“But what is your native language?”

The Problem With Language

Fighting Assigned Identity

The problem is that too often people tend to associate identity and belonging with language and will label the speaker accordingly. For my part, I don’t want to be labeled as being part of a culture I either rejected early on or have absolutely no connection to by virtue of its changed geography. I also don’t want to come across as assigning more value to one culture than another, though that has been my subconscious go-to all my life. Cross Culture Kids, who are brought up in this mindset, can dip in and out of cultures at seemingly breakneck speed, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t have our own likes and dislikes when it comes to certain cultural norms. Some of us thrive in more authoritative structures, while others benefit from permissive environments. Personally, I’ve always functioned best when I was given freedom over set guidelines, but I have friends for whom the set guidelines work. As a consequence, there are places I’ve lived in that leave a very bad taste in my mouth still, whereas others evoke an instant feeling of inner peace, love, joy and the happiest of memories.

[The best thing about the training was...] ​A combination of sharing my thoughts, hearing from the other couples and the contextualization from the session guides are all impossible for me to separate from each other in their "bestness".

​Osallistujat odottavat ensimmäistä lastaan

​My personal experience is like this too. The first time we applied for my child, there were not enough children to form a group in our municipality, so we were just informed about it and left alone without another solution.

​Kielimuurin vuoksi hoidan kodissamme pääasiallisesti arkipäiväiset selvitykset, oli kyse veroista, terveydenhuollosta, päivähoidosta tai vanhempainvapaasta. Olen tulkkina välissä pankkiasioissa ja vakuutusyhtiön kanssa. Puolustan perhettäni verbaalisesti siellä, missä se on tarpeen, vaikka erittäin itsenäinen vaimoni kokeekin varmasti välillä turhautumista siitä, että hän on kielimuurin vuoksi minusta riippuvainen arkisissa asioissa.

I am lucky to be able to access to support groups and intercultural family groups here like Familia or Spouse Program to share my woes and lament unlike back home in Malaysia.  For example, Familia has given me a place or platform to share my thoughts and mix with other intercultural families who may be going through what I went through in life situations such as the severeness of digital exclusion, seeking employments, choice of children’s education development or discriminatory actions of certain groups of minority. ​

​But how to get into a workplace to practice Finnish language in first place, if Finnish work culture finds resistance to trust immigrants and their lack of fluency when it is not native level?