English Is My Second Language

It is my pleasure to present a guest post by author Esther Erman.

After receiving her BA and MA in French from different divisions of Rutgers University, Esther returned there for her doctorate in language education. A multi-published author, she now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, Lee. When they’re not traveling—especially to be with family in other parts of the United States and in England—she loves to bake, quilt, and add to her monumental book collection. Her latest book, available on Amazon and in bookstores, is Rebecca of Salerno: a Novel of Rogue Crusaders, a Jewish Female Physician, and a Murder, and her website is EstherErman.com.

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At the ripe old age of four months, I arrived in New York with my parents. We were refugees from Germany, where I was born. We moved into a building on

Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The main language of the streets was Yiddish, which my parents, Holocaust survivors from Poland, spoke as the main language of the house, and which they taught me. Polish was reserved for secrets.

My parents started learning English right after arrival. My father, a risk taker as a language learner, would go up to people and try out his English, not caring if he made mistakes. My mother, much more cautious, did not attempt to speak any English until she’d taken more than a year of night school classes. Neither attempted to teach me this new language. Then, when I was four, we moved to the Bronx. There I made my first conscious distinction between people—some were Yiddish speakers, some English speakers. I was in the first group, but I wanted to be in the second.

My opportunity came when I went to kindergarten. I wish I could remember anything about the learning process, but I can’t. I started kindergarten as a Yiddish speaker and ended it as an English speaker. From then on, I refused to speak Yiddish—the language my parents always spoke to me. I must have made a very strong point because they never taught my brother, born in the Bronx, Yiddish.

I loved school. I loved my first-grade class and my first-grade teacher. I was a successful student and all was good and harmonious until…. I don’t remember what prompted my teacher to ask me about something I did. Instead of answering, I responded with, “Let’s forget about it.” Back then, this was a shockingly rude thing for a previously good student to say to her beloved teacher. Beloved teacher demonstrated her shock by demanding that I stay for after-school detention.

Horror! Doom! I saw my life going down the tubes. Unpleasantly surprised that I did not come home at the usual time, my mother walked the five blocks to my school with my little brother in his stroller—a hassle for her.  I was sure that Mom would join my teacher in punishing me. My mother always sided with adults and often found her own reasons for being less than pleased with whatever I did.

But then came my turn to be shocked. When my teacher explained why I was in detention, my mother shook her head. She said I had just recently learned to speak English and obviously didn’t know the import of my words. My mother stood up for me to another adult—and such an important one! When my teacher heard this very plausible explanation, the world tilted back into balance. With a smile, she dismissed me from detention. Relieved, but mostly surprised at what my mother had said and done, I practically skipped home.

The truth was, I really did know what I was saying.

That was the only time English being my second language came up as a problem…until college. Unless exempted, freshmen were required to take a speech class. In the queue to try for a much-desired exemption, I heard that both girls ahead of me succeeded. Since they had thick New Jersey accents, I figured getting the exemption would be a piece of cake. With great confidence, I read my paragraph. The speech teacher looked at me with a slight frown. She then asked, “Where were you born?” 

When I answered, she nodded and signed me up for the speech class.

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Announcement and News:

Here is a video of an interview I did with Robert Brandwayn, The Language Coach from Colombia

If you are anywhere near Venice Florida, come down to the Venice Book Festival on Saturday, March 25! I will be there selling my books. 

I am always seeking guest posts, so if you have something relevant (to this blog, which is a pretty wide area) to say, please submit your ideas or your posts!

Upcoming Posts:

• Grammar Trivia
• The Origin of Some Common Idioms