I speak well. I speak well and yet can't speak to others. In foreign languages of course, but English too! Under many circumstances, a message is conveyed; but is that message understood?
When I was young, I'd always wanted to learn so many languages. The main reason I wanted to learn them was so I could talk to anyone I wanted. Others were one you'd think a child would have like the concept being cool or just sounding fun. I worked on it, it was a passion. As I pursued, I soon learned that there was more to knowing languages, there was more to speaking in general. I moved countries, and soon I learned I would need to be much more careful.
As I began school in Al Ain, there were a lot of changes I had to get used to. Chouiefat was a strict school, and something I wasn't used to was the student-teacher relationship. Most of the students were relatively bad eggs. Of course, there were exceptions here and there, but in my class, the majority of the boys weren't students you'd want to deal with, so I think teachers made the automatic assumption I was worse, to be on the safe side. This made it hell for me. To set the scene, I was around the point where I'd just turned 10, maybe it was late May, early June. That much isn't important, but what is important is that it meant that I was a sensitive child who had grown up in the states, where my teachers and classmates were all kind and friendly, to a different curriculum, where it seemed that every male student was supposed to be trouble and, it being so late in the year, I was expected to do well in the final exams which were just beginning as I arrived. The teachers were ruthless. I once got permission to go to the bathroom, and even though I don't remember being out that long, I returned to a million accusations. The teacher was furious with me and said I was skipping class and a student accused me of using my phone in the bathroom saying "Miss, I saw him take phone with him" in his thick local accent. The teacher obviously believed this and told me to give her my phone, I told her I didn't have one, which was true, I didn't own a phone. Angry with me for talking back and "lying" she threatened to call my parents and the principle and she then gave me a detention. I'm pretty sure 10 year old me cried, I was scared of almost all my teachers. As I'm writing this it just occurred to me that events like that weren't rare, and it gave me a sort of childhood trauma of school bathrooms that I think I might still have. Of course looking back on that now it's nothing but funny.
I tried finding ways to stop these issues, to avoid the issues I was constantly encountering I actually tried adapting my own Arabic accent to talk to them, I was self-conscious of my own accent. It made me different and at the time, the idea scared me. I didn't want to be different from everyone. Being different caused problems for me, it got me bullied and therefore, 10 year old Outh came to the conclusion that being different was bad. I began to speak differently and was scared that people would bully me if they saw my English results, as English was the only thing I could really do well in as the other classes were in areas never taught to me. This one boy, his name was Suhail, and it's safe to say he was my biggest problem. Sometimes I wish I'd punched him. He seemed to constantly bully me for no reason, he was the one who got me into that bathroom problem with the teacher and he seemed to follow me around the next years too. The next year I'd made a few good friends who sort of encouraged me to get out of being so afraid of my accent and all, but Suhail was a different story, it was like a I got in trouble for anything he did to me. Though, I always knew what he was up to, because he always spoke about me to his friends in Arabic, and I always understood, though I don't think I ever told him.
Talking to a lot of the students was hard, a lot of them didn't understand my choice of words or my accent so a lot of my explanations relied on simple vocabulary and communicating with more than just my voice, but my actions as well. I let people know basic ideas through the way I acted. As time went on I let people like him know I wasn't dealing with him, without ever talking to him personally. Without really relying on my words, I told the surrounding people who I was.
When I was young, I'd always wanted to learn so many languages. The main reason I wanted to learn them was so I could talk to anyone I wanted; but I also wanted to learn how to speak without words. To speak without speaking. Soon, I showed people that mouths don't do the talking.
No comments:
Post a Comment