How a Language Experiment Ruined My Childhood

#languagelearning #japanese #bilingual #languageskills #languages #multilingual #japaneselanguage

A little vignette of what it's like to grow up in an unusual language environment. Thanks so much for watching 🌹

[amazinggrapes]

The fact that they never spoke English but thought you had a learning disorder because you didn't know English 💀

[LinguaPhiliax]

It sounds to me like you were going through a kind of "language malnourishment". Instead of being raised as a multilingual speaker, you were raised as a monolingual Japanese speaker in a non-Japanese speaking country. But I think this is also a case of two different problems making the other worse. It is both true that you should not have been denied proper English skills, but likewise those students and especially those teachers should not have treated you so bad because of your learning difficulties. If they had treated you with more empathy and patience, rather than making fun of you, it might have made the eductional journey a lot easier.

[hellishgrims]

i love how this vid is only 3min long. no running around the bush just immediately getting to the point. thank you🙏

[Shizulupus]

I grew up in Germany but my mother was japanese and I learned both the languages. As a kid I kind of mixed the languages so it was difficult for people to understand me. At some point I realized that not everyone could talk Japanese so I stopped speaking it and I only talked to my mother but it was very broken. As a teenager I started learning it again through anime and now I speak it almost fluently again. I’m grateful to my mother that she didn’t give up on it because I think it’s really cool to be able to talk Japanese and I think it’s a beautiful country and culture and I will always be proud to be Japanese and German.

[RainASMR]

It just sounds like your teachers were mean to you for no reason. I don't think society should treat you as if you are stupid just because you don't speak English in your household, that's just prejudiced.

[ipwo]

Personally, I believe your father should’ve used English with you while your mother would use Japanese. This way, you’d get to learn both languages equally, but we can’t go back in time. What’s happened happened, and I totally understand where you’re coming from. I would like you to know that you’re not alone. 本当に素敵な英語を喋ると思いますよ！

[PSYCHOBEVO]

I was born in the US to immigrant parents. My parents never spoke to me in English, but I learned English from my environment. I'm not even sure if I can pinpoint any particular source I learned it from, I don't even remember any time when I was a kid when I was confused by English or didn't understand anything in English. As far back as I remember, I always knew English, even though we never used it at home.

I'd encourage more multi-lingual parents to speak to their children in other languages. Children of immigrants failing to learn the language of their parents and losing that skill forever for subsequent generations is far too common. Knowing another language is a lifelong skill that children can easily pick up on as children, but people lose that chance when they grow older; learning as an adult is far more difficult than learning it as a kid.

[gonzalezm]

I’m an immigrant from Colombia and I only ever spoke Spanish with my family. I came to the US when I was 4 and struggled a lot in kindergarten because of the language barrier. My English caught up to like 95% of everyone else’s by the time I was 8, but there were often certain idioms and such more colloquial things that I had to pick up more slowly. My English is better than my Spanish now, but I do think that I was a bit isolated for the first few years in a way that affects me to this day. I was always really good at math, so I never felt dumb, but I just never communicated or picked up slang the way my friends did. I’m happy to be fully bilingual and it allows me to connect with my family in a much deeper way, but it was hard 😅

[tableofteaspoons]

your parents spoke ONLY japanese with you for 12 years, and had you rely on schooling to learn english, and he was surprised you didnt know what intersection means? gosh, i am so sorry kisara 😭

[dizzybunnies]

as a teacher, not even a minute in and im noticing the school's mistake: how did nobody catch that it was a language barrier issue? i live in a city that is very multicultural so most kids here speak 2 or 3 languages, and are probably learning a new one in school. im also an ESL teacher so i teach these kiddos english. so, when a child shows difficulty, be it in a language class, math, science, ect, the first thing the school does is come to me and ask how their english is (for most kids, english is their first language, or the language taught at the same time they learned their first language), if they understand me, how they speak, ect. so it boggles my mind that language wasnt the first thing the school thought of.... sending you hugs!!

[EffortlesslyJulia]

I think it is about your individual language learning skills rather than a general rule. I immigrated at the age of 10, started learning a new language. My parents and I continued to this day, 30 years later speaking with each other in our mother tongue, however it didn’t stop me from learning speaking and understanding the new language to a perfection. It took me about 1 years to start speaking like a native without any special classes. Writing took few years longer. English is a third language I picked along the way. Lots to f people of my age and situation had a very similar experience and results

[khanhhuynh]

I find this really interesting, because I went through similar experiences but I still consider English my first language. Neither parents would speak English to me

[screecheth]

As someone in college to be an ESL specialist, thats a failure of the school you went to. Schools are required to accommodate English language learners, and if they were not doing that or missed you somehow, that’s a failure on their part, not yours.

[JonBrase]

2:12 Zero hours outside of school? Were you dealing with severe social isolation on top of the lack of English in the home? Children of immigrants often have good skills in the local language from interacting with their friends (beyond age 5 or so this actually tends to be more important than interacting with parents), but as someone who self-isolated through half my childhood, I know that not everybody has much of a social life after school.

[CocoCouponing]

That sounds genuinely horrific. I can't imagine going into school and being unable to express your thoughts and feelings. I'm glad that your story has a relatively happy ending!

[anlingitalia]

If you had bilingual peers, this would not have been an issue. The peers and teachers were the ignorant ones.

[PrincessSakuno]

Actually, this kind of language environment is very common for kids who grow up second generation, and their parents are first generation immigrants. I don't speak to my parents in English unless, I just have to say it and I can't express it in Chinese, and they don't speak English to me, besides maybe saying a few words (because they cant). I did have a fear that this caused some differences academically as a child because I felt like I was behind in academic style English.

I studied linguistics, and there are studies showing that bilingual kids growing up may have a slower uptake in the two target languages compared to a monolingual because obviously there is more information to take in than if it was just one language. However it evens out the end, and basically there is not a noticeable difference in the final result.

I guess the effects may differ between individuals and their individual circumstances. It's a shame that the adults in your schooling environment weren't able to support you well and ostrasized you instead.

[scribblecloud]

is it weird that i partially 'did' this to myself? i was born in germany speaking german but have learned english, and while most germans are taught english and are often generally decent at it, i had a lot of exposure to it through the internet and voice chatting with friends, and became very fluent in it, but now i feel like i am more fluent in english than my own mother tongue! german is a weirdly complicated language and its hard to form grammatically correct sentences with the correct amount of formality, and i struggle a lot in school, where i bet id struggle at least a good chunk less, were my education in english instead of german.

[endlessxlove]

Thats so mean (the people around you). I spoke only in non-English at home, and didnt speak English till I was 9. Was totally fine thanks to the support from school and extra ESL classes. I ended getting top 10% in the state in English and even tutored English.

[alpacagato]

I grew up in a strict "only speak Spanish!" household and "only watch TV in Spanish!"... yet I've always been doing extremely well in the English language and have been a consistent top writer and speaker in my grade... I'm not sure what the difference is.