I mix up words when learning another language

When learning Spanish or Italian, the accents on different letters, spelling of words and the pronunciations of words are very similar. Similar enough that I sometimes say things in Spanish like I would in Romanian or vice versa.

Nobody speaks Romanian other than Romanians

Romania is a relatively big country in Eastern Europe, (when compared with its neighbors), but it is still smaller than Texas, leading to a smaller population speaking one specific language.

When people find out I speak another language…

Usually when someone finds out that I speak Romanian the first question might be one of two

1. Are you Roman?
2. Where is that?

I can’t even fathom why people think that an ancient society has come back to life. Rome is a city in Italy, Romans are people who live in Rome, but the term isn’t used much anymore. Romanian is the language spoken by Romanians, not Romans.

I don’t know a lot of idioms

You may think that this isn’t such a big disadvantage, but many times idioms go right over my head, causing me to not understand what the person means.

I’ve only met my whole entire family once

I don’t know many of my cousins. I barely know my first cousins, and I only had a close relationship with one set of grandparents. This is all because all of my family lives overseas. In order to see them I would have to take a nine hour plane ride and drive another hour. That is a trip I take every other year.

My parents get discriminated against because of their accent

My parents’ accents are ridiculed by people close to me. I see this happening with many others as well. As soon as someone is told that a person they’ll be communicating with frequently has an accents, they ask, “Can I understand them?” English is a hard language to learn, just for someone to put through the effort to learn this language shows their dedication to communication. Instead of making the other person learn to communicate with you, you could always try to learn the other person’s language to help the transition process.