How a Language Experiment Ruined My Childhood
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- Опубліковано 27 лют 2024
- #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 🌹
The fact that they never spoke English but thought you had a learning disorder because you didn't know English 💀
A lot of Mexicans are in the special ed program.
Ikr, her parents should obviously know that she would not be able to speak English properly because her parents spoke Japanese with her
@@Naomiwy3970They probably thought that speaking English at school was enough. Not saying I agree with that but I know many immigrants who think like that.
@@leila_de_hautjardin can confirm. im an immigrant and my parents never spoke a lick of English when I was born, yet I still learned English along with my native language at a good pace. the teachers were the problem, not the parents.
@@mechupaunhuevon7662it's not, if you lived with social media it maybe will and that's how I learned English and always had good marks in my exams despite my parents not teaching me the language, but I learned from my phone not school because on the other hand with french I've never learned the language and it effected my grades too much, I didn't learn it from school neither from the students even tho they were all good at it, I even studied outside the school and it didn't work, I ended up learning it in summer before my first year of high school, also for the girl in the video she entered elementary school with zero English, she couldn't even understand the teachers while they talked to her, it's a little crazy to think it's a disorder and it's only natural for her to learn English slower then the rest of the students
It sounds to me like you were going through a kind of "language malnourishment". Instead of being raised as a multiingual 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.
I believe this is the most accurate comment, specifically the monolingual upbringing piece. Outside of the house, the OP was likely only exposed to English , causing a language “rift” of sorts. Domestically, this could’ve been prevented by introducing even small amounts of basic English into day-to-day interactions. And of course students and most certainly teachers should be more accepting of and accommodating toward English as a second language learners.
100% agree on everything you said. Especially with how the school treated her. When she described her experiences with school, it brought back my memories of school and how I feared being judged stupid (thus never asked questions and never wanted to read things out loud). My parents were not fluent in English so I was put into ESOL but even then, American public schools don't teach grammar so well anymore so I was still a little behind among my peers (who had native English-speaking parents to begin with). It took a HS English teacher to steer me to the general direction of what I was lacking and a college English professor to make a lot of stuff click.
My Filipino teacher did something similarly with her children. She spoke in pure Filipino because she knew her daughter would learn English in school. The difference is we live in a billingual country. So, in school many people speak Taglish or a mix of Filipino and English words in one sentence. Depending on your social class and your location of residence and schooling, Taglish is usually spoken by children of well-off parents due to to being raised by Filipino-speaking nannies, their English and Filipino-speaking parents, and English children's shows. Outside school, blue collar workers tend to speak in pure Filipino while white collar workers can speak fluent English or Taglish. Our local media is in Filipino or Taglish while our many other TV channels and international media like the internet is in English. Her daughter became more fluent in English than her mom because of all the outside influences but retained her fluency in Filipino too because of their language used at home. Because otherwise, she may not have retained her fluency in Filipino due to the popularity of Taglish in our country. So this experiment could have been successful only if she lived in a billingual country I think.
@@marieso2293 Your story reminded me of an experience. I attended a remote elementary school in the Philippines before moving out, and I had a classmate who was raised purely in Kapampangan + Filipino. He was very fluent and even used old terms because even my Filipino classmates were just as fascinated by what they meant: for example, he liked saying the word "awon" which meant yes or ok (if I remember correctly?). He even corrected or helped me complete my sentences when I struggled to find the right word. He's a great and patient friend, because similarly to OP's experience, schoolmates would mockingly copy my way of speaking and make fun of it in general. Even nicknamed Cachupoy because they found my broken Filipino hilarious.
However, he almost always failed English classes up until 6th grade (we were classmates since 1st). He was by no means dumb, but he was treated like one because of bad grades in one subject (since people linked English proficiency with status and intellect). He even had to stay overtime after dismissal to get 1 on 1 tutoring from different english teachers - high school entrance exams were imminent and he needed his English proficiency to be "up to standards". Even heard teachers gossiping about him/his family and upbringing. My guardian usually picked me up late, so I used to watch the tutoring. I wasn't particularly good in English either, but I tried to help him so I can repay the favor. We lost contact when my family moved out of the country, but I do wonder how he is after that.
Exactly! Blaming her parents for her mistreatment by American classmates.
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.
right but neither of your parents is a native speaker. Parents have a duty to their kid to ensure their educations go smoothly if they are able to provide that resource.
I think it depends a lot on language ability too. Some people can learn languages better than others.
I know many children who grow up that way in my country , there is not that much trouble as long as the parents are comitted and serious about school, but they are big problems if the parents don't have a positive attitude towards the host culture and don't follow their kids close enough, and also when the parents make no effort to learn the country's language, it sends a bad message to the children that they don't really belong, as if their stay was permanently temporary and if they did'nt have to commit to anything long term.
i love how this vid is only 3min long. no running around the bush just immediately getting to the point. thank you🙏
Next time it will have a sponsor. 😂😂 This channel will blow up.
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.
the teachers were being unnecessarily mean, but it’s possible that they didn’t know?
@@archonicmakes That was going to be something I was wondering to. Did they know that her parents were being weird and speaking any English at home despite the fact that the dad (and maybe the mom as well) were fully capable of it? The teacher making fun of her was being mean but in other scenarios where they suggest she take different schooling it's not wrong to think that would be best for her if the teachers interactions were with the dad speaking English.
The real stupidity is not teaching a child the local school language. It makes their lifes and futures more difficult for no legitimate reason.
@@archonicmakes Many teachers are unnecessarily mean and don't particularly like children. Not the majority, but education is a relatively easy degree and there's usually a mild shortage of teachers because the job is low pay and difficult, so all school districts end up with at least a few bad teachers who have zero passion and little expertise, and are just there to offload their bitterness onto the kids.
It is not. The US is American English as our language.
Not Japanese. Not Mexican. Not Chinese.
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 😭
yeah the dad seems to be a little on the slow side. Either that or autistic.
Well too be fair, many immigrant families tend to do this, however were it all really went wrong is at school, which is where most foreign kids learn the language.
I had a similar experience growing up in the U.S. since my parents are immigrants and I don’t think I knew what an intersection was at that age I asked my sister (12) who grew up with more English at home thanks to me and she also didn’t know what it was called I just don’t think it’s a word that is needed for kids at that age, that vocab it typically used more by people who interact with roads more and for all the 12 year olds around me know about roads it’s what some one else drives on (or they just refer to the traffic lights and describe an intersection)
They were not an immigrant family.
@@beverlycrowell_ Honestly I don’t think that is a big distinction to make. I do think that the school was mainly at fault for not knowing how to help a language learner. I do think that her parents could have helped in having more English at home because that was available to them but considering actual immigrant families it definitely should not be a requirement 🤷♀️
You did not fail. There was nothing wrong with you. You are beautifully spoken. Your teachers were uneducated, close minded, and poorly trained.
I experienced something similar on a much smaller scale simply by moving from the North USA to the South USA. The dialect differences between GAE and AAVE resulted in special speech classes, alienated me from my peers, and left me feeling like a bizarre pale creature no matter where I went. I had to be removed from school, in favor of homeschooling. In that time, I was able to study Latin, French, Spanish, and yes, Japanese. It was wonderful.
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
Very true. It seems like she, for whatever reason, struggle to progress in English even though she spent a lot ot time at school. By the time we're at school we usually spend more time socializing there than with our parents. Seems a bit strange how she wasn't able to get better having friends. Or, the other theory is just that she fixates more on the negative, some people assimilate situations by focusing on the bad parts. Maybe she remebers rhe few times people didn't understand her and not on all the good part where she was doing well. As I learned I certainly had a few insidences of people not being nice but I didn't let thay stop me, au contraire. Maybe she's not the "assertive" type
Of course every child is different but I'm wondering if the differences in the languages played a role. Japanese and English are worlds apart, whereas if a child knows Spanish it's easy for them to also pick up Portuguese, Italian, French, even English when young. From what I have heard normally the opposite happens particularly with very different languages (i.e Japanese, Mandarin etc). Immigrant parents do not speak much of the native language with the child and so they cannot communicate as clearly in it- but because they do not live in the secondary language country it affects them less socially.
No, it is because she experienced cruelty and isolation in school. jfc.
In my case, my parents immigrated to Japan and I was born there. They only spoke Portuguese to me my whole life but like many ppl in my situation, I wasn't able to communicate in Portuguese very well.
were you also made fun of by your classmates and teachers for not knowing English well enough?
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！
agreed. i have an american English-only dad & a canadian bilingual French/English mom. Growing up, my mother would repeat her sentences in both languages so I would be able to learn both languages faster. At my dad's, I woukd generally speaking english, but at my mom's i would mostly speak french since my extended family & school at the time were francophone. Definitely helped a lot!
