3- Recall the experience of some newcomer trying to enter your community or trying to appropriate and use your own language. How did you feel or react? What does it mean to “own” language, and what is entailed in “taking” or adopting” a language or a set of rituals and traditions?Recall an experience when some misunderstanding occurred in a bi-cultural or multicultural context despite everyone trying to be well intentioned and polite. In a journal entry, explore what it was about the social context failed “in translation.”

Language is an important way of communication. People take others language for granted or sometimes do play it. This should not be done because every race of people have a different way in which they communicate with one another. I am African American and I see people from other races all the time trying to fit in with blacks and trying to speak they way they do.When I see this happening I feel upset because one should feel comfortable in their own skin to not have to imitate someone else's language or way of living. The phrase, " to own language," is fiction to me. I believe that no one can own a language because it is a way of life. It is natural for people to do and one person cannot be the owner simply because everyone makes and participates in the such language. When a person adopts the language or rituals of another culture let's me know that they are not confident or independent. I think that they are not capable of making their own decisions and fell to realize the importance of their own culture. I am ashamed to see people who are not proud of who they are and have the desire to fit in with other race. An experience I had once before is when a white boy knew these black boys, like they saw and spoke to one another on a daily bases, and they looked upon one another as associates. Well, the word nigga is used by blacks in a way of endearment or name like friend or acknowledging a person. The white boy of course heard them calling one another by this word and did as they did with thinking the reasons why they use it. The black boys took offense to this because when a white person says nigga the word is look at differently. It is look at as if the white person is trying to down the black person or mocking them. This was an unpleasant situation but everything turned out okay. If the white boy would have spoken the way he does normally instead of trying to do what he saw the black boys doing then there would not have been a misunderstanding. The is a lesson that everyone is different and should embrace the person that they are, and not try and follow the things that others do.