Language autobiography Ruben Burenstein

One summer I was at my cousins in Florida. Every time that I get outside I let the moist air into my lungs. I love everything, from getting my baggage to finding the car in the parking lot. I love Florida, it’s what I look foreword to every winter break and summer. I used to just go there and hang out with my cousins. They moved to Florida when I was about 7 and it was extremely saddening. I was there when I was in 7^th grade. I was playing Xbox 360 with my cousin Jake for the first time ever. We sat on his comfortable carpet floor, playing on his 50-inch flat screen TV. We joked around about what was going on in the game of just us. After a while we decided that this was kind of boring with just us. We played an online game where he talked to other people. I couldn’t understand anything that he was saying. He said things like “Owned, Camper, Noob, Wrecked, Beast, and No-scope.” I asked him what that was. He was astonished that I didn’t know what those meant. He explained to me that its what you say when you play a game. He said, “Owned means I beat him really badly. Camper means that they are camped out in one spot. Noob means that he is bad at the game. Wrecked is a synonym for owned. Beast means that I’m really good.” I asked, “What does no scope mean?” He replied, “when you use a sniper rifle, and you don’t scope in but still hit someone.”

I spent several weeks in Florida that summer, all the time playing Xbox with him. I started catching on to this part of language. After I got home I had no-where to use this new language. I pleaded for weeks to get an Xbox, and finally I got one for my birthday. The first thing that I did was talk to my cousins. I was so excited that I forgot all of the trash talking online.  No one in my old school spoke with gamer language, so I didn’t either. I thought that I would get made fun of if I said anything that I use every time I play Xbox. While I wasn’t saying any of this in school, I said them as much as possible when talking with people online. When I came to this school I found other people that play Xbox. I started playing with them, so we used our gamer speak online. Eventually we became better friends and started using our gamer speak at school. This creates a problem because I am at risk of people being like “What is that, nerd!” I have decided that gamer speak is a kind of language that many people in the world use or speak. It is somewhat a type of slang, whereas words replace others and not everyone knows what they mean. I try to switch between these as much as possible, not saying some things to my friends who don’t play games, and saying gamer things when talking with my friends that do play games. Sometimes it gets kind of confused, so I switch the things up.  

In 8^th grade I got a homework assignment in history class. We were asked to use a primary source, but I didn’t know what that was. I went to my friends house after school. My mom came after a while to pick me up. I walked out to our light gray Toyota Camry.  I always loved the seats because of how fuzzy and warm they are. They are also the same color as the car. I asked my mom what a primary source was. My mom was born in Queens New York. She lived there until she was in college, but then moved to Philly. I had never heard her New York accent before this. She repeated “A Primary sauce?” I started laughing uncontrollably, saying “Primary sauce? My primary sauce is tomato, I like it on spaghetti.” She didn’t understand why I found this so funny, because that is how she says source. When we got home I sat on the maroon sofa in the family room. This room is very dark, so the couch looks even darker than it is. The couch has a weird design in it, where unfilled in hexagons cover it. I don’t like sitting on it because of this, and because the small blanket is somewhat itchy. While sitting on the couch I was talking with my mom about it. Eventually she said sofa, but it came out as “Sofer.” This was the second time in one night that I had heard her New York accent, and it surprised me very much. I now make fun of her every time I need to find something, and use a primary source, or any time I sit on the sofa. 

Changing your accent is not something that most people would do unless they really wanted to. Everyone thinks that their accent is normal, so the only reason to change how you talk is to fit in with other people. It takes a long time in order to change your accent or how you speak. Many people try to change their accents in order to fit in, but like gamer talk it slips out sometimes. I think that changing your accent is unnecessary because people shouldn’t judge you on how you sound, or what you talk like. 

A lot of things about dialect are making you fit in or make you stand out in a bad way. Changing your accent or dialect can be a tough process. It takes a lot of time in order to change how you talk. It is not something that can be done over a short period of time, and even if you take a long time it will never be perfect. Everyone who has changed how they talk will eventually go back to how they used to, even if it is only for one word. Changing how you speak is something that many people do in order to fit in places, even though they probably know that it will make them alienated from the people that they knew before.