Few people have ever asked me in America how my English is so good. Not sure why I don’t run into this seemingly quintessential American immigrant experience more often (maybe mine just isn’t good). But if someone does ever remark on it I don’t feel annoyed at all. Where does the annoyance come from, I wonder? The expectation that someone should consider me a natural American? Why? I always say, ‘Yeah we were colonized by the British, that’s why’. Or ‘Too much Netflix’. I have no pride attached to knowing English, well or not. It is what it is. I do not see it as as much my language as theirs. It is THEIR language and I know it. That’s it.
For me, the annoyance comes from the inherent ignorance about the rest of the world implied in that question. There are more english speaking people in India than in the United States. It also sounds condescending.
I get you, but one would feel the condescension only if one considered native fluency in English as something special or something to aspire to. Why would I want to pretend to be like them? I am a native speaker of languages whose depth, beauty, humour and swear words they have no clue about. I walk about in this world with the confidence of all that I know and they with their mono linguistic lives can never even get near.
Apart from all that, enjoyed reading this
Few people have ever asked me in America how my English is so good. Not sure why I don’t run into this seemingly quintessential American immigrant experience more often (maybe mine just isn’t good). But if someone does ever remark on it I don’t feel annoyed at all. Where does the annoyance come from, I wonder? The expectation that someone should consider me a natural American? Why? I always say, ‘Yeah we were colonized by the British, that’s why’. Or ‘Too much Netflix’. I have no pride attached to knowing English, well or not. It is what it is. I do not see it as as much my language as theirs. It is THEIR language and I know it. That’s it.
For me, the annoyance comes from the inherent ignorance about the rest of the world implied in that question. There are more english speaking people in India than in the United States. It also sounds condescending.
I get you, but one would feel the condescension only if one considered native fluency in English as something special or something to aspire to. Why would I want to pretend to be like them? I am a native speaker of languages whose depth, beauty, humour and swear words they have no clue about. I walk about in this world with the confidence of all that I know and they with their mono linguistic lives can never even get near.