Sorry for the random rant that is completely unrelated to fatphobia, but I need to vent. I bet many immigrants and people whose primary language is not the one of the place they live at, or people with learning disabilities, or people who use signs language and many others will relate.
It is so FRUSTRATING to “kind of” dominate a language but you know you “don’t really” dominate it when you live in a place where they use that language. Or you interact with people whose primary language us that one.
Because they think you understand just fine but the truth is that you fucking don’t. I understand maybe half of what I’m told and if I seem like I understand it is because I always try to figure out by the context. Which is a fucking lottery.
And this leads people to give for granted that I understand and that, when I don’t, they get upset because they think I’m NOT WANTING to understand. Like that person some asks below who thought I willingly decided to ignore a preferred pronoun.
That’s just one of the many issues I suffer like that every day. Because let’s be clear when you live submerged in a foreign language you feel less intelligent and people think you are less intelligent. Patients call me ableist slurs constantly when I ask them to repeat or I don’t understand a word. Even my family laughs when I don’t understand something or say something in a way they don’t understand. And I know they don’t mean ill but it is still frustrating and it hasn’t been only once that I overreacted after one of those.
I’m not able to be as fluid and precise when talking about stuff I’m passionate about as I am in Spanish. That’s why I mostly give short answers here compared with the lengthy and incredibly well articulated posts from Bella. And as much as I am delighted reading their posts, I sometimes feel inferior and frustrated without not as much to say, just because I can’t find a way to say it or because it is just incredibly draining and exhausting to use a language that is not your own.
One co-worker, the fucking hospital liaison, had the nerve to tell me on my own Facebook how monolingual people were smarter because they “excelled” on one thing while bilingual people weren’t as good at anything. Of course I blocked his ass immediately. But it wasn’t the only one. Co-workers mad at me because I asked something and they thought I stated something.
And so and so. It is hard. And it is incredibly oppressing having to interact with people who never needed to learn a language, or being expected to, and still expect others to use theirs to perfection. Or else.
End of a rant that was far better articulated in my head and that touched far more subjects in a more concise way than it actually did when I got to write it because fuck language privilege.
- mod Guillermo
