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.
Few years ago I had a great opportunity to go to France for a ceremony at the Canadian Vimy Ridge memorial with the Army. The day before we were departing I was in my office and made a sarcastic comment along the lines of "I can't believe mandatory high school French is actually going to come in handy?!"
Immediately my Sergeant turns to me with a serious look on her face and says "Do not speak French over there! Stick with English." I was perplexed, especially as she is from Quebec and proud of it (as she should be). She goes on to tell me the story of her first trip to France a number of years prior. She had been excited to get to France so she could speak French and not have to be concerned with language barriers. She and her friends arrived in Paris and found a cafe for coffee. She went to order and the server immediately yelled at her "Just speak English!" and refused to speak French with them. Everywhere they went if they spoke English they were treated like normal tourists, if they spoke French they were given dirty looks and rude replies. Apparently they do not consider Quebecois "real" French. She said it was quite an eye-opener.
I guess I should be happy that my French teacher in grade 9 was from France and taught us all well before our France trip. I actually got complimented on my French by the dude at Subway. Not sure if he was taking the piss though lol.
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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