bookthenerd:wreathsoflaurel:smvke-like-xo-fvck-like-drizzy: This scene is so important. I usuall

bookthenerd: wreathsoflaurel: smvke-like-xo-fvck-like-drizzy: This scene is so important. I usually don’t comment on things, but this is so personally relevant.  When we came to Canada, my mom couldn’t speak English apart from the general sentences everyone knows like “how are you?” or “my name is…”. So while she was learning a new language, in a lot of situations my brother & I had to translate for her. Obviously, since we’ve lived here for ~14 years now, she (in my opinion) has become very fluent, so my brother & I no longer need to translate for her and she communicates by herself.  Usually, this isn’t a problem and people are very accommodating of her accent and how she speaks. But sometimes some people are so insensitive about it and there have been so many times I’ve heard people just say “I don’t understand you” and make no further effort to. I remember one time my mom talking about it and saying that she doesn’t mind when someone asks her to repeat herself several times because she knows that maybe she isn’t saying something comprehensible, but sometimes she could tell that someone understood her and would say “I don’t understand you” because it was a source of entertainment. Honestly, my mom is so educated & intelligent & precious and it bothers me so much that there’s this view that because someone doesn’t speak perfect English, it’s somehow okay to be less nice to them.  And even when I teach English to international undergrad students, some of them say they won’t ask their prof or TA questions because they’ve experienced instances where someone made them feel like their language skills were inadequate (even though they probably know more languages than the person who made them feel that way!!!).  Learning a new language isn’t an instant process. Stop treating it like it should be.   My mom is originally from Brazil but has lived here in America for 23-24 years now and yes she has an accent but she speaks fluently in English, Portuguese and Spanish (which takes a lot of effort to learn not one but 2 languages) and she teaches for a living. I know that she can speak fluently and comprehensively because her kids never complain about not understanding her (unless they don’t understand the lesson). But I remember one time her boss came in to observe her lesson and gave her a bad report because she said she couldn’t understand what she was saying because of her accent even though every kid never complained about not understanding and did really well with the lesson. I just think how hard it is for her if adults continue being so ignorant because someone has an accent. -- source link
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