How a Language Experiment Ruined My Childhood 

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

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

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.

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

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.

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 😭

I was born in the US to immigrant parents. My parents never spoke to me in English, but I learned English from my environment. I'm not even sure if I can pinpoint any particular source I learned it from, I don't even remember any time when I was a kid when I was confused by English or didn't understand anything in English. As far back as I remember, I always knew English, even though we never used it at home. I'd encourage more multi-lingual parents to speak to their children in other languages. Children of immigrants failing to learn the language of their parents and losing that skill forever for subsequent generations is far too common. Knowing another language is a lifelong skill that children can easily pick up on as children, but people lose that chance when they grow older; learning as an adult is far more difficult than learning it as a kid.

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 😅

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！

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.

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

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

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!!

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.

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!

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

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.

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.

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.

It's more like "not learning English made me dumb".

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.

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 RU-vid 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.

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

Your story made me sad and happy at the same time, I'm inspired by your story and your storytelling style, thank you :)

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 😙

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.

Her parent really said the education system will teach my child not me.

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

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

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.

Went through something similar. Thank you for sharing this 🥲

How could a father be so smart yet so dense?

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

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 😭 ❤

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.

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?

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There are a loooot of families like that,you're not alone

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 😅

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 ❤

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 RU-vid and watching RU-vid 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.

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.

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 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".

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.

This is very interesting. I grew up in a Russian speaking household, and was essentially forbidden from speaking English with my parents unless it was something I specifically couldn’t communicate in Russian. I went through ESL until the 3rd grade, and I remember I had to go to a speech therapist a few times as I had difficulty pronouncing sounds in English that don’t exist in Russian (specifically the “th” sound). Today, I am perfectly fluent in both languages. Russians are often shocked to find out that I grew up here and have never lived in Russia as I don’t have an accent and can express myself comfortably (minus the lack of knowledge in certain slang terms). There are definitely moments I can’t think of a word in English, but know it in Russian (or vice versa). I’m sorry that you had such a negative experience. Honestly, it sounds like a combination of factors, including a failure of the educational system to accommodate native bilingual speakers led to your struggles. For what it’s worth, your English sounds perfect to me!

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.

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’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 ♥︎

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'm honestly confused why it was such a big deal that a kid didn't know the word "intersection".

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.

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 😭

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

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.

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.

That was so mind opening

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

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.

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.

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 :)

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 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.

This is the first time that I have seen someone thinking that the advantage of being multilingual is DISADVANTAGE. Having had the opportunity to learn such a difficult foreign language in English speaking countries is a blessing. I wonder why your experience is so negative ???? My own child grew up in an English speaking country and went to a German international school. She exclusively spoke my home language. She was exposed to the second leading language of the country we have been leaving. Of course that she used to tangle all those languages when she was small. But it was so cute, never a big deal. As a young, well educated women she is juggling 4 languages in her everyday life, and most people admire her and praise her. She couldn't be more confident, proud, and content that she was blessed with opportunities the life and the family presented to her. I hope you can look again into the language gift your parents gave it to you and learn to appreciate it.❤

Thank you for sharing!

We commend you for your sacrifice, may your experiences be a lesson for us all.

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 feel like this highlighted more problems with the teachers and students at the schools more than anything lol.

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.

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?

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.

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.

Even though the video is only three minutes long, I had to stop halfway. It was just way too heartbreaking.

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 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 :')

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.

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”

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!

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.

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've had friends how use English outside the home and the other language in the home - children become fluent in both - and are able to pick up other languages very quickly too

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.

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.

"whenever my mom wasn't with us" That's says a lot.

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 ❤

Wtf is this lmao, this supposed “experiment” is how most children of immigrants are raised.

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

Lol I can relate, my parents didn't speak to me in English as a kid but I kept hearing English outside of the house, so I didn't speak until I was 3 years old and people thought that I was mentally slow or something. Then when I did start speaking I quickly surpassed my peers, and I think that having different language stimuli ultimately played a really huge role in developing my brain. It took a bit longer to output everything, but the result is that I am now able to speak several languages while most of the people around me are still monolingual.

I am so sorry you had to deal with that

Omg first time I ever hear someone complaining about being able to speak another language...