Aria by Richard Rodriguez

One of the stories I was assign to read this week was called Arai by Richard Rodrigues. I honestly did not know what Aria mean and I was wondering what the story was going to be about. I actually thought it was a word in another language because the other reading that was assigned this week was called Teaching Multilingual Children by Virginia Collier. After reading the story I still wonder what it meant and thought it was a word in Spanish. In the Google search box I type define Aria. The definition that pop-up said, “A long, accompanied song for a solo voice, typically one in an opera or oratorio.” At first it did not make any sense to me and then I try to search for other definitions. Then I start to realize something and then it made sense to me, maybe that is how Richard felt when he heard people speak in English to him. English was a second language to him. Richard also felt that the English language was force upon him.  I also thought okay usually not a lot of people understand opera and maybe that what he might be comparing that too. To be honest when I hear opera all I hear is a loud man or woman yelling very in a high pitch and it seems like it is going on forever and ever.

Rodrigues stated, “Shortly after, I stopped hearing the high and loud sounds of los gringos. A more and more confident speaker of English, I didn’t trouble to listen to how strangers sounded, speaking to me. And there simply were to many English-speaking people in my day for me to hear American accents anymore. Conversations quickened. Listening to persons who sounded eccentrically pitched voices, I usually noted their sounds for an initial few seconds before I concentrated on what they were saying.” Rereading this section after finding defining the term Aria it give me a reinforcement maybe that how Richard really feels.

Rodrigues also stated, “The silence at home, however, was finally more than a literal silence. Fewer words passed between parent and child, but more profound was the silence that resulted from my inattention to sounds. At about the time I no longer bothered to listen to the sounds of English in public, I grew careless about listening to the sounds family members made when they spoke. Most of the time I heard someone speaking at home and didn’t distinguish his sounds from the words people uttered in public.” Here Rodrigues still talks about the sounds and what he hears. By this time Rodrigues was more use to the English language, to me I feel like something is bothering him but he seems likes he can careless too.

Question/Comments: I wonder if anybody had the same issue as me trying to figure out what the title meant? What were their first thought? What hint and clues did they get from the story?