Same here. French (bi-lingual) mother, spoke French to our daughter when she was growing up, English Dad, so I spoke English to her.
For years she always replied to both of us in English, but now will respond to her Mum in either French or English (depending on how she's feeling ;) )
Her spoken French lags behind her French comprehension (fine as she spends 95% of her time in the UK) but is now improving all the time :)
Aw thank you for the sweet comment! I think my upbringing might have made more sense for someone moving to Japan, which was the case for most of my classmates at the local Japanese Saturday school (hoshūkō) I attended for ten years. It was nice that my Japanese was strong enough to keep up with my classmates (mostly Japanese nationals temporarily living in America) but in hindsight I’m not really sure what practical purpose it served for someone like me with long-term plans in America lol. What you suggested is the approach I would also probably take towards bilingual parenting if the plan is to stay in America.
@kisara_takahashi well, being bilingual actually helps your brain develop, so this is maybe where your parents were aiming to (you couldn't have seen it as a child of course), they wanted to give you a solid Japanese base and thought that the outside environment would suffice with English.
I agree with op that maybe this would have worked better with a one parent-one language approach, though, so you'd speak Japanese only with your mum and English only with your dad.
Btw, knowing a second language, even if you don't have plans to move there, always enriches you as a person ❤
All the best!
Parents should never underestimate kids abilities to learn my little girl picked three languages before turning six , my side Arabic/French and her dad side English ,her first phrases was Arabic cuz I mostly speak to her in Arabic but she still picked french as we were living in France, her English improved quicky after she turn three from watching many cartoons in English
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!!
I put the blame for all of this on the dad, but I do wonder what was happening with the school. I have to assume they were communicating with the dad so they didn't realize the language barrier existed??? Very weird that this situation went on the way it did for so long.
@@AyeliaGDoren this is kinda what I'm thinking. Was the school ever made aware that English wasn't spoken at home? They had one parent who spoke fluent English (and presumably went to the parent/teacher conferences).
It's entirely possible that nobody other than parents knew it was a language barrier and not, say, a learning disability. It's a problem with the school system, yes, but in this particular situation it starts at home
@@jonahhex18According to the creator (since many had the same question as you) replying on a popular comment, her dad did ACTUALLY communicate with her school about this, aka the kind of language living environment they established, but in her words, she suspects they didn't really believe him which yk..... YIKES. I just facepalmed as soon as I read that. Poor girl, man. 🫤😅
@@artfex1289 See, that just makes the situation even worse. The parents did attempt to make up for the home situation, but the school dropped the ball.
I still think it's fucked that it took the parents 12 years to realize they were fucking up, but they clearly cared
@@jonahhex18 yea agreed, I was super disappointed reading that comment. The parents clearly dropped the ball with their weird decisions, but I was hoping they at least cared enough to communicate with her school about them which her dad did. But then the school had failed to acknowledge this and failed her too as a result. Really sad on both sides because that would drive me insane speaking as a multilingual.
My father is from the Czech Republic and my mother is from Australia. I was born and raised in a monolingual household, as both of them just spoke to me in English. I hated this, because, although I now speak Czech (after studying in my own time and in community classes that I enrolled myself in), I don't think I will ever be able to speak it like a background speaker. My whole childhood, I couldn't really communicate with my paternal grandparents. My paternal grandfather passed away in November last year and, at his funeral, I discovered so much that I never knew about him before, and it really saddened me, knowing I never got to know him in the way so many of my friends got to know their own grandparents. I feel like your parents should have done what I always wished my parents had done, where I could speak to my mother in English and my father in Czech. Growing up bilingual is particularly beneficial for the brain development of a child too, so I really wish I could have had that experience.
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.
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.
Insane that her parents were this bad
@@gwills9337 they should've noticed their daughter struggling but i wouldnt necessarily call them bad. I had practically the same experience except the horrible teachers part. I still have cute little booklets my teacher made when i was 4 and learning English, documenting my progress. And this was normal school, not some english learning programme. Never had someone shame me even though when i started school at 4 years old all I knew was how to ask to go to the toilet. I also think my parents could have prepared me better but I've almost never been made to feel insecure. Just once when i was 10 because i didn't know a lot of adjectives, the teacher was kinda a bitch. Fixed that when i was 12 by reading a lot.
@@gwills9337I mean what about families where the parents don’t speak much English? Are they bad parents too?
@@gwills9337 I don't know why so many of you think this household she lived in is unique in America. Lots of kids born in the USA have parents that don't speak any English. Most Chinese-American kids have parents that only speak Chinese in the house and they have to learn English outside of it. Their educational outcomes aren't considered worse than white kids.
Exactly! We have a monolingual Chinese speaking household, and our kids are proud to be bilingual. They fit right in with peers. She did not grow up in a place that celebrated diversity. Not all of the United States is like that. The parents were trying to give her an advantage, but perhaps should have chosen a more culturally diverse community. Can’t believe the school setting was this unsupportive.
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.
Well, considering the kids bullied her, I don’t imagine she got many opportunities for that… :/
Exactly, I wanna know
What about TV? As a migrant I learn a great deal from TV. Those kids Tv program are great exposure to English.
@@hansythekitty9564maybe they placed strict limits on screen time and/or only let her watch stuff in Japanese.
@@The1andonlyAbber Yea, I see how devastating that must be. Some of the fastest ways I learned English was through watching UA-cam videos on Minecraft and other topics then being able to communicate about those things with my peers.
I knew very basic English up until the age of 7, with "chopsticks" being the longest and complicated word I knew, but learning English became a breeze when I was dropped in public school in America when I made friends and stuff. I guess for me it was easier because I went to school in a pretty diverse place so it's not unusual to meet immigrants and ESL learners, so my friends were pretty accepting.
I’m sorry you went through this but it was a failure of the school not your parents. Raising a child to speak another language and then depending on the school to teach them English is very common in American society. It’s not an experiment. Your parents didn’t want the Japanese culture to die with you and I respect that.
I cannot agree. It is totally the job of the parent to watch how the child does in school. They should have intervened, considering dad is a native speaker. Also, are schools funded for this influx of immigrant kids who need to learn English? Is this part of the school system or just something that schools have to somehow tackle because so many kids are struggling with English? Additionally, it's never an advantage to have to learn school materials while not being proficient yet at English. It's for a big part on the parents as well.
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 😅
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.
That's what also happened with me, I'm from belgium, and I started learning english just from the internet, but also from school along with french. But because I almost always use english when I'm online, my dutch and french lvls are decreasing a bit
dude, I feel that. I feel like I can express myself better in English, but my German suffers from it.
wait i did the exact same thing... i used to be good at german but then i learned english and fixated on it so much that i cant really talk about certain things in german even though its my native language. Its really frustrating to forget basic german words around people who dont speak english :/
Yes I think I'm doing this to myself as well. I live in France and I don't speak french these days because I only talked in french at school. I know English more than my own mother tongue which is understandable since barely anyone speaks it in France. But french is spoken in France and I have no excuse as to why I suck and don't have a lot of vocabulary. I was thinking of consuming more french media to see if that'll help in any way.
Dutch, same situation. My bf and I speak English now despite both of us being native Dutch speakers
Thank you for lending a new perspective to the not-so-sunny side of a bilingual upbringing! I really feel for young Kisara and wish people around you had been more understanding 🥺 Growing up speaking a different language than the norm can be tough on a child’s sense of identity. Meanwhile, it seems like the benefits are serving you well in adulthood 😙
Rather than bilingual, it seems she was raised monolingual in the household in a country that didn’t really speak the language.
The classmates and schools were definitely part of the issue, though. Instead of punishing her and bullying her, at least ONE person should have realised that she simply wasn’t understanding what was being communicated to her.
Not really a bilingual upbringing though! But the comment above explained it well enough.
An actual bilingual upbringing does leave both languages weaker than if parents focus on a single one... But it's like 90% and 90% the competence , and the benefits of having intuitive access to a "language switch" in your mind from childhood is well worth it. (though to be fair, exposure is rarely completely equal and competency usually just ends up being like 35% - 99%. Still a net positive over just one language.)
A lot of bilingual kids end up very weak in their second language, but I think the way to fix it is for the parents to just ignore the first language, lmao. Honestly one of the parents should focus on the second language up to the kid's teens, and from there on it's up to the kid if they want to keep up the second language or not. In any case it will have been of use to them, so in my opinion it's always worth it.
She grew up monolingual
This was not a bilingual household. Her parents exclusively spoke to her in a different language than the one spoken in the country they live in. She was denied the need to learn English from her parents. The parents failed to prepare her to assimilate into an English society.
