Week 8: Gains and Losses

Question 1:
a). At home, my family speaks all english, so there are no differences from my home and school dealing with language. I do have a friend whose parents are Spanish and has grown up speaking spanish at home, but at school is taught English. It seems to be hard for her sometimes, because at home, her parents only speak spanish and know a little bit of english, but when she goes to school or talks with her friends, she speaks complete english.
b). I think that when you grow up learning a certain language it will obviously be easier to learn than having to learn a language for your career. The reasons it would be easier is that if you grow up your whole life hearing a certain language spoken, it will stick better with you and it's just how you were raised your whole life. Once you grow up speaking this language, it can be very difficult to try and learn a different language because you already know one language and it's so normal to you to speak that and putting another in there to learn can get confusing and hard.
c). Belonging should always be an important thing when referring to language use. It's important to be confident and be proud of who you are and I think belonging has to do with just that. Then, feeling that belonging will make you not afraid to speak in public with any language, whether you grew up speaking it or learned it for a career. People can always tell if a person is confident or not and seeing that confidence in a person could get you farther in your career.
Question 2:
a). As children grow up, their families will change because people themselves change all the time whether they notice it or not. It is not always a bad thing, but it happens. In Rodriguez's case, the change wasn't a good one because of the language barriers and the fact that his uncle, who raised him, didn't speak much. I do think that achieving success does take sacrificing, but I don't think it should be your family. There's always going to be sacrifices made to be able to get to where you want and that's where your moral value should come in so that the sacrifices aren't things that will hurt someone in the end.
b). Having intimacy with language in our career and academics would certainly be fulfilling. Without the intimacy, there's really no feeling behind your achievements with the language. Having the intimacy shows that you care and want to achieve the most you can and when you do that, it should be a fulfilling experience because those goals are the reasons you were intimate with a language.
c). The way Rodriguez speaks about going back to the time of his youth when he hears someone speaking Spanish makes me think that he isn't sad or even thankful of what he "lost". He seems very comfortable and confident with the language that he speaks now, but I think that because he doesn't speak Spanish anymore, whenever he hears it, he appreciates his youth more and goes back to a time when he would hear his family speaking and that brings joy to him. It makes him happy for a little while and brings back good memories.