When I hear the phrase “ I am my language” I think of speaking Portuguese with my parents and family. I grew up speaking Portuguese, and it is something I hold very close to me, because it gives me a warm feeling of family and being part of something, in this case, Brazilian culture. I lived in Brasil for a while and my Portuguese got a lot better, and I actually lost a lot of my American culture when I lived in Brazil, because of how much I wanted to embrace Brazilian culture. Portuguese to me is joy because of exactly that reason. Whenever I am with my parents and family, we dont speak a word in English, everything is in Portuguese, and any English words we have to say we say with an accent. Outsiders to this might be my boyfriend for example. He is Italian-American. Born and raised in upstate New York, knew very little about Brazilian culture before I came into his life. Since I throw Portuguese words into my speech every now and again, he has learned their meaning and uses some of them as well. For example, “ bebe” instead of “ baby” and “ eu te Amo” instead of “ I love you”. It is really cool to see him learning my language like that, and being genuinely interested for the simple fact that it is part of me.

My favorite phrases to say in Portuguese are “ Vou te contar” which means something along the lines of “ Oh boy”. I love that there are words in Portuguese that simply do not exist in English, like “saudades”. It is the same as I miss you, but it is only one word, and we conjugate it, its a verb. Another thing that makes me feel really close to my language and my culture, and that really makes me me, is singing in Portuguese. I absolutely love singing in Portuguese, especially since it is something I do with my father, and have done my entire life with him. He plays guitar and at every single party we go to, we always sing some good tunes in Portuguese.

There is a special kind of connection in that, a warmth, something I can’t really explain. The
warmth and fuzziness is still there when I sing in English, but when I sing in portuguese, the
connection is unmatched.

I associate myself with Latino culture because of my Brazilian background, so I end up listening to a lot of Latino music, which includes music in Spanish, of course. I learned to love Latino artists, and really bring that out in my life. I throw Spanish words into my vocabulary as well, so it becomes some kind of Spanglish-portunhol type of situation that I cant really even explain. I am not sure if I am the only one that does this but I totally understand where Anzaldua is coming from when she says “And because we are a complex, heterogeneous people, we speak many languages.”. I totally understand this because that is exactly how I feel. I don’t know how to explain it but there are a couple different types of Portuguese, and I mix some of that with Spanish, which creates portunhol which is Portuguese and espanhol. Then while I am here in America, I mix that with English as well, which becomes that portunhol-Spanglish mix. I find language really interesting, and beautiful, and I think it is amazing how different languages can be, and how there is no clear cut between them. There are always variations and mixtures and such that makes it difficult to really answer the question “ what languages do you speak?”.