@@SupremeDP literally how i was raised. Sadly when i was 9-10 we lived in a very bullying and racist place so i thought not speaking one of them would maybe help the bullying. Didn't ofc, only made me become less fluent and develop a foreign accent when i relearned it 💀
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!
SO excited that you feel comfortable sharing this language experiment and talking about the nuances of such a personal topic! Bravo and kudos to you for having the courage to share this.
my parents only spoke to me in a foreign language at home, but by 3rd grade my english was on par with my peers. i really think this is an issue with your teachers being rude/ignorant and maybe a lack of english speaking friends at school rather than an issue with your parents... and as you've said, you're now completely fluent in both languages now, so indeed, it all worked out in the end.
but you're correct in the fact that theres always the option to whitewash your future child's cultural identity by refusing to teach him/her anything but english in an attempt to "shelter" them from what you experienced. its a free country afterall.
My thoughts exactly.
Her teachers were extremely rude. We had multiple kids in my schools where their parents didn’t speak English at all or just a little and they were put in ESL classes to catch them up in pre-k to middle school.
This doesn't sound like a "language experiment". It sounds like how many immigrants' children are raised. It is also common knowledge within the study of bilingual children's development that they may struggle with both languages while young, but then they will get to a point as older children when they are able to properly distinguish their languages and then will progress faster and often be more intelligent than their peers. It sounds like your difficulties came from the lack of support from your teachers rather than your parents only speaking Japanese to you. This is the same that my father went through with his Spanish & English. His parents only spoke Spanish, & then students were punished for speaking Spanish in school, and not given support and understanding from teachers knowing that most children in his area were in Spanish only households. As a result of his treatment, he refused to teach us, his children, Spanish, and this happened with many of my peers. Thus we grew up unable to communicate with our grandparents and relatives in Spanish speaking countries. This lack of knowledge of our heritage language left us feeling completely isolated, cut off, as well as, not feeling Latino enough. Now as an adult, I am decent in Spanish, but still am not proficient enough, & feel inadequate and cast out because of not being able to speak Spanish at an advanced level. Due to my experiences, when my niece was born, I refused to have her grow up like my siblings & I did. She is being raised bilingual in English & Spanish, as well as learning some French & Japanese (because I lived in both of those countries & thus learned those languages to some extent too). My little niece is only ten and her language & vocab skills are far beyond her peers, even as a preschooler her teacher noted how advanced her vocab was. She comprehends languages so easily, even being able to translate French to Spanish or English without ever having heard the French word before.
I am also getting a degree in psych with a focus on children never being taught their heritage language & how the loss of their heritage language affects them. The overwhelming majority have a negative feeling about their language inadequacies in their minority heritage language.
This sounds like you may be experiencing the same, but with your community majority language instead. Learning Japanese didn't make you dumb. Your teachers just treated you like you were because of their ignorance in bilingual development. You were never dumb, just not properly supported in your second language like, unfortunately, many bilingual children are in the USA.
Note: For those raising or wanting to raise their children multilingual, check out the UA-cam channel & website Multilingual.family by Andrea. Andrea is a linguist raising her children multilingual, & her channel & website are a fantastic resource for helping you raise your children to be multilingual. I highly recommend it.
This is completely true! Fortunately I grow up in California so there are ELD program for migrant kids which help students with their English progress. Though my parents do not speak English I have exposure to English in school, tv, the Internet and books
This!!! I genuinely don’t understand how this video- her experience was a language experiment. As a person from an immigrant family, I only spoke in Chinese with my family- because simply, they couldn’t speak English. Even to this day, I can hold a conversation in English with my dad, but he’s still not very fluent. For my mom, she’s learning, but I can’t hold a proper conversation with her in English. I personally never had any problems learning English; to the point that I don’t even remember how I learned English. It just suddenly happened. But, I also never had any memories of being bullied or a horrible education experience, so I think that’s the common denominator. Though, because my parents were busy, I was never able to properly learn Chinese, so my skills in Chinese is not the best, and that did make me feel disconnected to my heritage. My younger self felt so disconnected that I felt that I wasn’t “truly Chinese,” and that even made me reject my heritage at one point. Now though, I’m trying my best to learn more Chinese
Well maybe because she's not actually an immigrant genius, it's just her parents chose to neglect her?
@@namiip yeah I think thats what really held her back from learning english, the kids and teachers were literally bullying her, bc the classroom is where most foreign kids learn the language through talking with their peers
Her father was not an immigrant. Both he and the daughter were born in the US.
Thank you for sharing this, I'm sure it will help a lot of people going through the same struggles as you did...
Also, I love how self-aware you are about your insecurities and I really admire that.
I feel like we can all learn about ourselves from you. Thank you ❤
Seems to be something really emotional and hard to share. But like others have said we can't turn back time but make the best with what we had.
Am pretty sure this "unique" experience has influenced greatly and made you a better person today. A lovely one.
Shows how you endured and overcame a though and confusing situation.
As a bilingual person I can totally relate is hard when growing up. But you look back today and end up grateful of being able to communicate with different cultures and even teach it to others.
Thanks so much for sharing ❤
I mean for me, as a child of two Chinese parents that know nearly nothing about English, I still learned English pretty well. I was an esol kid in kindergarten but by the first grade my English was pretty decent. And even now, my parents only speak Chinese to me. I guess it just goes to show how different our minds can be, since I was able to become fluent while mostly only speaking English at school for the first few years
It's all decided in the head, as we say where I come from. Maybe the idea that "I aaam speciaru because I aaam Japaneeezu" was also included in her language package. And man, I know what a burden it can be, because I have spent about seven years in Japan, Japanese is my third language, my adult kids are bilingual, my husband is Japanese and we are both language teachers.
Your case is the case for lost of us foreign kids, we all learned english at school, where it all went wrong for her is the fact that she got bullied by her peers and teachers, otherwise she would've been fine from the beginning if she wasnt
Yup pretty much my ex and I are both Mexican, his parents speak no English so he only spoke Spanish at home and learned in English in school it was a pretty smooth process according to him.
yes, her situation is the way everybody does it here in asia. it’s a given that the kids are going to learn english in school so the parents deliberately speak only different languages to the child. sometimes both parents each different languages, and the child ends up knowing three languages spontaneously!
i’m surprised to hear from this video that it’s a bad thing.. i learn something new everyday
@@joy1ess as an (southeast) asian living in asia you're so right. kisara's problem is definitely very similar to what asian kids in asian countries faced; it's just strange phenomenon because she's biracial asian person with no parents speaking english to her despite one of them being not asian (white in this case).
You unlocked a core memory of my childhood. When growing up in America, both my parents only spoke Bengali to me and did not had the fluency of English, so I pick up a strong sense bengali for most of my childhood until we moved away to a different state and the schooling there immediately placed me in ESOL classes and summer school to make up for my literacy skills till I reached highschool. I thought the majority of my life I was childhood i thought i was slow and had similar issues in facing adults and children either making fun at me or frustrated at me because I just could not understand what they mean in English , but hearing your story, I just wanna thank you and glad for you sharing. you're not alone 😭 ❤
I'm so sorry
What Esol?
@leafyishereisdumbnameakath4259 thank you! I appericate it but I'm grateful for growing up the person I am today and overcoming the challenges in my childhood ❤️
@ItsKadelyn abbreviated for English for speakers of other languages. So, I would have additional classes outside my regular classes in the USA to teach me English and catch up to my peers at the time.
@@cerivmarahgaming oh ths for explaining 🫶🫂❤️
The famous academic book "How Languages are Learned" (Lightbrown & Spada) describes cases exactly like yours. Bilingualism in kids is not always the best thing: there are cases in which children will lag behind at school, that will affect their self-esteem, inclusion, social life, etc. It's safer to mostly use at home the language that the child is going to need to be successful at school and social life, and expose fewer hours of a second language. A second language is beneficial to kids, but parents should do it with caution. The same thing happened to a friend of mine: she was being raised bilingual English-Portuguese... But was having a hard time at school because her English was worse compared to her peers. The school strongly advised her parents to speak mainly in English... and her problem was solved.
I dunno man, here in India, children are born with 2-3 languages to converse in by default
@@NutBuster99 It depends on each case. Another famous book "Resisting Linguistic Imperialism in English Teaching" (Oxford Press) shows how communities and learners in postcolonial nations can struggle in the dilemma of keeping their native languages or giving more attention to English for academic success.
It's not a good idea if the parents are not native speakers. That is a must or you will not have a rich language foundation. (In her case, the dad is a native speaker,s o...)
