This is for people who went to an English-speaking school not knowing English and their experiences, whether it was because you were never taught to speak English, were learning it but not yet fluent, or because you moved from another country.
Idk I don’t quite remember
Like I remember its just… utter confusion…
Like, imagine watching a show in a different language, or anime, and you had no subs or dubs
Idk what I was doing I was kinda just staring into space most of the time in class
Luckily, Cantonese is a common language in the US, because immigration from GuangZhou is common, so teachers just found a US born, second-generation immigrant kid that speaks Cantonese to translate, and there were a lot of those (and Mandarin would’ve been fine for me too, I went through 1-2nd grade in China).
I was like usually one of the first few to solve problems in math, if not the first, but english sucked (for obvious reasons), and writing sucked, especially when you have to write a story (as in, creative writing) with zero guidelines.
But still, school sucked, I never felt belonging.
The US-born chinese-american kids wouldn’t even talk to me (outside of like just translating stuff). The English-only kids definitely have a hard time trying to talk to me. I basically had zero friends. Maybe like one or two “acquaintances” that speak Cantonese/Mandarin, with occasional “Ni Hao” from the English-only kids (I felt like they were mocking me tbh).
I think it only took like 2 years for me to learn the basics of English, but like, still missing a lot of vocabulary. Like, even 3-4 years later, I still didn’t even know what the spiral metal bouncy thing commonly found inside a pen was called in English, until someone said a “Spring” and I was like, a what? The Season? And they had to describe it to me. And that just one instance where I know a concept and the word to describe it in Chinese, but don’t have the word in English.
(And I didn’t get a phone or some translator tool, and my parents were strict on computer usage time, so I never use the internet to learn anything. Like why learn when time is limited either way, might as well spend every second play video games. Thanks, strict parenting!)
Eventually, I stop needing anyone to translate anything. But later, even when I move on to middle school and high school, I still don’t feel belonging.
Like the US-born Chinese-Americans kids have more in common with other (non ethnic-Chinese) American kids, than an immigrant like me. Even though, my English has now become better than either Cantonese or Mandarin. So now there are some Mandarin-only kids which I also don’t feel anything in common with, since they don’t speak English, and my Mandarin sucks worse than Cantonese (kinda like the reverse roles of when I first came here lol).
So yea, that’s the story of why I don’t have friends. I don’t know if I said everything coherently (due to depression, not because my English sucks lol 😅), ask if you need clarification.
I can speak on immigrants from Central America because we sponsored 7 families (aunts & uncles) growing up and I ended up going to school w my cousins who didn’t speak English.
They did REALLY well in science, math, physics, biology, history & sociology because the schools that they came from had significantly higher standards, so they coasted until the American students caught up to them years later; but did poorly w literature, English, social studies, & civics for obvious reasons. (I grew up in small town USA and the racist teachers tried to fail some of them, but couldn’t since their excellent grades in the hard sciences made up for their failure grades in the soft sciences). (They also got into more fights at school by the racist bullies).
They were young enough so that they were completely fluent in English by the time they graduated high school and I hope that I likewise can become fluent in Spanish when I emigrate after the American fascists ruin everything.
One of my workmates moved to Australia from Uruguay when he was 14. He only spoke Spanish at the time, which isn’t very common in Australia. He’s talked a few times about the different experience he had vs his sister who is a few years younger than him. He still has a noticable rioplatense accent to his english, but his sister does not. He also had to go to a special immersion class/school to get his english to the point where he could do manage in regular english language schooling, but his sister did not, and managed just fine being moved straight in to english speaking schools.
Ultimately, he said that he got there pretty quickly, because he was still a kid, but he spent the best part of a year feeling isolated from his peers, except when he was in the immersion class.
Especially if the language isn’t commonly spoken in the United States, or rather, anywhere except your country of origin.
