I had a generic thought...

Technically, I'm an immigrant. I say technically because I never truly migrated; I was held in someone’s arms who did migrate. Technically, I'm an immigrant. I'm not the only one out there. Actually, there are a lot of us whose parents migrated from their mother country to this new fast paced, modern one. Us technical immigrants live a very confusing life- a life pulled into two.
WARNING: Cliche stories and ideas but mostly true.
Language.
Most of us are at least bilingual; some people even spoke another language before English, and though it's great that we can switch languages halfway through a sentence, we're also made fun of. No, not by the native-English speakers, by the people "back home". Over time, living in our new country, we've developed an accent (an accent which I am proud of) that impairs us from pronouncing certain words right. Not on purpose but because we were never taught how to form those sounds. Let's say we can get the pronunciation right; then, we really lack in grammar. We end up using informal language in a formal setting (and rest assured a nice lecture from our parents of the grammar rules of "our language"). Except, here's the thing, we've never formally learned the language either. Really, no ones ever sat us down and taught us the language. We just kinda picked it up (which is kinda awesome. We taught ourselves a whole language while learning another one. So cut us some slack). And if anyone is like me, you may have learned 3 languages, and you can't tell the difference between them. So you end up dropping Hindi in your Urdu while talking to someone who speaks Gujurati, and of course, add accent and grammar and well...things aren't looking so great....(this has actually happened to me. The person just stared back at me, confused, and proceeded to ask me the question again in English. It was easier after that).
The story of language doesn't stop there- it follows us to school. You know those awkward first day of school ice breakers like "Two Truths and a Lie?” You think you're clever and say "I only know one language" as your lie, and everyone rolls their eyes (or you imagine that because you're super paranoid). Someone goes "GUYS, she's brown. She obviously knows Indian". Yeah, that's annoying because (1) I'm Pakistani (India won't even let me have VISA, let alone nationality), (2) I don't think out of the hundreds of languages spoken in India, “Indian” is an actual language, and (3) I'm 1000000% sure you read this joke online and are trying to be funny, and it's not working for you (this story has been exaggerated for entertainment purposes). But you know what's worse than people assuming you speak another language because of your skin tone and name? When they ask you to say something. It's one of the most awkward moments ever. Like, what do I say? You're not gonna understand it. I could say gibberish or make weird sounds, and your reaction would be the same "OH WOW that's so cool!" response. However, what's worse is when they try to learn the language from you because then you end up teaching them Gujurati words after claiming you speak Urdu, so they can impress a Hindi speaker. Add the bad mispronunciation and poor grammar, and you've got an equation for success.
Disclaimer: I'm a nice person, I promise.
Have a good day/night/morning/evening/or whatever point in time you're at
Maha

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