@@professorsilva9388 fair enough. But the language curriculum here is kinda intense. For eg- one has to learn their state/province language, the national language hindi and the international language as kids. I myself learnt Marathi, Hindi, English in my primary education, as well as an additional choice German that we had to pick. Parents are South Indians, so they taught me Malayalam as well.... So I am literate in 5 languages, with spoken Tamil as well. Keep in mind that I didn't attend the best school nor the best curriculum. It's just the state curriculum of Maharashtra (SSC). The CBSE or the ICSE probably learn more languages here in India than I do.
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.
I promise u aren't alone!! I went through a mild version of this because I'm also billingual. I only spoke greek until I started preschool, so I too got in trouble a lot because the teachers thought I was ignoring their instructions. I also learned what the word 'melon' was in middle school, which kinda shocked me. For me, my preschool teachers told my parents that I needed to be in a special ed program if i didn't pick up english, so that's when my parents made the effort to only speak english with me, and it worked pretty quick. The only sad thing is that we don't speak greek in the same way to each other anymore. They speak it with me sometimes but my ability to speak greek has actually faded a lot, and I just reply to them in english. It kind of hurts to see old videos of me where I'm fluent and realizing that I cant talk like that anymore
I'm a bilingual kid and I have a weaker language. It's normal, and it's very fixable (if you care to fix it): Read books in greek, watch TV or movies in greek, try to meet some greek people or make an effort to speak in greek once in a while. Maybe tell your parents you want to only speak in greek while with them
The language is in you, and will be forever, and you'll probably realize you understand way more than you'd expect when reading books or watching TV (relative to your speaking ability). You just need to wake the language up a bit. It takes a few months at the most, and it's nowhere near as difficult as picking up a new language.
It's just a question of finding a reason and motivation to do it.
@@SupremeDP aw thx for this reply :) and actually recently ive been trying to build my greek back up and am kinda pleased to realize im at a point where the only way i can improve is by speaking with other people. I'm shy to ask my parents to practice because it feels weird, but i do care about this a lot so i might 💗
And it's crazy how far motivation can get you, and i was pretty unmotivated when i was younger just because i live in a small town in the US where everyone is monolingual. its so easy to just want to settle and blend in
@@SupremeDP I've lost the ability to converse in my mother tongue. It does hurt when you remember that you could speak the language well in the past. Assimilation sucks
@@notanexploreranimations1218 hi, I'm a French mum with 2 bilingual kids. Their dad is Greek and we live in Greece. We both speak our own mother tongue to our children. My eldest has assimilated both languages very naturally. My youngest is more at ease with French, but she's getting more and more comfortable with Greek by going to school and talking with other kids. Maybe you could join a Greek community and do some activities with members, there are many celebrations in Greek culture that are followed by Greeks living abroad. And I agree, watching movies or series can help too with the understanding. My kids are big fans of the series "Το σόι σου", it's very funny and has lots of archetypal Greek family traits. Its enjoyable to watch as an adult too.
@@Raphstav That is so cool!! I don't usually hear about people immigrating to Greece. And yes I've definetely heard of that series and it's actually my favorite thing to watch when I visit. :) I'm glad your kids are so connected to both cultures!
I think this really depends on the child. Cuz my parents did that with me , mind you they themselves didn’t know English well either. I learned English purely as soon as I started school. Yes I had to take extra English learner classes and attend summer school for a year even but by middle school I became quite fluent and didn’t even need the courses anymore. I read lots of books and learned more difficult English words there and googled their meanings. I’m glad my parents did this with me and didn’t speak English to me. My native language is Ukrainian but I also learned Russian through Sunday school and tv. Sure my Russian is worser in conversing but I understand it 100%. This really depends on the child this method cuz for me it worked wonderfully. My brother on the other hand mixes up words and pronounciation in our native language. And yes we both went to speech therapy also. As an adult I can speak well in English and Ukrainian tho.
Same situation here, native language Russian though
Thanks for sharing! This is so important for prospective parents to know! I never realized that there were such serious downsides to teaching kids multiple languages at a young age
Went through something similar. Thank you for sharing this 🥲
I kind of recognise this experience from immigrant kids in the Netherlands. When I was in primary school, I had a Turkish boy in my class who could talk to us in Dutch fine, but he was really behind in class because he probably lacked the Dutch skills to learn everything we could learn with ease at it made him fit in less than others. At the time, I thought he was just less smart than us because he got help from a special support teacher, but looking back it was probably his background of not speaking Dutch at home that made him "less smart" than us. In his case, it wasn't that his parents had decided not to teach him Dutch, but more likely that his parents did not speak Dutch well themselves and weren't able to teach him and I only realise that now that I'm an adult.
I'm sorry your parents made a conscious choice not to teach you English from a young age and I'm glad your dad decided to change his mind eventually to teach you after all. I hope this video sends a message to all parents that want to raise a child bilingual that it is important for their child to also teach them the language of the country they are living in. It is important for a child's education to be able to understand the teacher's instructions, it can prevent the bullying they could get for not being fluent, and being able to communicate with others well is just very important for one's self-esteem
Regarding the bullying. Learning a language so you don't get bullies is wild. The kids and teachers should learn to be empathetic
I noticed this as well. Kids who grow up in households who do not speak the language of the country they are in have harder times in school on average, because of the language barrier. The solution, I think, is more exposure to the language of the country. Whether that be in daycare, extracurricular activities, tutoring, babysitters, or extra classes.
Absolutely. Bilingualism / multilingualism is an interesting lifestyle, you can gain a lot from it, but those gains don't come easily and effortlessly. And you need to take negative feedback as constructive (although unsolicited) criticism, without seeing it as a personal attack, meltdowns and playing the traumatized victim.
The solution is putting extra effort into language development. All the methods listed by noah1502 above, first co-ordinated by the parents, then (and I can't emphasize it enough) by the youngsters themselves. Come on, if nothing else seems to work, you always have a school library with lots of books in the target language and a librarian who is happy to see a kid in the library!
When kids are no longer babies, they need to work on their own knowlewdge actively. Pre-teens should be old enough to understand that their skills are theirs to develop and use. They can't just sit in the corner waiting for some miracle to happen, they should seek out ways and opportunities to hone their skills.
not true, the parents HAVE to put their children in the other languagw daycare and the household language will never be an issue. when you are sitting at home in isolation and don't have any activity outside, of course you'll have problems, lol
How could a father be so smart yet so dense?
Maybe he thought his child would be a genuis too.
honestly, there are countless stories of children being raised entirely in one language but easily learning the language of the country once they start going to school. so i can understand why he thought she'd pick up English just fine. but yeah, personally i would still expose my child to *some* English so that they aren't completely lost and isolated when they go to school. intentionally putting your kid in a situation like that when you have the ability to teach them English seems cruel to me.
There is nothing wrong with the parents choosing to have a monolingual household. Research shows educational outcomes for kids who speak a different language at home than at school are pretty much the same, and in fact those kids often emerge with better language skills overall than their English-only peers. There is of course an initial delay in English skills, but kids usually catch up in just a few years. Having ESOL support in school can help kids through this catch-up process. On the other hand, having teachers who don't understand your situation and think your kid is just stupid is going to make everything much more difficult. That's where the issue in this video comes from -- really poor handling by the educators.
My best friend also grew up in a Japanese-American household in the US with the same exact situation - her mother is Japanese and her father is American, but they were strictly only allowed to speak Japanese at home. To my knowledge my friend didn't have any major issues integrating into school and learning English. She was offered ESOL services in elementary school but chose to stop using them because she didn't need them. Generally, by interacting with the community outside of the home, making friends, participating in extracurriculars, and going to school every day, a kid's exposure to each language will come out to about 50/50. This is actually probably the best way to raise a fully bilingual child.
I grew up in a French-American household where we only spoke about 50% French and 50% English at home. There were no strict rules, and we switched and mixed the languages freely. Since I was also speaking English at school, my exposure to each language probably came out to 75% English and 25% French. As a result, my French now is definitely worse than my English, although I am still bilingual. I wish my parents had been more strict about speaking only French at home, because then my French would be much better today.
he wasnt smart he was just a weeb
Some very stupid people like him can be good at one particular thing (learning Japanese).
This was an interesting video. I would have definitely watched a longer more in-depth version of it. I look forward to seeing what the next video is about.
I grew up bilingual as well, and I relate a lot to your experience. From moving countries, I spent my childhood learning and speaking English 99% of the time despite being a native Spanish speaker, when I was suddenly forced to start using Spanish all the time it was like whiplash and I was really behind everyone else in Spanish for many years. When I had to be thrown back into Spanish language schooling I struggled a lot because I COULD NOT read Spanish in the 6th grade, it was a huge struggle, and it left me with an identity crisis. I refused to learn Spanish for many years and my progress was slow, it took for me to make the decision to start reading and listening to more Spanish that it really started to improve. Nowadays my Spanish is closer to my English, it took me more than TEN years to really close the gap and even to this day my English remains my dominant language. I would not wish for my children to go through something similar, but at the same time society can be unnecessarily cruel.
