Like many other first generation immigrants, I grew up with English as a second language. My mom didn’t know much English at the time, so I mainly used my mother tongue, Urdu, and learned English later on in my childhood. 

Some students believe that learning a new language or being bilingual is easy. However, this is not the case. It is incredibly important to understand that learning a new language, especially at an older age, is not easy at all. It gets even worse if the written script of the language doesn’t use the Latin script we are accustomed to, like Chinese or Arabic. In fact, the Latin script only makes up a fraction of all the different scripts out there. With all of these different factors going into learning a new language, it requires a lot of time and effort for someone to accomplish. 

However, this issue does not just apply to this school. This is an issue that immigrants in the United States face every day. When they arrive in the United States, looking for new opportunities, people often expect them to conform to their culture and, specifically, their language. There is an unspoken expectation of being able to speak the language as soon as you get here, and that can harm a lot of immigrants; more importantly, it disconnects from their cultural identity and who they are as a person.

There is also a large stigma around speaking your own native language in the United States. I was always told to not speak Urdu, in airports or public places. This is absolutely unacceptable, and is another example of what losing your own culture and heritage looks like when it comes to languages. As a society, we should be more accepting of people trying to learn English as a new language and help them to not lose a piece of their cultural identity.

The views in this column do not necessarily reflect the views of the HiLite staff. Reach Ayaan Nadeem at [email protected].