Personal Narrative: A Broken Bilingual

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A Broken Bilingual’s Problem I used to speak English in Korean accent when I talk to Korean, because I feel ashamed to speak English. Although I don’t have perfect English accent, I try to speak English in broken accent to Koreans so I can hide my imperfect English skill to Korean. One day, I was talking to my Korean friends who are more comfortable with English than Korean. We were talking in Korean, but I had to say some English words. I said, “Ferrari is really expensive.” When I said the word, “Ferrari,” they laughed at me because I pronounced it as ‘Pe-ra-ri.’ I knew how to pronounce that word in right way, but I just said it in broken accent because I thought it would be weirder to say that word in English accent while talking other things in Korean. It is much better to say English word in Korean accent while talking in Korean. When people who learn English as second language get humiliated with their English skill by Americans, I got humiliated by Korean people. Many Korean really think English is an important language as much as their traditional language, Korean. They think it is okay to get wrong in Korean language, but it is not okay to get wrong in English. By living in America surrounded by Korean groups, I realized that acquiring perfect standard English…show more content…
Rachel L. Jones mentioned about William Labov’s word, “It is the goal of most black Americans to acquire full control of the standard language…” (Frauenheim). I strongly agree with this phrase and I think it applies to most of the people whose English is a second language. Before I moved to Los Angeles, I dreamed to become an intelligent and a successful person who is able to speak perfect standard English. Unfortunately, I was shocked when I saw a lot of Korean Americans in Los Angeles. There was even Korea town where were full of Korean

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