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Refection: Linguistic Autobiography - Coggle Diagram
Refection: Linguistic Autobiography
I was born in Brazil
Specifically, São Paulo
So, I can speak Portuguese, which I do with my family
However, since I started learning English alongside my Portuguese, and proceeded to prioritize it, my Portuguese is not perfect
Essentially, I can understand it perfectly, save for a few words, but I find it hard to explain exactly how the language works
Furthermore, English influence sometimes trips me up in Portuguese, as I will think in English but speak in Portuguese
São Paulo has its own dialect, Paulistano, which, understandably, is the one I have
It is primarily characterized by nasal 'e' sounds and rolled 'r' sounds, similar to Spanish
There are also words and phrases not used in other Brazilian dialects
Due to SP's large amount of immigration, there are also influences from other Latin languages, like Spanish or Italian, but also Japanese
In writing this reflection, I have taken an odd role as an observer in my own language, something that I have never done before, which has definitely been very informative
It is the most widely used and recognized dialect in the country, due to SP being Brazil's largest city
Why take this course?
Language has never been a strong passion of mine, that has always been the natural sciences, but it still holds a strong interest for me
This may be due to growing up bilingual, the presence of other languages was impossible to ignore
In middle school and high school I took both French and Spanish
I also took a course on ASL as an extracurricular
Due to a lack of continuous use, I do not remember everything I learned
However, I did retain knowledge on certain aspects of deaf culture and the way the language is structured and created
This, alongside my upbringing, was what gravitated me towards this course
I wanted to explore how language is created, how it is influenced by other languages or by different peoples and cultures, and how these languages compare and contrast to one another
I wound up dropping French because it was difficult and I did not like the teacher very much
I chose Spanish because of its similarity to Portuguese and because I really liked the teacher
I became quite proficient with a beginner to intermediate level of Spanish due to that advantage, and it was certainly a challenge to cycle through three languages and make links between them to properly understand the material I was given