Lozada\u2013Oliva\u2019s poem reminded me of my experience with my first language. For context, my family moved to Canada when I was 3 and my first language was Slovak. I eventually stopped speaking it at home (most likely when I was around 8-9 years old) and I am now no longer able to speak it. <\/p>\n
If I were to try to speak it, my first language would be grasping for words that would never come. They simply don\u2019t come to mind. Even if I knew the right words, I wouldn\u2019t know where to begin when it comes to putting them in order or conjugating verbs. I\u2019d be reaching out for knowledge that seemingly doesn\u2019t exist. Even the most simple sentences seem impossible to say. I\u2019d be able to say more in languages that I\u2019ve actively tried to learn and\/or have taken classes in. <\/p>\n
But if I were to hear it, I would understand a decent amount. And if the grammar was very off, there\u2019s a decent chance I might notice. The knowledge that seemingly doesn\u2019t exist, in some ways, actually does. To me, it is not a language that I see\/hear in the media, in writing, or from anyone outside of my family. To me, it is little memories and fragments rather than a way of communicating. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lozada\u2013Oliva\u2019s poem reminded me of my experience with my first language. For context, my family moved to Canada when I was 3 and my first language was Slovak. I eventually stopped speaking it at home (most likely when I was around 8-9 years old) and I am now no longer able to speak it. If […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67293,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[165],"class_list":["post-498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-span312","tag-week13"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67293"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=498"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":499,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498\/revisions\/499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}