Bi/Multilingual Stories Elisabeth Ajtay

"One of my first memories was ... I was wrapped up in a giant snow suit for the first time in my life feeling really uncomfortable, this little child enveloped in layers of snow pants and giant boots and coming from Italy I was like 'What is this?' ... It was a shock ... and the switch from speaking Italian to speaking English happened within a few days".
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I think the last thing you learn on a very high level, is to do humor and to joke. ... I found that very hard when I moved to Sweden when I was 19, that people would think that I'm stupid. When I was joking, but also when it was about emotional things, when you wanted to be very very precise with something and couldn't really be so precise, that was very frustrating to me. 
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There are always these external forces ... that send a message to you that you are not Armenian enough, or you're not American. I think you don't truly feel like you belong because there is always others who send you these very strong messages that you don't belong.
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"Switzerland has four official languages … the reward of learning a language was so clear fro the beginning… you learn that you can communicate with people if you learn to speak their language. It is more fun if you speak other people’s languages."


Support the showIf you want to tell your story email me at elisabethajtay.at.gmail.com!
Sound by Hernán Giorcelli
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"I can’t be 100% Mexican and I can’t be 100% Americana, and that’s OK. Maybe I’m also a mix of other cultures that I admire and that’s OK as well. I’m a blend of things".
Support the showIf you want to tell your story email me at elisabethajtay.at.gmail.com!
Sound by Hernán Giorcelli
Thank you for listening, sharing and supporting Bi/Multilingual Stories

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“…The first one or two years when I was back in Korea they said … ‘your Korean sounds so interesting, because it is Korean but it sounds like a translated English novel.’”. Some people make fun of it … like mimicing or something. That was embarrassing but at the same time it was like OK, people laughed and we had a fun time together.”
Support the showIf you want to tell your story email me at elisabethajtay.at.gmail.com!
Sound by Hernán Giorcelli
Thank you for listening, sharing and supporting Bi/Multilingual Stories

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.