Table Connections

I really enjoyed this assignment and getting to learn about language in other people’s communities. I liked learning about the lovely people who sit at my table and I liked getting to know more about them as a person and what kinds of things are important to them. One big thing that we all had in common was that the language community we used was from our home towns. I talked about my home town mascot, Abbey talked about how roses represented her retreat from home, Bushra talked about her grandma and her words from their religion in their community, and Juliana talked about a route that became a brand from where she lives. These words are all personal to us in our own way. My word redskin is similar to Abbeys because Abbey’s word has to do with her retreat that she went on in high school, just like my word pertains directly to my high school. High school has a big impact on young people’s lives and it contributes to a lot of language that we use today. Another similarity is that Juliana’s word is a now a brand and you can buy things with the logo on it just as you can do with my word redskin. Route M-22 and redskin did not start off as brands, but now you are able to purchase the logos in stores. Bushra’s word was extremely cool to learn about, not only because it is a different language, but because my whole life I have gone to school and learned about Christianity, so I really enjoyed learning more about the Muslim language and religion. It’s strange to think that you spend 50 minutes with people you sit next to three times a week and you still don’t know much about them, so I’m really appreciative that I got the chance to learn about a word that means so much to them.