A Raisin in the Sun- Blog 3

           A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry contained a quote spoken by Asagai when he tries to explain to Mama what "Alaiyo" means. "Aliaiyo" is the word he uses to speak to Beneatha and it is a Yoruba word. When he tries to explain to Mama what it means, he can't quite find the cotrrect way to explain it. He says to her, "Well...let me see... I do not know how just to explain it...The sense of a thing can be so different when it changes language." Being Mexian myself and being bilingual in Spanish and English, I can relate to this feeling of disturbance from not being able to fully explain what something means. There are words like "Bueno?" that people in Mexico say when answering a phone, but translated literally mean "good." It doesn't make sense to answer the phone and be like "Good?", but to those in Mexico it is a greeting and a way to say hello. Like not being able to translate words exactly from one language to another, we must realize that the Youngers are not all alike. They all have their own manner of speaking and acting towards different situations. Their approches are different and to the others there is no way of literally understanding what it means.