Abdoul Aziz Tandia

Cover Letter

My audience in this essay would be every person on this earth. Everyone has their own culture and sometimes people forget how great their culture really is. Sometimes because of others but also sometimes because they are to blind to see it on their own. This essay is for the people like this because writing this helped me so hopefully it can help them also. I tailored my language and rhetorical choices by to appeal to them by using some of my own language and by also providing very specific and relatable examples that happened in my life into my writing. In this essay I was able to appeal to both pathos and logos. I was able to appeal to pathos by using vivid descriptions because I was able to provide examples that occurred in my life and being very detailed. I also used emotional examples by bringing up a very tough moment in my life (losing a family member). I was also able to appeal to logos by using real life examples and by this being my personal anecdote. The most meaningful insight I have gained through writing this assignment regarding language and literacy is that there are many factors that can enhance or hinder your language and literacy. For myself it was me hindering my own language by not sitting down and allowing myself to learn while _­also having other ridicule me because of my culture. While on the other hand, friends and family were able to help me enhance my language; Even a tough moment in my life was able to enhance my language. So, this is the biggest takeaway/insight from this writing assignment. The concept that has most impacted my learning and writing practices would have to be audience. I have to say audience because it is something that I was never really introduced to before this class, and it made me tailor my writing because I would have to think about the reader. I would have to think about who will be reading my writing. This means I would have to think about my intended audience and my unintended audience because both would be reading it. I learned that I would have to write for my intended audience while also writing so that my unintended audience would be able to understand and maybe relate to this writing. One learning outcome that I got from this assignment is developing strategies for reading, drafting, collaborating, revising, and writing. For example, for my first draft I had a completely different story about me winning a spelling bee, but because I collaborated with another student it made me revise my essay and tell this story instead. This assignment also made me write differently because I tried to put a lot of emotion into my writing which I had never done before.

African Booty-Scratcher

         I feel almost everyone has encountered this term at least once whether they were the ones hearing it or the ones saying it. Growing up I was always ashamed of being from African descent. The main reason was the joke that many kids would kill Africans which was, “African Booty-scratcher”. The most embarrassing was probably when the lights would go off in class when we were watching a video and all the kids would say, “Hey where’s Abdoul, I don’t see him. Hey, Abdoul, where are you I can’t find you.” Which was supposed to be a joke about me having darkskin. There would even be times where I would just lie and say I was Jamaican to avoid the jokes from my classmates. I even remember being embarrassed of my parents showing up to my school in “African” attire. But this was just a piece of my story.

         “Salaam maaliekum” (Peace to you), “Maaliekum salaam” (Peace unto you to), “Nanga Def?” (How are you?), “Mangi fee” (I am here). This is how most conversations begin between Senegalese people start, and this language is called Wolof. Growing up I never understood a word, only knowing these 4 phrases and how say yes (waaw) and no (déedéyt). Whenever my extended family would try to speak to me in Wolof I would either just look at them with a nervous expression or just say “waaw” (yes). While I was growing up Wolof was the primary language that was spoken in my home even though everyone in the house spoke English; Everyone spoke Wolof to each other but spoke English to me. I never bothered to pick up the language as a child even though my parents have tried to teach me.

         Growing up I was raised in a house with my mom, dad, an older brother, an older sister, and a younger brother. Everyone in the house besides me and my younger brother were born in Dakar, Senegal and spoke Wolof fluently. As a child my parents would try to teach me, but I would just laugh whenever they tried to teach me anything. I lived in East Harlem pretty much my whole life and I have never once thought that I needed Wolof in my life. As I got older, I saw the ways that it is important for me to learn to speak the language of my ancestors. Especially once I got to middle school, I had realized that I wasn’t able to connect to my family back home and they always wanted to talk to me, but I was never able to speak to them which made me feel sad and guilty. Also, around that time coincidentally people really started like African culture for some reasons which made me kind of embrace my culture no matter what people think of it. In middle school I ended up with a lot of Senegalese friends and Senegalese neighbors, so I was introduced to the language more. At home I had told my parents that I wanted to learn Wolof, so they started speaking Wolof to me more, so I ended up picking up words fast. Also, some of my friends that spoke Wolof would speak Wolof amongst each other and I learned a lot faster this way because it is in a very casual setting, and they would even help me with mispronunciation.    

         In my sophomore year of high school my older sister had passed away which was a tragic moment in my life. When my family had the funeral, and everyone was speaking to each other I felt almost left out because everyone was speaking Wolof and I was barely catching the gist of the conversations. This was what really made me think about the whole thing differently and this is when I told my mother that I was serious about speaking the language. I thought about how much my family has gone through in their past and how far my family has come. I don’t want my children to lose a part of their culture because of me. This was when my mother really started speaking Wolof to me and when I didn’t understand a word, she would tell me what that word meant; Before I knew it, I was able to put words together and make sentences. Even now I can finally speak to my family back home in Senegal and understand what they are saying, even though my Wolof isn’t the best grammar-wise they know what I am trying to say, and we can hold a conversation. Even with some of my friends now when we are in public, and we want to keep a secret or be subtle we just say what we want to say in Wolof.

         This is something that I now take a lot of pride in, and it even led me to look more into Senegal and hopefully one I would like to go and visit my family that is there. I have even gone as far as trying to learn to read in Wolof. I even now talk to my neighbors in Wolof whenever I see them or even sometimes strangers when they speak to me when they find out my family Is Senegalese. This is something that is honestly still crazy to me because I went from not speaking the language at all to understanding it well and speaking a small amount in a short amount of time. Even though I am happy with where I am in the language I am still not where I want to be because I want to be able to speak it fluently. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll end up packing my bags and end up moving to Senegal, I have no idea of what my future holds so I should do my best to be prepared.

         This is one of the most meaningful moments in my life involving language and literacy. This something that I would never have imagined happening, but it is also something that can encourage other people to learn the language of their culture if they don’t already know it because you don’t know what your future holds. Language is something that holds and binds people together, and this is something that is relevant to every person on earth regardless of the language. All I can say now is “Ba ci kanam” (See you later) and have a great day. This “African booty-scratcher” has come a long way.