New words

Refriend:

Its the act of being friend again with an old friend who at one point became an enemy .

Plussing:

The addition of something such as weight. 

The book " Language Death" by David Crystal

David Crystal in his book “Language Death” suggests several factors which will help the languages to survive. He claims that speakers themselves can help the language to advance. They should increase their prestige and legitimate power within the dominant community as well as their wealth; speakers should have a strong presence in the educational system, ability to write down the language and make use of electronic

The Book I choose

The book i choose is "Language Death" by David Crystal. In his book,  Crystal looks at present and future threats to languages and at what can be done to counter them. I choose this book because i believe it will give me answers to questions that am curious to know such as :How do languages die?What can be done about this?Why should we care about language death?
In "Language Death" Crystal talked about how languages die. He said " obviously a language dies if all of its speakers die as the result of genocide or natural disasters, or are scattered in such a way as to break up the language community." More commonly languages die through cultural change and language replacement, by assimilation to a "dominant" culture and language.
As an immigrant, i admit that now i rarely speak french. When I am with my parents, we speak "fulani" which is an west African dialect.When am at school or outside the dominant language is English there for its rare forme to find a french speaker in New york.
Crystal suggests six key themes in language revitalization that i can't wait to learn .


My languge story

 I was born in west Africa and lived there for more than fifteen year before coming   to the U.S , my first welcome and challenge was the English language because, I have been  always proud of my native language Fulani( spoken in west Africa)  and French.       I was so happy at first for coming to the US, seeing my father for the first time after more than half a decade was a wonderful feeling that I cannot describe. Those moments of happiness only lasted for few hours since my arrival. The next day my father took me to register for high school.

            Being admitted to August Martin High School as an ESL student changed my life and beliefs forever. I was given seven classes in my first session, where three of those classes were English to help me learn quicker, and the other classes were math, American History, Art and Earth Science. In less than two months I received my first report card. It was more than a disaster. I realized that I only passed the math class. It’s hurt me a lot not only because it was the first time I ever failed a class in my life but the reasons behind it, which were nothing other than my lack of knowledge of the language. I blamed myself for accepting to come to a country that is totally different from mine in all aspects.

I worked hard and successfully achieved and graduated but with a great sacrifice. I completely stopped speaking French. All I wanted to do is learning English and nothing more so I can not only be able to interact with others, but also be able to graduate with good grades.

Today i basically speak two languages. English when am outside my house and Fulani when i am at home or  with family members.