am extremely grateful for the opportunity I had, and the situation I was put in as a child, because although it came with lots of hard times, the lessons I learned are worth it all. One lesson that I learned very quickly after moving from Hawai’i to Germany is the amount of adversity in English around the world, and how not everyone talks like they just got done shredding a huge wave on their new surfboard (meant with no disrespect at all to the people doing so. If it was possible, I would be doing this same thing right now).

Growing up in Hawai’i, I was seen as a local due to the color of my skin. I fit in, and they treated me like family everywhere. Being such a young age when I was taken into their community, I quickly adopted the native slang terms. I never thought anything of the way I talked, but my mom would always get on my brother and I about it. She would tell us things like “stop talking like a thug”. She would make sure we always said, “say yes sir, or yes ma’am”. She would make us talk on the phone at young ages, and order food for the family. She did this all so we would be better off when we left the house, and I never took her seriously. I look back on it now and realized that being young you think you know everything, and I thought the way I talked was fine because it sounded cool to me, and my friends, and at the time that was all I cared about. I never once thought that people sounded different around the world. It wasn’t until we moved to Germany that I started to understand why she kept stressing to talk a certain way to my brother and I. 

Moving to Germany was a culture shock to me. I was treated and looked at differently for the way I spoke, and I didn’t understand why. I guess you could say I was so isolated in Hawai’i, that I never really thought about people speaking properly outside of school. I still remember my first day of school in Germany. It was a cold rainy day, and the fog was still laying on the grass in the fields. As I walked down the cobblestone roads headed to the bus stop, I saw a group of kids that I assumed were my age. I wanted to make friends because I knew the day would be hard if I didn’t at least try, so I naturally yelled how “howzit brah?”. They asked me “why do you sound like that?” and laughed in my face about it. This was not in any way the ideal situation I wanted to start my day off with, and to this day I believe that it made me self-conscious of the way I talk. The biggest lesson I have ever learned regarding language and English was not learned in school, but rather at home by my mom. She explained to me that there is a time and a place to talk a certain way. That when I was with my brother or family I could relax and talk in Hawaiian English, but when I was outside talking to anyone else, I would show respect and talk in proper English. This became something I constantly thought about, and I can say I got good at it fast. I was scared to be embarrassed and made fun of. I don’t know what I would have done if it weren’t for my mom encouraging and pushing me to be better. By the time I left Germany, I had adopted a formal way of talking, and no longer used Hawaiian slang terms. I had lost a part of myself because I was scared to be different. When I moved back to Hawai’i I found myself picking up on the same slang I learned when I was young and finally finding the balance of the two different English’s. I was able to flip the switch when I wanted to without having to completely stop talking a certain way.

Looking back at my life now, I finally understand why my mom stressed talking properly. In a way she grew up just like me, except in her case she spoke an entirely different language. Growing up in Hawai’i blinded me from the reality of the rest of the world. In a way, I was just like my mom. Grew up in an isolated environment and received a wakeup call when moving to a place that had a higher number of “proper” English speaking people. What I went through changed me as a person, and she went through the same thing I did, but ten times worst. She had an accent and spoke “broken” English. She was made fun of just like I was for the way she talked. But she worked extremely hard, and picked up on the right things to say, when to say them, and collectively how to avoid being made fun of or not taken seriously because of the way she talked. She may have lost her native Filipino accent, but she understood that the only way to obtain an American accent was to talk like an American 24/7. She is my role model, and the biggest Literary Sponsor in my life.