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July 1993: ¿Podria repetir, por favor?
While I had a lot of trouble adjusting to life in the Midwest, and frequently found myself confronted with strange or confusing situations where I didn't know exactly what was expected of me, I wasn't the only person in my small family to have such difficulties. Just as I had problems, so to did my baby sister. Though, her problems were slightly different. While my problems were largely cultural; I neither understood, nor liked, the pervasive culture of our new town, Lucy's problems were communicative. I brief, everybody else in the town spoke English and, not to put too fine a point on it, my sister didn't. ¿Podria repetir, por favor? To say that Lucy couldn't speak English wouldn't be entirely accurate. She had as good a grasp of basic English grammar as any child her age could be expected to have, and her understanding of more complex things, like tenses and conjugation, wasn't too bad either. However, where Lucy ran into difficulties, was Vocabulary. She had a stock of words considerable smaller than most other preschoolers. Maybe about a quarter, half at best. Predictably, this caused her some problems. The Whys and Wherefores Given that both my Mother and myself are multi-lingual, it might seem odd that Lucy had difficulties speaking English. However, it was therein that the problem lay. Although I spoke English fluently, and so did my Mother. Lucy was exposed to our other languages far more, and thus picked them up far faster. I speak fluent Spanish and so did our Mother and, at her, insistence it was the primary language of our household (this is slightly odd, since our US roots are Hawaiian, but I will explain everything later on). Spanish was also the second language of the two girls who used to sit for Lucy when I was unable to. Thus, Lucy spoke Spanish, and our family's gift for languages meant that she spoke it to a much higher level than most other Spanish speakers her age. Next came Japanese. I always spoke Japanese with Lucy when our Mother wasn't around, and it was the language that she was most exposed to when she was out and about with anybody in Kyoto. So Lucy also spoke Japanese to a high level. After this though, a poor third, came English. Compound Ordinance demanded that English was language spoken in the compound. However, circumstances contrived Lucy spent very little time with the compound dwellers, and so picked up very little English. What little English she did know, she primarily picked up from while playing with other children in the compound. Which isn't a recipe for a broad vocabulary by any means A Child's Eye View At this point, there are probably a few people out there who might feel inclined to raise their hand and say something along the lines of “Children are naturally good at learning language, surely Lucy would have picked up English very quickly?”. Which is a very sensible thing to say. In most normal cases, anyway. It's true, children are very good at picking up languages. I picked up 3 languages fluently as an infant, and I had a good mastery of several more languages and dialects by the time I was a teenager. However, in addition to her low initial exposure to English, Lucy had several of other barriers to learning. Barrier Number 1: That's nice, but don't do it near the good China The first of these barriers was my Mother, or more precisely the air of negative reinforcement that she stamped on English. Most of which was because she wanted Lucy to be understand English, but didn't want her to think of it as being her native tongue. When we first arrived in America, my Mother did precious little to encourage Lucy to speak English. She waited until well after Lucy's problems became apparent before she even started buying the English language books and tapes that Lucy needed, and even when she had acknowledged that Lucy needed more exposure to English she still insisted that she reserved English for use when she was supposed to be studying it. Going so far as to stop her when she tried to use English outside of “study time”, and to remind her of the correct Spanish to use. Thus leading Lucy to think of English in the same way that most people think of juggling chickens : As in, “It's an interesting talent, but you really shouldn't do it in the house”. Barrier Number 2: Nihon, Nihonjin, Nihongogo Then there was the other problem. Which, I am ashamed to say, was none other than myself. On learning that I would be spending more than just a brief summer in America, I panicked about quite a few things, one of which was that my sister might forget how to speak Japanese, and so might have difficulty getting into a good Japanese high school (At that age, getting into the right school or college in Japan was pretty much all that I ever thought about). With this in mind, I made it my mission to ensure that Lucy kept her Japanese language skills alive, and I made sure to speak it with her whenever our Mother was out of ear shot, so that she wouldn't forget a single word. Of course, as you can probably guess, I was also rather afraid that I too might forget how to speak Japanese if I didn't practice regularly. So, in speaking Japanese with my sister, I was really helping myself. Not only was I taking away many of the chances that my sister might have had to practice speaking English, but I was also further reinforcing the idea that English wasn't as important as the other languages that she knew. Neither of which helped my sister very much. Barrier Number 3: Dumb Americans While my Mother and myself weren't exactly helpful when it came to Lucy learning English, and while we had our own selfish reasons for doing what we did, we weren't alone in hampering Lucy's English language development. Far from it, we had a lot of help from the local population. Some of whom didn't react well when faced with a little girl who didn't speak as good a standard of English as could be expected, and others of whom were so downright moronic about it that I have, on occasion, come to blows with them. Figuratively, and literally. Some people broke in and corrected Lucy halfway through a sentence, other's didn't even try to understand what she was saying and automatically turned to my Mother or myself, expecting us to act as translators, rather than putting in that little extra bit of effort that was required. In once instance, one of Lucy's Kindergarten teacher even refused, point blank, to speak to directly to her. Instead directing all of her interaction with Lucy through a Spanish speaking teaching assistant, on the grounds that “she didn't have time to try and understand somebody who couldn't speak English” (her actual words). Which was particularly insulting, and which was only resolved when I marched into the Principle's office, with my sister in tow, and made them listen to Lucy speaking, in order to demonstrate that not knowing “double-dutch” meant “jump rope”, and so on, didn't mean that Lucy needed a translator 24/7. Worse still, some people got stuck in the mindset that my sister simply couldn't speak English, and simply refused to adjust, no matter what. I'm not kidding. By the time Lucy was in 5th grade (some 5 or so years after we arrived in America) she was a grade A student in English, and her speech was indistinguishable from a native born American, yet some people still spoke slowly and loudly to her, and others still addressed me, expecting me to translate. Which, by that time, I hadn't needed to do for several years. Unsurprisingly, not being able to communicate with the people around her, didn't do my sister much when it came to touching base with adults and make those all important first few friends. Equally unsurprisingly, having local adult automatically dismissing what she was saying, even when she was speaking perfectly understandable English, didn't do very much for my sister's state of mind. As a result, she lost a lost of confidence during that first year in the US, and she visibly changed from being a very talkative young girl to one whom was far more reluctant to speak. Which took her years to get over. Further Reading: Moronic Americans Of course, when it comes to insensitivity, the American Midwester of the 1990s had more to offer than people who didn't know how to properly treat a little girl whose English was not up to speed. Indeed, there were some members of the town's population whom took things a step further. Treating Lucy's early difficulties with English as if it were a sign of lasting mental impairment. People who automatically tune out every time my sister opened her mouth said - even when she was getting the aforementioned A grades in English class – and whom talked down to her on the presumption that she had something wrong with her and thus couldn't understand anything at a higher level. As an example of just how moronic things got, on one occasion when my sister was in the 5th grade, (by which time about she spoke flawless English), she asked one of these less than sensitive individuals if they would mind stepping aside, because they were standing in the diamond where a junior softball game was about to convene. He responded by giving her a big silly grin, followed by a stream of baby talk, and tried to shoo her away like a wayward cat, because “da big people is talkin', sweety”. He humiliated my baby sister in front of her friends, and made her cry right in front of me. I was so incensed that I launched at him fist first, almost taking his head off in the process. I might well have finished the job had there not been enough people around to drag me off of him. The next day, somebody shot out the tires on his truck, and stove in the windows for good measure. I suspect, but cannot prove, that this was my Mother. Whom, by that time, was broadcasting all of the signs of a dangerous meltdown in progress. Though this, as with our Spanish connection, is a story for another time. |
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