Getting To Know Me

Nathaniel Worthman  Professor. Dadak Writing-101 25.2.19             This week I want to talk about how people react to different forms of English and talk about weather or not there should be one standard form of English. Now, before I get into this I want to make it explicitly clear that I am going off of my own experiences in life and my own opinion from a person who is a strong believer in language change and that this in no way reflects all of any community or nations beliefs but just what I’ve seen in my life.              Now, getting into this… So, I grew up in a place where many people identified themselves first and foremost as Americans. This isn’t a positive or negative thing but rather the lense in which they chose to live their life through. With my life experience I have seen that people who mainly identify themselves as Americans they typically are strong believers that English should be spoken one way and that should be the American dialect and accent of E

Nathaniel Worthman Professor. Dadak Writing-101 21.2.19                          Should foreign languages be taught from a younger age in the United States? Well, there are many benefits and few drawbacks to doing this. For example, teaching kids a foreign language from a younger increases the retention rate of the language in comparison from people who start learning a language from an older age. Additionally, having kids being multilingual from a young age not only will benefit them when they are older because they will be more desired in the workforce, but it also increases one’s creativity because it makes you brain operate in a new way thus enhancing your thought process.              Maybe I feel this way because I grew up monolingual and have always wanted to be anything but it. However, I also know that the kids that did grow up multilingual did on average get better grades and were also able to learn other languages easily and I believe that this is all because

Nathaniel Worthman Professor. Dadak Writing 101 16.2.19             By definition, code switching is “[The] process of shifting from one linguistic code (a  language  or  dialect ) to another, depending on the social  context  or conversational setting.” [1] So, why would I write a language log about it? Well, code switching is a really interesting and controversial topic. Some people believe that code switching is the reason why people speak an “impure” form of a given language. In order to illustrate this opinion, I will share a personal anecdote that I think will really help illustrate why some people have this opinion or least in the Latvian-Russian relation.              Living in Southern Latvia, I had made friends with many Latvian nationals whose first language was Russian. This is a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union. While speaking Russian and only Russian is extremely normal in southern Latvia this is an issue that many people in northern Latvia fear is

Nathaniel Worthman Professor. Dadak Writing 101 13.2.19             As we begin the procces of preliminary research for our research paper in writing class I feel it is a great opportunity for me to talk about my idea for my research topic. For class we had to come up with two different ideas and talk about them. I wrote about how the use of the Russian language in Latvia is perceived as a threat to nationalism by the government and how this has affected the lives of citizens who grew up in Latvia during the USSR. While I’m not entirely sure what direction I will take this research this exact moment, I think the best way to start my research is by compiling some background information.              So,here is what I know from both personal experience in Latvia and my preliminary research. Historically speaking, The Latvian Republic has been affected again and again by invasion of foreign powers and thus has had the introduction of many foreign languages and ideas. This w

Nathaniel Worthman  Professor. Dadak  Writing-101 12.2.19                          For this language log, I want to talk about something that has affected me for all of my life. Multilingualism in America. While most people don’t even give a second thought to the disadvantages of being monolingual this was something, I have struggled with for most of my life. I was born in Guatemala with my twin brother James and my little sister Sandy before being adopted and brought to the United States to an extremely monolingual family. Don’t get me wrong, being raised by an upper-middle class white family in Long Island, New York has afforded me many opportunities and for that I’m so grateful!! The only thing is that culturally, I always felt like a little bit of an outcast in one way or another. For example, as I grew up and really started to get to know who I was as an individual I realized that I had a huge passion for languages and language learning and preservation. Because of th

Nathaniel Worthman Professor. Dadak Writing 101 Today I want to talk about the language of my soul. As you may imagine…. It’s Latvian. So, what do I mean by language of my “soul language?” Well, when my roommate and I talked about this once I described it as the language that not only understand but that understands me. For me, this didn’t happen until I lived in Latvia. For almost 17 years I had convinced myself that because I was adopted from Guatemala the language of my soul had to be Spanish. Due to my love of Guatemala and the Spanish language for a while I was perfectly content not knowing any better. I learned Spanish fluently and then translated all of my adoption documents to English to learn more about my family history. While yes, it made me feel connected to my cultural roots, the Spanish language never spoke to me. This followed a long list of languages that were studied both formally and informally (Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean, Thai, a

Latvian.... What is that? Who speaks that? Ohh that's what they speak in Libya right? These are all real questions I have been asked when talking about the Latvian language. For this Language journal entry please allow me to talk about my favorite language in the world! Latvian (Latviešu valoda in Latvian) is an Indo-European language (Balto-Slavic, Baltic, Eastern-Baltic to be more specific) with a population of about 2 million native speakers. Latviešu valoda is written in the Latvian alphabet and is the official language of The Latvian Republic, and the European Union. Latvian in one of the two last living Baltic languages with Lithuanian ( Lietuvių kalba ).               Linguistically, Latvian is broken up into three main dialects: the Livonian dialect, High Latvian and the Middle dialect. In addition to these Latvian dialects there are also four “ethnic” languages spoken by various ethnic groups of people in Latvia on a smaller scale: Livonian, Curonian, Semigallian a

            As this is the first of many language logs, I would like to start this log entry by introducing myself and my relationship to languages, cultures and language learning. I was born in Guatemala City, Guatemala on July 10 th 1999, soon after that, I was adopted by my wonderful but EXTREMELY (white) and monolingual family. With that being said, I faced many an identity crisis before the age of 18!! I mean, I am a Hispanic male named Nathaniel Joseph Worthman, living in Long Island, New York, being raised by two white parents.       From an early age my parents tried to keep me in touch with my heritage by sending both me and my twin to Spanish school but like most kids, we didn’t want to stop playing with our toys to go to a boring Spanish class. Luckily, down the line I realized how important it was for my to keep in touch with my roots so once I started middle school and had to pick a language to study I chose Spanish! This one choice led me down a path that changed my