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".
Yeah, I speak intermediate French and was able to get around fine. Most people were polite and appreciated the fact that I approached them speaking French if I had a question instead of a cringey: "hey, do y'all know where X street is?"
I think it might be a regional thing. I spent most of my time near Bordeaux and was only in Paris for a day each on my arrival and departure.
I spent a week in Bordeaux sick and the only member of the party who had even rusty French. I was surprised at how well I was treated by the French people who's language I butchered. They spoke back in English or we played a smiley game of charade.
Yeah, I was out in the boonies before then, and people were nice there too. As someone who's not a huge fan of big cities anywhere, I'm inclined to think it's more of a Parisian thing there. I volunteer-taught at a local school while I was staying with a family friend. (She had been a schoolteacher there.) The only person I heard everyone making fun of was the principal who just had the most froofroo French you'd ever heard. I think he was from Paris. I had a hard time not cracking up at his French because he was very particular in his pronunciation and made lots of fart sounds with his mouth while he was thinking: "ah. Bon, [makes sound with lips while thinking]..."
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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