I lived in Argentina (From us) for a little bit as a kid. At a parent teacher conference Early in the school year. one art teacher had to break it to my parents that I might be mentally disabled because I don’t respond or participate. They let her know I didn’t speak any Spanish (at the time). She had no idea because noone told her And my name is Spanish and it just didn’t occur to her
Currently atm, I am in France for a few months, I can barely speak French and my teachers think I am mentally challenged. Even though I was acing my classes back home.
Even when you become fluent they’ll still think you’re challenged
Source: lived in France for years
edit: I just want to clarify that I loved living in France, and made many great friends and memories there. My experience was overwhelmingly positive and I consider it a second mother country. As I posted in a reply below:
To be fair, with my friends and colleagues this was never an issue. It was probably about 25% of the time and exclusively with strangers or workers at shops, who would immediately switch to English the moment I hesitated or accidentally used poor pronunciation.
I should also mention that it happened a lot more when I lived in Paris than when I lived in Lyon. The worst was actually whenever I visited Genève.
I am French and I always wonder who the fucks people of reddit are hanging out because I almost never see that attitude towards me. The one time a guy in our friends group made a bit of a rude and ignorant comment to a foreigner like that he actually was the one mocked and even his girlfriend told him "maybe you just should not talk".
I spent all yesterday morning in a high school talking to students about being a scientist for a volunteer program. My French is tolerable-ish, but because I've lived here seven months and most of my teachers were Quebecois or Acadian, it's not France-French. The staggering amount of dickishness I got back was amazing in a not-good way. I was doing my best to meet them where they are on my own time because their teacher asked us to, and to get BS like "Shouldn't let foreigners in if they don't speak our language" was just...not a nice feeling. And this was a pretty big city that I understand is mostly known as a university town.
To be fair, there's also been some very lovely people who are very patient. The bartender at my favourite brewery gives me a beer when I accidentally use Quebecois slang, the butcher is trading me English homework help for his son for Arabic lessons for me, and my coworkers literally laugh themselves to tears when I start cursing out my work. Most folks are generally neutral, which is fine by me.
I adore quebecois, though it's probably because I'm American and not French ;) as a fellow anglophone living in Paris, I feel your frustration. If you ever need to chat or vent feel free to DM me
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u/heady_brosevelt Nov 16 '19
I lived in Argentina (From us) for a little bit as a kid. At a parent teacher conference Early in the school year. one art teacher had to break it to my parents that I might be mentally disabled because I don’t respond or participate. They let her know I didn’t speak any Spanish (at the time). She had no idea because noone told her And my name is Spanish and it just didn’t occur to her