There's nothing wrong with people like us we are just people who grow up in between cultures, I think what your parents did was a similar mistake to what my parents did, they did not expose us enough to both languages. My guess is that they didn't want you to miss out on the Japanese side of your heritage and lose out on Japanese (lots of second generation immigrants lose their heritage language completely) because you lived in America, and assumed since you lived in America that you would speak English fine. It's a tricky balance, I don't want to blame your parents either for the experiment because of it, we as a society simply don't have a consensus with how to deal with raising multilingual children.
This story seems really similar to mine. I also had to learn a language from scratch in 7th grade and I also refused to learn it- which didnt have the best outcome for me academically lol. Thanks for sharing this... it feels good to know I am not the only one who has been through these stuff
I'm honestly confused why it was such a big deal that a kid didn't know the word "intersection".
Exactly
Why should a little kid know that
But people use the word intersection every day! _I personally_ say intersection once every 1/15th of an hour, just to remind myself of how great it is as a word and how to pronounce it!!
_In-ter-sec-shun._ Such a beautiful word. 😊
Intersection.
Intersection.
Intersection.
/s, but you knew that already. 😂😂😂
@@Ixarus6713
Nope not everybody. People around me just used street light or 'at the light'
Hi! Love your video❤, i really appreciate when people share their experience on this kind of topics!
I think that maybe this depends not only on the child but also on how different are the two (or more) languages you are learning.
For example I was born and raised in Italy but in my house I only spoke Spanish because my mother is from Venezuela and my father (who was born in Italy) grew up in Venezuela too. My father being a bilingual himself already knew italian while my mother took three years to start speaking fluently.
I don't know how but I don't remember a time when I didn't know how to speak one of the two languages..I think I picked both at the same time because even if at home I was taught only Spanish, I spent 7/8 hours at the kindergarten everyday and there I learned Italian.
At 4 years old I could easily switch between the two languages and translate for my family members when they came to visit.
On the other hand I have two younger sisters and for them it was more difficult...which is strange because they've always been better than me in English and French at school.
BUT, my point is that English and japanese are languages that are totally different from each other..from sentence composition and structure to the alphabet and handwriting, and that probabably the reason of you having such a bad experience.
Your story really resonated with me. It probably is the most relatable video I have ever watched.
Growing up, I was raised by my grandmother whom only spoke our native language within a community that didn’t really speak much English. I occasionally would get teased speaking my native language as a child, and when we moved out of that community to a more English speaking community, I was further brutally teased by my teachers and peers for my lack of vocabulary and proper pronunciation in English. I just stopped talking all together in one point of my life, and only spoke to the people I trusted. Personally, I think that schools should be more accommodating because isn’t it a place to improve upon what you don’t know about?
This is just the experience that every child with immigrants parents go through. I went through the same thing and in my opinion the teacher should have just been more understanding. I know what you mean by "gaps" in your language but those gaps were filled because I watched a lot of English content on my free time, is this something you did? Also, because I went into school not knowing English, I was enrolled in an ESL class until I was able to fully understand English. Did your school try to enroll you in one?
I think there is too many variables that could have had an impact on your an English that I think it's unfair to point at your parents (or dad in this case) as the sole cause for this because it isn't. I went through this, some of my friends went through this, and some of my cousins went through this and we all turned out fine. This isn't a "my parents didn't teach me English" issue this is a "my peers and mentors made me feel inferior because English wasn't my 1st language AND my learning environment doesn't account for ESL Learners" issue.
I have a somewhat similar background but with entirely different outcomes. My mom is Japanese too and I speak to her exclusively in Japanese while I spoke English at school. And technically English is my second language. 🫡
Growing up bilingual is a balancing act and I have no idea how I managed it on top of being autistic (formally PDD-NOS so not full on stereotypical autism). And it’s not like my mom carried around a book about raising bilingual children when I was growing up. My brain does things for me and while I hated talking during class and a teacher or two got nitpicky on me about class participation and being “socially functional”, I still learned and retained a lot from listening and analyzing.
Very cool that your dad speaks Japanese!! My mom spoke to me in English and my dad in Spanish. There were countless times where people told me that I should speak one language and not mix or others would tell my parents that they were gonna confuse me.
In the end I just think we’re privileged people!
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
Thank you for sharing with us how you feel and how this experience impacted you.
I’m glad your dad saw your need to connect with his in English. And I also want to point out many teachers in America aren’t equipped to accommodate for folks who speak a language other than English at home. I’m an afterschool teacher and have plenty of students whose parents have little English knowledge, but I think the more important thing is for us as educators to show empathy rather than judge. Even though America claims we are a melting pot, there’s still a standard at which is “the norm” and we have a long way to go before being truly culturally inclusive and integrated.
Growing up I had many peers whose parents didn't speak the language of my country and therefore only spoke in their native language to their kids at home. I believe the crucial thing in their success was going to Kindergarden (which is very different from America kindergarden, more a daycare focused on playing) for three years before starting school. This gave them the time to pick up the language from teachers and peers before being expected to be able to learn anything new in that language.
I literally have this experience too,
I grew up from asia, and i was only spoke to in english by my parents. Their reasons were because it gave more opportunities which i get, but I had the experience of being called dumb, daydreamed during lessons and didnt had any friends at school. I was so sad and frustrated that i wanted to go overseas to have "english stuff". I only manged to get out of my local schools during covid when i convinced my parents to have english online school at 14 years old at the end of that year.
And the thing i did before coming home and get told the news, I was crying quietly in class because the class made a joke that i didnt understand and everyone was just having fun while I realized that I will never understand any of them.
Just the last year, I came to canada and have school here and I learnt way more and did so much more then I ever did, and now 18. I still wished I came here earlier, because i am very much still confused on life and wished that i had more time to learn.
Edit. Also want to add, I was also told that if I didn’t stopped daydreaming, people would think im "special". And i had siblings have a similar experience but they managed to learn the other languages, which made me feel worse as being "the dumb one".
It seems like parents have good intentions, but literally did no research on raising a multilingual kid. There are multiple psychology techniques to help kids learn multiple languages better, and parents are responsible to know the possible negative affects and a responsibility to explain to their kids that if they feel picked on at school because of language, if they're not understanding everything at school to tell the parents because it can be fixed and helped , and that the parents make sure their kids are at a sufficient language level to succeed in 1st 2nd 3rd grade , like look out for your kids??? Don't treat them like a science experiment or a fun cool toy ??
By any chance are you Filipino
@@joebidenofficialpotus nope. Close guess tho
I'm a South Korean. But my daughter couldn't speak Korean. My daughter speaks English and Vietnamese only! Because I didn't teach her Korean. I tried to teach her Korean when she was little, but she refused to learn, so I gave up teaching her Korean! I think language is just a tool to express yourself and understand others! I believe that good interpersonal relationships can only be created under sufficient expression and understanding. If she is able to express her opinions well enough in the place where she lives and read the other person's expressions well, the origin purpose of language would be achieved. When she refused to learn Korean, I realized that it might be more valuable for her life to have fun with her friends with a language than just to gain a ability to speak bilingual or trilingual languages. That's why, I gave up teaching my daughter Korean.
Quite sad to hear, must’ve been hard throughout childhood. As an immigrant myself, I’ve been thrown into a Scottish public school at age of 9, and I only knew 10 english words at the same time. Most of my friends went through similar cycle. It took around 1-2 years of being able to speak a normal conversation albeit at very poor variety of vocabulary. At that time key was to speak english as much as possible outside of school. (Also my parents were learning english along as well, so none of us could really learn from each other). As I grew up, I naturally learned new vocabulary as school went on. Since my friends in high school were from my home country I noticed despite my academic english being very good, It was lacking a lot in understanding english as a culture (simple as watching a tv show 9 out of 10 cats - it would not be near as funny as it was to locals). This changed in University where again I was only surrounded by locals as well as I took up reading. Now I read both my home country books and english books, to maintain a good level of both.
Teachers were helpful because it was obvious I was a foreigner - I guess if I was a local and couldn’t speak local language then that would not have gone the same way. As to being bullied picked on, it was for the fact I was a foreigner. Mispronouncing something only gave fuel to the others. Kids will bully and make fun of others over anything, colour, race, nationality, quirks, clothes, status.
