What being bilingual means to me.

For those that may not know me, as the majority don’t since I haven’t made that much of an impact on the world being 18 an’ all, I’m bilingual.

Specifically bilingual in German, which in hindsight isn’t the most helpful language to be fluent in, in comparison to other languages such as Spanish or Mandarin which are more universally spoken in more places.

However being bilingual has many positives (don’t get me wrong, this isn’t going to be a rant about the shortcomings of speaking two languages) because there are many things I loved about growing up bilingually:

• Being able to communicate and understand two different cultures.
• Knowing how to conversationally ask for things while in the other country.
• Being able to take GCSE’s and A-levels earlier due to more knowledge of the language.
• Having two passports (in some cases).

These are a few in the list and I’m glad I grew up with the prospects of being German and simultaneouly British.

However I’ve noticed, especially when you are born into a bilingual household, that there are certain pressures and expectations placed on you, not only by family members but also by those in society around you that you suddenly understand all there is to know about your second language.

That’s not always true and can be damaging to confidence levels as people grow up.

Commonly, after the initial animosity that can come with someone from abroad coming into a school environment, I was always asked to prove that I was bilingual; that I could speak German by classmates that would ask me to “prove it” or “say something”. More often than not I would simply entertain and say something like “hello” or “my name is” and that would be that. But it still bothered me that there was this mentality that I needed to prove something. Was there really this distrust lurking around about my origin because I looked ‘british’ or was it more that people believed that those from abroad must look or seem different from the ‘norm’ for them to single them out of a crowd and brand them as ‘foreign’ and I wasn’t immediately brandable?

As a 6-year-old, I had no idea. So I just went along with it.

By the time secondary school came around, I had experienced the odd offensive slur about being German (highlighting certain aspects of history) but none had really had much of an impact because being German wasn’t quite as unheard of as those from further afield and as a fluent English speaker without an accent people didn’t notice any different.

Then exam season rolled around and I soon realised that doing German exams was something I could do earlier than the rest of my year (again, something I found wholly positive) but soon realised that, since I had never been taught structured German in a classroom, it was very different to the German I had learned whilst growing up. So the questions turned from “can you prove it?” to “Well, you should find those easy, right?”

Cue the plummet of confidence in my abilities.

Instead of this idea of doing exams early being this big, exciting thing that could help me with future jobs or possible work abroad, it turned into this need to prove myself all over again. Prove that my auditory language learning was enough to breeze through an intitutionally organised syllabus and ensuing exams that don’t actually teach you how to speak the language but rather how to teach it.

Forgive me, but I don’t think knowing the Pluperfect tense constitutes on the list of things I think of when ordering a coffee and a muffin.

After a while it became expected that people thought I wouldn’t have any trouble with the language exams.

The first set went well but weren’t the top marks. That was okay.

Then came the second set and I got a grade I wasn’t entirely happy about but could live with considering I’d taught myself the syllabus that year with some help from a tutor.

When it then came to the time that I wanted to happily share my success, I was met with “Oh, that’s still really good!” or “Well, don’t feel bad: the paper must’ve been hard”.

I was hurt, to say the least, but most of all I felt as thought those who were saying these, less than helpful, comments were voicing my thoughts aloud.

“You should have done better because you already know the language.”

“You should find this easy, why didn’t you study harder?”

And thus, my confidence plummeted further until it affected my other subjects, I started properly doubting my own abilities and the work ethic I was so proud of was reduced to the mindset that there always something I could do to improve myself.

Nothing was ever enough.

Now in the present, I would like to state that this mindset is neither healthy nor good for productivity and easily leads to regular burnouts. I kept convicing myself it worth it, but then found that I had become too consumed with this need to be perfect at something I had never been taught before, simply because I knew the basics. I’d turned my success at passing a major exam with a pretty good grade into a failure. A failure at grasping the language that I had grown up with.

People shouldn’t get to dictate what you see as success or failure and there should be an ability to remove the stigma that being bilingual means you are perfect on both sides.

Being perfect in itself is a flawed concept so why aspire to be it?

I’m happy that I have the ability to speak two languages enough to relate culturally and physically to the country while also knowing that I am my own person and am not defined by either country or my ability to speak the language.

Also, a country’s stereotypes or past shouldn’t define you as an individual and I believe more people need to be reminded of that.

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