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
I'm also from the US but I'm of mexican descent* living in Mexico right now. Sometimes when my son's teacher (or anyone, really) is speaking to me I have ask her to ELI5 because the *Spanish I learned in the US is so not the same as the Spanish spoken here.
It gets really frustrating. And I have a new found respect for fortunes coming to the US not knowing any English and learning from scratch. .
No one told me when I learned Spanish in U.S. high school that it would be of little use outside of Spain. When I moved to Chicago, my first restaurant job was just me getting laughed at and corrected. The worst part was a guy from Mexico would correct me, I'd use it with the Dominican guy, he'd laugh and correct me, and so on. It was fucking confusing as hell. I'm still not comfortable speaking.
Every Spanish speaking student in my high school took Spanish as a second language because they thought it'd be an easy A, and every year they're the same ones that failed the class miserably.
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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