Once, in his youth, my father was standing by a river in Eastern Europe. On one side, was the Czech Republic, where he knew his family was, where his ancestors had lived, and he had never been able to step foot on it before and, thanks to the political climate of the day, it was illegal to do so. So, spurred on by youthful impetutousness, he says now, he dove into the water, stood on the soil from whence his people came for ten minutes, and then swam back, knowing all the whilte that, if caught on the land, he'd be shot. That's how rooted my father was to family history and, to this day, though he was born in Chicago, he only calls himself an American if someone weedles it out of him. It's not that he's ashamed of being born here--he's not. He just does not feel American and, growing up in a family that did not speak English at home, never has. Personally, I think that all cultures need change with time, but trying to become another culture or ignore your own is just plain bizarre to me. What you speak of saddens me though. Since, in America, our people can be so branched out, it can be hard to maintain the old ways. I don't speak Romanes, for instance. I've tried to learn it before and, what few words I do know, I try to memorize and hold onto, so I can give them to my children oneday. I once bought a book on how to learn it, but the book didn't explain pronunciation, and the only language courses in Romanes are offered in Texas. It's too bad it's not available to learn over the internet. Keeping one's language is one of the best guarantees to keeping one's heritage alive.
I agree that it's sad that people lose their cultural and linguistic ties here in America. I was raised on a homestead and, as a child, all I ever heard about was culture, tradition, ancestors, ancestors, and more ancestors. I didn't even really understand that I was American until I was seven-years-old. It just never computed in my head.
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