I have a similar experience. I had to enroll in ESL despite being born in America and having an American father. My mom only spoke to me in Spanish and she was a stay at home mom while my dad worked full time, so I got exposed to Spanish much more than English before school. They still put me in ESL for 4 years though.
I’m actually glad about it because we learned a ton of geography and learned about different cultures in ESL, when I was in high school I noticed I knew so much more geography than most of my peers.
being bilingual is a wonderful thing, and is also becoming more common. i am so sorry that the us school system failed tyou so horrifically. how teacher after teacherfailed to see that you were not responding or understanding well due to a language barrier and were not simply being difficult or ignorant is awful. any compitant teacher should be able to see that and you should have been offered extra english help from the get go. i think raising a kid monolingual in another language is fine, but parents and teachers should coordinate and be aware when the kid starts school so they can get the extra boost they need from teh start. this whole thing also leads to schools telling parents to stop teaching thier kdis the native language of their parents for english which also isnt good.
Wow! I grew up in the same boat. I still have a slight accent that comes up occasionally. Your folks meant well and it’s common to think that “they’ll just learn English in school.” I also was bullied in school. Hell I hated school until my last year of high school. Anyway, in the long run, your parents gave you the gift of Japanese that you would have had a very difficult time with later in life. As a kid you’re a language sponge. That’s how I view it and I’m thankful to my parents.
I was born in Argentina, i now live in Colombia and for some reason i started learning english from a very young age, guess it was all because i attended a bilingual school and by that time english was a priority for must schools here, long story short i now feel way more confident speaking in english than in spanish, i always bring up series and movies references in english and my friends don't really get them, it's also kinda funny when people try to guess in online conversations where i'm from and i always end up telling the story about my colombian parents travelling to Argentina and having me there. 😂 First time watching one of your videos, you look so cool and i gotta say so pretty! 😍 i'm subscribing 😅
In my experience, Im really glad my parents spoke in their native language all of the time. Well that is because they didn’t know how to speak English, but because of that I am bilingual, and I hear constantly of these kids who can’t even communicate with their parents and tried to get tutors that didn’t work.
I had a similar thing happen to me. I'm brazilian, but I was raised in Georgia, US as a kid. Because my dad wanted me to learn English well, that's the only language my family would use with me, but a few years later we moved back to Brazil and I knew absolutely no Portuguese. The only English thing continued and I was always really behind in class. I just couldn't understand anything for a very long time.
From being one of the best students in my class while in the US I went to being the worst. Sure, because of that my English got better since I would only watch TV in English and only read in English. But it took me many, many, many years to get better, but by then I just didn't care about grades or anything anymore. It was rough.
This is something that i’ve also struggled with a ton. My parents being immigrants I was always forced to speak my native language at home, which held my english skills back because I was homeschooled for a majority of elementary school. The main tubing that helped me get better at english and an American accent was UA-cam and watching UA-cam videos 24/7. It’s much more easier to pick up rather than formal learning but sucks for your reading skills which is still something I see the effects of.
So interesting to hear your experience. I grew up in Brazil (Portuguese speaking country) but my family is Uruguayan and only ever spoke Spanish to me and my brothers, either at home or on the street. As a result of this, me and both my brothers are fluent in Portuguese, Spanish and find it very easy to learn new languages. As a teacher that focuses in international education and bilingualism, I perceive your experience as a flaw from your schooling system in being open and adapting to your educational needs. The amount of time you spent with people outside of your family would also have a relevant impact on the final outcome. Anyway, super interesting to hear more from a different experience and it’s always important to remember that each person has their own experience. Thank you for sharing.
From what I've heard and seen, the best way is to both parents speak their own language to the child consistently, and the child becomes bilingual. There might be a bit of "mix up" periods there, but children are very much capable to have more than one mother tongue.
But there hasn't always been much knowledge of the best way, and your parents might have gotten some bad advice younger. I'm sure it was a big revelation and a save in your journey, what happened when you were twelve. I'm glad you're ok now.
i mean, my parents only speak chinese to me, since, well, they don't exactly _know_ english. grew up in america too, but a major difference was that i had an older brother. while my english is still pretty iffy sometimes, i think having a sibling definitely helped with the whole not-enough-english-outside-of-school thing.
funnily enough, the main thing dragging my english grade down now is missed homework assignments---i grew up with everyone telling me i was smart all the time and never really got challenged in elementary to middle school. then high school hit, along with the homework assignments and difficult-er subjects that came with it, and i learned that i was supposed to be spending time learning outside of school too, haha. i'll definitely be teaching my future children (if i have any) that hard work is A Cool Thing and to not freak out like a cat seeing a cucumber any time there's a chance that failure may exist :')
Thank you so much for sharing this,it’s the first time of hear of someone going through the same troubles as me and my siblings.
We live in an arabic speaking country, where everyone speaks Arabic plus the local dialect, but my parents only ever spoke to us in French (our mom does not speak arabic), which lead to us being mocked (and bullied) for not being fluent in arabic despite living almost our whole lives here.
Interesting topic. Thanks for sharing 🌸❤️
Hey, grew up as a bilingual here! And I have a similar story.
I'm from the Philippines and when I was younger I only ever spoke in Tagalog until I was 5. Once I turned 6 however, My dad would teach me English every now and then. It still wasn't the best but it did give me a boost in my English subject. When I visited my cousins (who only spoke English), my dad realized I had to learn English more, so I sorta went through a transition phase where I would switch my everyday language from Tagalog to English instead. This is the time where I also only watched English shows rather than Tagalog ones as well (my choice, completely).
While it was good for my English grades, I started suffering in my Filipino and A.P. (PH History) subject instead.
I was still able to speak Tagalog, but I wasn't really fluent anymore. I was still able to talk to classmates but they still noticed how "weird" I spoke.
To the point where they think I'm a foreigner or a "half-Filipino" and often times they wouldn't expect me to understand the language. It also didn't help that I had really pale skin.
I also have trouble reading in Tagalog, since I'm not as fast reading Filipino books than English books (An English novel would take me 3-4 hours to finish, while a Tagalog novel would probably take me 5-6 hours + I'll need a dictionary for some of the words that'll appear ever now and then.)
Fast forward to now, I'm 18 and homeschooled ever since the start of the pandemic (when I was 14). And, even though I'm still not quite good in my Filipino subjects, I speak better Tagalog now. My family would talk to me in "Taglish", mostly my dad. While my mom talks to me mostly in Tagalog. And while, I still have a small accent. I can converse with other people better than before.
(Also, since the jobs I apply for, only really need you to understand English, it still helped in the long run.) The only downside is that I couldn't communicate properly with my fellow Filipinos.
My little brother however, has a case much more similar to this video. Because unlike me, who was able to go to school for 10 years, (and forced to talk to other people for 10 years). He's been homeschooled ever since he was 9, and he only speaks English now. He can understand our language, but now he's too shy to speak it.
bro my first language is english and i tried transitioning to tagalog only when i was 10 but now im stuck speaking broken tagalog and i forgot how to verbally communicate in english 😭😭😭
isn't tagalog just 60% English and 30% Spanish now ?
@@belstar1128 sorta, but I'd say it's more 50% spanish and 20% english
I grew up in the U.S., but my family speaks (only) Korean at home. Somehow I didn't have this issue described in the video, and my English was always fine, but I definitely noticed deficiencies in my younger brother's (7 years younger than me) English when he was little. So when he became about 9 years old, I started speaking with him exclusively in English. My parents didn't like it at first, but his English dramatically improved afterwards IMO. Now, his English is pretty much okay.
I went through something similar. I come from a Belgian and Danish family and live in Norway, my mom is a linguist and so she got the idea of speaking only French with me even though she did know Norwegian. I was diagnosed with dyslexia at the age of 12 and was never helped by the schooling system. but did decently and got into university where I studied economics and programming. I'm now 26 and have lived with a Norwegian person for 4 years, and my reading and writing skills have improved dramatically. To the point that I'm kind of wondering if I have a learning disorder at all.
Hi Kisara, I'm so sorry to hear of your negative experiences growing up b/c of the language barrier. I am born and raised in the U.S. but in my earliest years I only spoke Tibetan and I know how it feels to be in isolating and frustrating circumstances. I am glad you overcame your obstacles :)
I'm so sorry you were made fun by you're peers!😟
Also great video for people who had the same experience!
And I honestly relate to this,I didn't have the same EXPERIENCE,but I did go through the same idea so I understand this.
