*Due to a word limit, this has been paraphrased.* [Intro] I'm nervous bc although I can speak KR, I mostly talk w/ my family in KR so I'm rusty. I can't write in KR well but I can speak/understand mostly everything, so I consider myself fluent. I've been speaking KR since I was born; my first word was "appa" (dad in KR) and my parents made sure I spoke it at home. I lived in KR for a few months after I was born; from 4th-6th grade, I visited in the summer and went to a nearby KR public school to be more culturally enveloped. I'm thankful that I can speak KR bc most of my KR friends can't. That doesn't mean it's bad, bc it's hard to balance languages. Also in KR, they push students to learn English more than KR. I think English is important, but KR is too, so I try to retain it. I have a KyungSangDo dialect bc my family is from there. I also used to live in China, where I lived w/ a Chinese grandma. (She was a nanny, but I was 5; to me, she was a grandma living in China.) If my memory's correct, she's a North KR woman who escaped to China, so her accent also affected the way I talk. It's not bad since everyone understands me and vice versa, but I might talk in a way that people could misinterpret. Please let me know if you think this: leave a message, email/tweet me, etc. (I haven't thought of much to say; I wanted to speak KR on this platform just to try.) So talking about KR summer school, I would go as soon as I was done with U.S. school in late May/early June. In the KR school, they'd already been through 1/2 of their curriculum. I remember the school chose a teacher in 4th grade who spoke some English, but once that school figured out my KR was fine, they chose regular teachers in 5th and 6th. This was great since I was there to learn about KR culture. I had never learned KR science, which isn't different but the vocab was confusing. There are certain terms in science, so like the KR word for "oxygen" confused me at first. I knew the word "air" but not "oxygen" specifically. I learned about KR econ since it's a little different from the U.S. I also learned math, which was not different except that it's what I'll learn a few years later in the U.S. Reading was hard in 6th bc of in-depth comprehension. I understood the story but not the analysis; I struggle with that even in English. I made a few friends, got their contacts, but I haven't contacted them. I'm in 11th grade, I just moved and I barely keep in touch with peeps from my old place, so trying to contact KR friends is harder. I actually remember a KR friend who wrote me a letter, apologizing for snickering when she heard my accent. I laughed it off bc I know it sounds all mixed up. She also wrote things like be more assertive and hold my head up. I thought I was shy bc I wasn't as fluent as the natives, like the lack of communication made me temporarily introverted. However, I realized after coming back to the U.S. that the shyness was a part of my personality. I really only talk to people I know, and I don't go out of my way to talk to strangers. This is why I want to speak more languages so I can talk to more peeps and connect. In many Asian countries, they want to speak the language of the majority. "If they go to the U.S., they'll be better off, and to be okay there, they need to speak English." To me, learning English at the expense of losing your native language sounds horrifying. If I wasn't fluent in KR, I would struggle since I consider my KR identity as a big part of me. I look KR, my parents are KR, and even with dual citizenship, no one validates me as American. It's important to keep that KR part of me alive. Going back to learning more languages, I consider them as bridges to cross into different cultures. I wouldn't be worried about fluency since it's more about connection, especially through social media w/ peeps all over the world. It'd be great if I could understand other languages to have a "happy family" idea, if that makes sense. [Closure]
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