“Are you speaking Spanish?” and “Hola…” were some of the things I would often hear from children my age when I was 6 to 8 years old. I would then reply with, “No, I’m speaking Japanese.” With my response, children would then make a strange facial expression hearing a language that they’ve never heard of. Many shy away from understanding that, even in our generation today, languages are all around us. There shouldn’t still be this ideal form of how an individual is expected to speak. Since this was what I was used to, the habits of pronunciation continued to carry on with me. Strangely enough, as I got older and stopped communicating as much with my grandmother the way that I used to, my proficiency in Japanese has also gone down. Still, I seem to sometimes make the same grammar mistakes when speaking English to those around me because my native tongue is often stuck in the past.
As I’ve gotten older, I began to learn other aspects of grammar, especially through education within certain communities. Since then, I’ve begun to dive back into the branches of languages within the real world, studying Spanish and minoring in it during my time at university. I have always surrounded myself with different types of languages, and simply sticking to English because it is apparently the “default language” disappointed me. In turn, my passion and appreciation towards other cultures besides mine have heavily influenced me over the past few years.
It’s crucial for me to recognize the differences there are within languages and how each person uses that to acknowledge their backgrounds, along with facing their challenges too. A lot of aspects of my identity come from my mother. But, because of her appearance and slight accent, people often become impatient with her speaking and eventually resort to me being the (unneeded) translator, since her English is considered “broken.” It felt belittling to think that teachers may have viewed my mother as unintelligent because of this. While the conferences were going on, the teachers would also look toward me to answer a question that they were asking my mother first.
Language has become a reflection of identity with unity and understanding that there is never a “right” way to speak, or having to lose out on your native tongue because of what others expect of you. Learning about simple kanji and Chinese characters in that same third-grade class was challenging. I knew that I wouldn’t move as quickly as the others. But, at the same time, I wasn’t reminded of that. I was instead taught just the same as the other students and they helped me adjust along the way. Languages do not always imply who we are as human beings. It is a form of our identity, yes, but there is a line between what we should and shouldn’t expect to hear when a person of color or a foreigner begins speaking.
My identity has reflected upon the differences that different cultures and nations presume from outsiders. In the end, it is the conformity of life and how we are subject to categorize the things we observe and hear, that decrease our abilities to engage with each other.
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