Jordi Mendez-Paris

When I was younger, around pre-school age, I could only speak Spanish and at the time, Iwas barely even conscious, but I would remember constantly messing up my words and pronunciation like I was a newborn. I couldn’t understand why I was being laughed at and teasedinstead of being helped with my difficult time speaking. As a result, I essentially became, for lack of a better word, kind of a mute. During this period of time, I remember barely speaking anywords at all and just being a constant observer of everything in my everyday life. At most, I would speak to my brothers and that was all since they were the only ones that understood my gibberish. My parents tried to do what they could, as they worked all day at their jobs in order, but it didn’t seem to work. They would always end up talking with my siblings though and having a good time while I was kind of left out. As the weeks turned into months and I went into kindergarten, it was like a switch flipped inside my brain and I could suddenly gain the confidence again to communicate with people like a normal human being. Except this time, exclusively in English. This may have contributed to the issue of different treatment between me and my older brothers since now a language barrier was introduced so at times, I often felt different from my older family members not only from the different language we speak, but because I had “not learned the culture” according to my aunts and uncles.