When I came to Suriname at three and a half years old, I was already able to walk and speak properly. The only issue was that I spoke Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian). My parents taught me some English words as well so I could communicate with people from Suriname.
Before I started kindergarten, they taught me easy Dutch words that were important like several greetings, asking to go to the bathroom, thank you, please and I'm sorry.
My kindergarten teacher was so understanding of my situation and I truly had no idea how she could understand me even though I had such a huge language barrier. I learned how to speak Dutch properly in school, with a lot of struggles. The only person at home that could communicate with me in Dutch was my father, because my mother could only speak Indonesian and Javanese.
Elementary school was quite challenging for me. I spoke English for things I couldn't really say or explain in Dutch but got scolded so many times, even though they knew my situation. It took me a lot of practice to actually be good at communicating without switching into another language.
I got bullied a lot when I was little for not speaking "properly". There were kids of different ethnicities at school, who spoke Sranan Tongo. We were actually forbidden to speak other languages besides Dutch. But I did manage to hear kids speak other languages at recess such as Sarnami, Sranan Tongo and just a few who spoke English.
So that's how I kind of also learned how to speak Sranan Tongo.
When I was in middle school, I learned how to speak Spanish as well. It was one of my favorite subjects in school. My grades for both English and Spanish were pretty good, since I actually enjoyed those subjects. Well.... Dutch not so much. In theory, it's actually quite a bit complicated.
I'm that "weird" kid that switches languages mid sentence, for some it was pretty cool but for others kind of annoying. That being said...
I am blessed with the knowledge of different languages and I am happy to be #alive to use them to communicate with others.
Thank you for reading my blog post and I hope you enjoyed it.
Terima Kasih Banyak! (Thank you so much)
鉁岋笍Throwing peace signs since back in the days!鉁岋笍
I was probably around 4 or 5. It was Christmas and we had to do a dance in the church.馃