If you want to leave this comment,you can,because after this is just going to be my OWN experience,h(so basically like my life story,or a part of it,also have a nice day/night/morning,evening,love ya)
Hello,my name is Reem Alshehri,Im from Saudi Arabia,and this is gonne be talking about my OWN experience,so lets begin:
When I was about 4-5(years old),my mom has gone out to study like cancer cells or something like that(something related to cancer,and she wanted to become a doctor,idk alot,correct me if im wrong though,also me,my 2 brothers and my dad have gone with her).So me and my family gone out with my mom too(also we've gone to UK,birmingham specifically,and she took us to learn and study englsih,go somewhere new,e.c.).So when we got there i barely speaked Arabic,I was getting the hang of it,but,of course my mom and dad had to put me in a school,so I started learning English there,but I was STILL learning Arabic,so I didn't know what and what to focus at,so my talking was englsih and Arabic together.
Example:Mom شوفتي وين Doll حقتي؟
Another Example:بابا did you see وين الايسكريم and drink is?
It was to the point my mom and dad had a hard time understanding me,and sometimes wouldn't even understand me.We stayed for on year then gone back,then I started to learn Arabic,and the same time I was forgetting my englsih,so my only gone back to have a break,but no we've gone back totally the UK,so now I had to learn English all over again!(I forget to include my mom and dad didn't know englsih well themselves,so they talked Arabic mostly,but even though,it's wasn't enough to keep up my Arabic).So now I started to learn englsih AGAIN,and started to forgot my Arabic now,instead of my English,and my Arabic started to get weak,so we stayed in the UK for 2 and a half,then when the pandemic came,we had to go back to Saudi Arabia.After we've gone there I won't say my Arabic got alot better,because we were on screens,and I barely focused.So now my Englsih started to get a bit weak,but my Arabic was weak,my mom actually started to notice that by me always asking her what an Arabic word meant,she told me to start reading more books,i did,didn't help that much tho,so after a year in Saudi Arabia,WE'VE GONE BACK TO UK,AGAINNN,AND MY ARABIC WAS ONLY GETTING WORSE!,so we stayed in the UK for half a year,then came back to Saudi Arabia,when I only spent 1 week in Saudi Arabia,my mom had to go back to continue her studying,becaus she cant take s long break(we only came as a break),So I had to go with my mom because unfortunately,nobody wanted to come with her from my family,since they've already gone to school and started their life's there,and my mom didn't want to go alone since she didn't feel comfortable with that.We stayed there for half a year,then we came back to Saudi Arabia,and when I started to go to school,my Arabic teacher started to realize I'm fantastic at Englsih,but not that good at Arabic,my reading was good,but other skills,no,I wasn't good,so she started to focus on me,now I'm good at Arabic and Englsih.I know it was good at the end,but for my future kids,I wouldn't do that to them.I know my mom didn't do this at purpose,so I won't do the same mistake.
Thank you for reading this if you did,or if you read a little bit,hope you had a great time and enjoyed it,have a great day/morning,night,evening.Always remember that you're an amazing person!And you're unique and one of a kind,also really beautiful!Don't forget to drink you're water,and eat ,if you're doing it on purpose please don't,it's not healthy,be kind to you're self,I care about you and I'm sure alot of other people do!If you're going through some hard times,it'll pass,don't worry,I'm here and we're all here for you!
If you have any questions or something to say,please do put it in the comments below!
Annnnndddddd...
السلام عليكم/Assalamu Alikum 😁👋
i grew up with a single immigrant mom who's third language was english and a secondary family who was mexican, and I think we had a pretty good system. I'm not sure how it started, but its how I've talked to them my entire life. when I was little, my mother would mostly speak to me in farsi, my godmother and her family Spanish, and my best friend (godmother's daughter) and our shared babysitters in English. when we started school, my mother would alternate between speaking English and farsi with me while I would speak the opposite language as a way to keep me up to speed on both languages, help her improve her english, and help us both with translating between languages. my godmother's family still spoke to me mostly in spanish while she switched to mostly english with me. i went to an international school where I took french, English, and farsi, and before I knew it I was fully fluent in three languages and conversationally fluent in a fourth. this "style" of upbringing, where multiple languages were used and encouraged, did give me a little bit of trouble in the long run with my brain thinking in a different language than I was trying to speak, but it also gave me incredible linguistic skills and an overall love for languages. I'm now working on my fifth language and I'm always so grateful to my family for making sure I grew up culturally diverse instead of limiting me just to one language.
This is a very interesting perspective that I have never heard before.
I grew up with many bilingual friends. Many of them spoke one language with their parents and English with their friends.
I don't recall anyone having this issue that you seem to have had.
I would like to learn more about this topic.
Thank you for sharing!
Many of my immigrant classmates only spoke the language of their parents at home and only got exposed to the local language in school. So their were really bad at school.
I was kind of the opposite lol. My mom was born in Poland and my dad was born in China, yet they still communicated to me in English, even though their English was very broken, so I ended up speaking broken English when I was a kid, and still have a small accent, so I’ve always felt so insecure that I didn’t know my parents mother tongue, even though I had a non-American accent, which made me wish I grew up in a multilingual household 😭
It is such a shame that parents don't read up on this. A mothertongue is so important and makes learning another language so much more easy. :/ But cheer up, one can always learn a language! :D
Interesting! I actually had an almost opposite experience to this.
I grew up in Ireland all my life, but to Polish parents. They didn't speak much English at all, so I was raised speaking and listening to Polish. We also had Polish TV which kind of isolated me from English entirely.
Despite this when I joined school I don't think I lagged behind at all. Though it might have been the accomadating teacher since there was a lot of kids speaking other languages in my class. But yeah, now I actually find my English is a lot better than my Polish. Hell I'd go as far to say my Polish has gotten a lot worse than my English. But that might have been because I stopped using it around my parents after I was like 13 because they managed to learn more English themselves to actually understand me.
My brother's experience was a bit more like yours tho. He had trouble picking up English in school for a long time, and also had to get extra help for it. His Polish did eventually get pretty bad too after getting used to English, and he can barely speak it now. His Polish right now is probably a lot worse than my current Polish surprisingly enough.
The lingering side effect that I find that I still have is a weird accent. I did try put in extra effort into making my accent Irish, and it kinda worked, but I still pronounce some things a bit weird lol
I’m sorry you went through that. I kind of had the opposite problem. My family came to Canada when I was five years old and they only spoke in Tagalog (Filipino) in our household, but the weird thing is growing up my siblings and I lost that language skill :(( I wonder how that happens? I still look forward to relearning that language fluently one day ♥︎
I find this bizarre. I only spoke with my parents in a different language in the US growing up (and all my life) and this was never an issue. It was my superpower! It's either you viewed your native language as a weakness (a matter of your personal perspective) or you truly have a learning disability and needed the extra study to bring yourself up to the level of your peers.
Kids learn incredibly quickly. I learned English in 1st grade at age 7 when my family moved the US. I went to an American school where no one spoke my native language and only knew the English alphabet prior to starting. I was speaking fluent English in 3-4 months without an issue. I wouldn't say I'm out of the norm because my sister who was 2 years older had the same experience of being able to pick up the language just as quickly without any problems.
learning multiple languages as a kid is has some weird outcomes, a classmate of mine said that her older brother grew up with 2 Filipino dialects and also English, this overwhelmed him growing up and his communication skills suffered because of it.
I completely relate to your upbringing! Mine was somewhat different though. Being someone born in SEA, my parents wanted me to learn English first compared to the rest of my peers. It was nice being able to learn English in a county that had plenty of other English speakers out there, but because I grew up what I considered a less developed side of the country, being the only English speaker where everyone else spoke the native language made me feel incredibly isolated. It didn't help that my parents told me growing up that I was better than other kids because of me being an English speaker. Not only that, my parents and relatives didn't really try too hard to teach me the native language which really stunted me academically. Even now I'm still struggling with the language. My parents really thought that I would be able to easily pick up the language like my father did when he was young, but the unnecessary pride made it harder for me to connect with the language. I'm a bit better now though in where I can follow along some conversations, but overall it's a genuinely difficult experience and I'm glad I'm not the only one who had similar struggles.
Wow. Interesting. Thank you for sharing. I became multilingual as an adult, so this is super helpful for me to understand should I choose to try to raise my own children as multilingual.
Hello I am a career teacher with two degrees in applied linguistics and 12 years of experience.Your teachers and your educational system failed you, not your parents. You should have been reading English books where you would have increased your vocabulary significantly. Studies show by 4th grade children with parents who do not speak English perform on average the same as other kids. Of course this is subject to variation, there are many factors. Now, as a trained teacher who knows standardised tests are subjective and pseudoscientific measures I would like to say for you and for other younger people growing up in the US that they should not let these tests define how smart they are or how good their language skills are. Finally, I think it is very important to listen to you and validate your experience, because its your life and you lived it and lived the consequences of your dad's decision. However, immigrant children may look at your video and think they are doomed to be dumb and bad at English, so some sort of disclaimer or note or something would have been appropriate in my opinion. Academics in the 80s often pushed the idea that being bilingual was a sort of disability, and it took many years to change the narrative.
