dent ex pression
Volume 5, Issue A forum for stu 4
ARROW
Renton High School 400 South 2nd Street Renton, WA 98057
Love yourself for how you sound—because you sound perfect. The perfect language. We think it exists. We think we speak it every time we open our mouths, whether in chants or songs, in English, Spanish, Tagalog, Japanese, or any other collection of syllables categorized as “other.” We hope to be understood. How do we say something right—this thought, this phrase, this hallway how-ya-doin’? Twenty-six letters? More than that? The idea of a perfect language is an ideal that may sound elegant and beautiful to ones’ ears, but maybe in the end A, B and C is harder than 1, 2 and 3. The art above (repeated as a logo in the following pages) features a few languages from around the world. Top row: a Spanish tongue. Second row: a Grecian history. Third row: a character from the Hiragana alphabet with “x” symbols to denote sounds absent in
Japanese. Bottom row: Arabic alphabet art. Why is this necessary? Theodore Roosevelt, our 26th President, once said, “We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boardinghouse; and we have room for but one sole loyalty, and that is loyalty to the American people.” Can you believe that? ARROW reporter Aidan Chaloupka took to the hallways and talked to some students about a piece of upcoming legislation (page 3) and found a reality different from Roosevelt’s. “There are 1000 plus languages in India, with around 18 main ones,” sophomore Basheer Sheikh said.
“I mainly speak Hindi at home and English at school.” Sheikh speaks our language. Learn more about it right here, right now. Tradition: pages 2 and 3. Spoken: pages 4-6. A twist of the tongue: page 8. Listen (on a free CD of stories!): pages 9-12. Choosing the forbidden diction: pages 14-16. Poets, musicians and photographers finally unite on pages 1719. In the back: our beautiful names. Listen to these voices. They’re speaking to you, and they sound perfect. Your friend,
ARROW Newsmagazine