Parents Who Speak  

Broken English 

 

While roaming around YouTube looking for something  to write about, I came across this buzzfeed video on parents who speak broken English. It instantly got my attention because I also have parents who barely speak English and when ever they do it’s broken. The video was about people’s experiences having parents who don’t speak English or speaks with a broken English. The video was very emotional and very relatable to my experiences of having parents who don’t speak English. Some of the experiences  both the parent and child have went through were discrimination, being judged and overall negative emotions.  

Foreigners who don’t speak proper English are being judged and it’s a something that must stop. There has even been a case of assault talked about in the video simply because one of the parents didn’t understand what was going on. When one of the speakers was a child her mother would take her and her brother to walks on the park. One day at the park a little girl was kicking towards her. Her mother then put her arm out to stop her without touching the little girl and told her to stop. The kid ran away and came back with 4 women all angry and wanting to fight the mother. The speaker(as a child) then stood in between them and her mother with her arms out protecting her. Eventually she got scared and hid behind her mother where one of the ladies punched the speaker’s mother in the face. This was sad because her mother was just so confused, she didn’t know much English, nor could she speak it well. She couldn’t understand 4 women yelling at the same time and since she didn’t speak well, she couldn’t deescalate the situation. 

 A common experience they all had was translating as a child which was very relatable. With my parents not knowing English they would always ask me or my older brother to help translate which would be very hard since we were young. To some this may lead to shame or even frustration because you don’t understand what is being said. I remember one time when I was in my early teens there were cops outside of my apartment asking for who called and since no one spoke english my mom woke me up to translate. I remember the cops looked a little surprised when I showed up to translate and since I was the only option they told me why they showed up. They got a call on domestic abuse from our neighbor who lives in the basement but they didn’t know who it came from so they were trying to figure that out. It was a serious situation and they didn’t want to have me involved so they waited for another officer who speaks Spanish. I was a spooked because it was a serious issue and because I had to deal with cops first thing in the morning. In the video they also mention when they were kids learning English they sometimes needed help but they couldn’t get help because their parents didn’t know English. When ever one of the speakers needed help they would ask their mom but she would reply “I’m sorry I don’t know go ask your dad” and their dad would say that they don’t know either. This was exactly how it was for me needing help but I couldn’t receive any so I just didn’t know what to do.  

Going through certain situations can affect people on an emotional and mental level. The hardest part to watch from the video has to be when a speaker’s mother arrived home frustrated and sad. When she asked her mom what’s wrong her mother replied “you don’t understand. I’m stupid…I’m slow… I’m uneducated.” The fact that people are made to feel this way because of others are judging them makes me feel sad. Foreigners put in a lot of effort to learn a new language and then they get put down by people making assumptions about them. Just because someone doesn’t know English doesn’t mean that they are uneducated. If you were trying to speak a second language, would you like for others to think you are uneducated? Some of this discrimination happens at such a young age like in school but kids wouldn’t really understand what they are actually saying. As for adults  they should know better not to discriminate or judge others for trying to learn a new language.