And how is it not the fault of the parents that they have not provided her with English books? Howis everybody excusing the parents from literally parenting?
I agree, I know many immigrant kids whose parents don't speak a lick of English and they do amazing at all grades reading and writing. It was the school, especially given teachers were teasing her. But, where I think she was disadvantaged is that whereas her mother was fluent, her father wasn't - lots of studies say first language literacy impacts second language acquisition. So if the parents have low levels of literacy, it's harder for a child to pick up a second language in a literate way. Her father really set her up for a fail in his experiment, by thinking he was equipped for a whole Japanese household. Its good that he knew to fixed it as he's a lot of the blame. And really, the fact her mom, living in the US, never attempted English ie just....odd. Secretly speaking English (as she said they did that when mom wasn't around) couldn't have been good for knowledge acquisition either. Every kid I know whose parents didn't speak English constantly tried English, which gave the kids opportunities to teach them.
As someone who grew up in a house were we speak portuguese, i didn't have any problem in learning spanish in school (living in a spanish speaking country), i learned it in only 4-5 months. Today, i can't remember exactly why, maybe because i had the help i needed from teachers! And my peers didn't fuck with me for it. We still only speak portuguese in my house, mostly because i would really hate to speak other language with my brazilian mom, i mean WE ARE brazilian, so it would be weird not speaking portuguese with each other. I wonder why it was different for you, that speaking english in school didnt make you learn it until speaking it with your family too
As someone planning to raise my kids multilingual (English and Spanish) thank you for putting your insight out there. Your experience will definitely be on my mind as I plan out my children’s language exposure at home
Just listened to a great podcast about this exact topic from NPR Radio Ambulante, where bilingual parents decided to raise their children in Spanish in New York. The kids shared many of your educational experiences: ostracized, unfairly disciplined, considered unintelligent or even disabled. There was a Latino esp Puerto Rican movement in NYC in the 60s that fought against discrimination in schools and a lack of ESL support. You can look up, “United Bronx Parents and the Struggle for Educational Equality in the 1960s”
awesome video ive thought about doing the same with my future child if i were to ever have one but now im taking this into consideration
Me and my husband are different races but we do intend our children (when we have them) to have a bilingual upbringing. I'm also a speech pathologist and very aware of the early language acquisition side of things (also surprised in the assessment the SLP didn't manage to pick up on the fact English just wasnt have as much exposure or maybe they did you didn't really say but in my training analysing that kind of thing was part of how we interviewed the parents to get a clear understanding of the childs language environment) and also aware the need for students to be able to communicate in their communities (both home and school). For myself my husband and I plan to speak both languages from the beginning (one of us focusing on each e.g I will communicate in English while he speaks Chinese). This video is a good reminder to keep things balanced and always check in with how children are fairing socially and in education settings with their communication especially with multiple languages involved. Thank you for sharing ❤
키사라 어린시절이랑 학창시절 이야기 들을 수 있어서 좋았어~! (귀여운 어릴 때 사진들도😂ㅋㅋㅋ)
키사라랑 대화할 때 전혀 몰랐는데 이런 어려움들도 있었구나… 그래도 잘 극복하고 여러 언어에 능통한 거 보면 너무 멋있어❤️ 다음 영상도 기대할게😄
There are a loooot of families like that,you're not alone
Grew up the same way but with spanish i didnt know english in preschool or kindergarten but by 1st grade i started to be able to speek it and communicate with student's the thing that helped was having a english and spanish speaking aunt anf teachers! They helped me bridge between spanish to english easier and wayyy faster
So interesting! My son was struggling with stuttering at age 4, and it was suggested that being bilingual could play a role in it. So we switched to speaking mainly in English. At the same time his brother had started preschool and his teacher though maybe he was hard of hearing! I really wanted to pass on the Spanish but I thought it was more important for them to focus on English fluency. Thank you for sharing your experience as a child!
Awesome video. Thank you for sharing your experience. As a linguist and a father, I would say that each parent should speak his/ her mother tongue when interacting with his/ her children. My family is multilingual and so are the families of most of my friends. Our children are fluent in at least 3 and up to 5 languages. The scientific literature concerning the impact of multilingualism on the development of cognitive capacities is overwhelming and compelling: the overall impact is positive, but, especially in the early childhood, ,multilingual children can face difficulties in expressing themselves correctly in each of the languages their speak. Their vocabulary in each language is generally more limited in comparison to monolingual children of the same age and even their grammar can be negatively affected by being exposed to several languages. I had the opportunity to experience directly this phenomenon: my children have been exposed from their childhood to 3 language and from the age of 6 to an additionsl language. They started speaking quite late ( when they were 3 years old) and struggled for few years with the grammar, but now, as grown adults ,they are fluent in Italian, French , English and Polish . In many regions of the world ( mainly in Africa and Southern Asia) people are by the way multilingual since centuries or even millenia .
Your dad is awesome, I struggle a lot to learn japanese and he did it on his own, かっこいい...
I am so sorry you had to deal with that
Thanks for sharing this insightful video.
That is really sad to hear :(. Growing up my mom wouldn't be around so she would hire Korean babysitters to take care of me and my German dad would only speak German with me. I never suffered in school but looking back I could see how it could have been much harder. I picked up a good habit of talking a lot with my peers and focusing on lots of English literature and I am glad that I made it through school with good grades. Thank you for sharing your story and providing a different perspective on growing up with Immigrant parents
As someone who is also half Japanese, and Polish, I completely understand how you feel! my dad was also fluent in Japanese, so in my household we also only spoke in that language. Due to my lack of places to speak/learn english I was very behind and was put in those special ED classes. My english vocabulary was smaller than a grain of rice, and I got made fun of a lot for my grammatical errors as a child. If I were to become a mother, I think I would speak in both languages for my child to learn. Sure, first it might be a little hard, and they may mix up some words, but at the end of the day they can learn two languages at the same time/level.
That's wild that you experienced such unprofessional teachers. I speak English at home but for 7 hours a day, I went to a French-language school. My speaking and listening proficiency was very good in both of the languages but my writing in English (obviously because I never officially learned grammar rules and how to write) REALLY suffered. Is there ever going to be an efficient way to raise a bilingual child?
Educator here! I work with bilingual kids all the time at my school and have always heard how it benefits language development. So seeing these kids struggle confused me. Thank you for this video. I’ll take this into consideration when working with children who primarily speak non-english languages with family!
Your English is definitely very good, now! Lots of reading helped my vocabulary, as it can expose you to weird words with easily reviewable context
Its a shame they couldn't identify the problem but im glad your dad took the time to teach you. I cant imagine living let alone growing up in a country and struggling to communicate to a point where i have to be put in special classes thinking the issue is more severe than what it really is. All in all it sounds like your parents though negligent on such a detail, they cared about you very much and your dad pulled through for you in acknowledging the problem and helping you tackle it.
Wow.. never thought this would be problems.. thanks for sharing
Damn, I'm sorry you had to go through that!
I lived the inverse of it, kinda...
My immigrant parents were neglectful and barely spoke with me.
So I learned the local language through TV, books and kindergarten.
And now I am barely able to speak my mother tongue and I'm not really great at the local language as well.
This has given me severe identity issues ever since I was little tbh.
I mean my parents talked to me so little that I'm not able to speak fluently in my mother tongue. That fact makes me really sad whenever I think about it.
So sorry you had that experience 😢 In my case, my Mexican dad and American mom met in the States (in English). I was born in the US, but we moved to Mexico when I was a baby, and I lived there until I was 10. My mom learned Spanish while we were there. Our arrangement was to do everything outside of the house in Spanish, (school, friends, neighbors, shopping, etc), but to speak English at home. My mom also taught us reading and writing in English, from a young age. We also spent summers in the States, with all our American relatives. So my siblings and I were always fully bilingual. By the time we moved to the US and I attended an American school for the first time, (when I was 10), I was advanced for my grade. So it worked out really well for us 😊
This is the same with me except my parents are both japanese. They don't have great pronunciation in english, and it was hard to learn english with just school growing up, like you. But I'm glad my parents did this because I want to go to a college in japan, and for my future to be possibly in japan. Though I did feel kind of isolated in middle school despite being born and raised in America; I didn't have a very big vocabulary and English and history was a struggle to me as I had different political views, language, and cultural views. But it all started to work out by high school, and honestly it's fun knowing a different language growing up.