Renique Sands 

Brenna Crowe

9/11/2022

FIQWS 1011: Thoughtful Choices, 

Composition for Scientific World

language and literacy narrative

When I was younger, I was born and raised in the Bahamas (Nassau). When I asked my mother, she would tell me that I sounded like a mix between a Jamaican and an American accent. She said that the first time we went to Jamaica, I was 6 years old. We were in the supermarket, and she put me in a trolley, and some primary school kids overheard me talking to my mom, and they gathered around me, and she said I was so excited to talk to them and that they were enjoying hearing me talk, probably because my accent was different from what they were used to. As I grew older, my accent changed a lot more because I would like to copy the accents around me like my mother, who is Jamaican. It got to the point where I started pronouncing words the way that everyone else was pronouncing them. Her accent only came out when she was mad, and I found it funny whenever that moment would arrive. However, I believe it can only really be done by Jamaicans who were born and raised in Jamaica or at least raised by a Jamaican that has the accent. 

Whenever I hear other people speak patois, it will always make me giggle or put a smile on my face. When I moved over here, my accent had hints of Bahamian dialect in it, as I would say ‘Een nothin’, meaning nothing much, ‘Well mudda sick! “Mudda sick!” instead of “Oh my gosh!” or “You’re kidding!” “Dem” for a group of people or an object, “mash up” means “to damage, break, or destroy”. If a restaurant or venue is “jam up,” it’s best to go somewhere else. This is a Bahamian slang term for “crowded” or “full”. Tingum is a word used to refer to a person, place, or thing whose name cannot be easily recalled. Example: If a group of people walked up to the entrance of the Adele Ferguson Gardens, the doorman might say, “Y’all mash up.

    When I was 11 I came over to america, and i started 7th grade it was a kind of hard to speak with my accent as most people would say that they wouldn’t understand what i was saying or that i wasn’t speaking properly.Every stage of our lives the question always asked is with the future in mind ,How we communicate with others also affects a lot of other things,Speaking has a Limit,Speech is a Restricted,Whether it be for our safety or for personal opinions of others,Speech is a Restricted ,Whether we can go to places or do things we want to do ,Speaking has a Limit,Whenever I hear other people speak with an accent,it will always make me giggle or put a smile on my face.,While it was always funny to me ,It reminded me of my mother and our background,How whenever my mom got mad enough her accent would show itself ,How when I was younger I used to copy the people around me whenever they spoke,How it took longer for me to even develop the ability to speak until I was 3,How I tried to develop an accent like hers,But never succeeded, it always sounded weird.

It never changes that this is how people make judgements.It’s how we make choices on what would be good or bad for us.Nobody is perfect, as it is a flaw to assume about someone without knowing them, but it’s what we do,Our thoughts, our choices, and our judgements our background all contribute to who we are.They make up our personality and make up how we present ourselves as a person.We are in a never-ending cycle as we develop our own personalities and respond to others because you can never treat anyone the same way because how they act allows you to choose who you are to them,If they are mean to you or nice to you, you will never have the same response to everyone.