My Language World

Growing up, I always felt like a bit of an outsider at family gatherings for both sides of my family- the Filipino side and the Scottish side. With the Filipino side, I was constantly getting confused since I had absolutely no clue what everyone was talking as I was never taught how to speak Tagalog except for a few random words like “blanket” and “soy sauce” (clearly not the best conversation starters). Not only was I puzzled hearing them speak Tagalog so quickly and trying to understand the several conversations going on, I was also anxious that they could possibly be talking about me in a negative manner. While the Filipino side was stressful enough, I still had the Scottish side of the family to cope with. Fortunately, that side of my family only speaks English and not Gaelic. I don’t even want to begin to imagine how much harder it would be if everyone exclusively spoke Gaelic.

While we all speak the same language back in Scotland, I do have trouble fitting in thanks to my accent.I have pretty strong American accent despite not having any American blood in me (that I know of, at least). This is due to being brought up in international schools with a large majority of teachers being American, since they were the main influence that taught me how to speak, I just kind of picked the accent up and it just stuck with me ever since. A lot of my family tend to tease me about how strong my accent is and always say how they wish I had a British or Scottish accent and it is a little bit discouraging for me. While that is the main reason why I tend to feel like an outsider with them, I also have no idea how Scottish slang works. I have lived in Asia my entire life, so I was never exposed to the slang culture in Scotland. While I do know a couple slang words, I am completely lost when it comes to phrases and things like such. Though I don’t have a huge problem with slang terms, I do sometimes feel quite left out when my friends use them knowing I won’t understand.