My Language Immigrated Before I Did

I didn’t immigrate.
But my language did.

I was born in Taipei, Taiwan, where Mandarin is the language of home, school, and daily life. My childhood memories are filled with familiar sounds: my parents’ voices, street vendors calling out orders, the rhythm of a city that never felt foreign to me. Taiwan was — and still is — my origin.

At the same time, English entered my life unusually early. When I was two years old, I was sent to a full-English kindergarten. At an age when most children are still learning how to name the world, I was already learning to navigate it in two languages. English belonged to school; Mandarin belonged to home. I didn’t question this division — it simply was.

After kindergarten, I attended a local public elementary school in Taiwan. Mandarin became dominant again, and English was reduced to a textbook subject: grammar rules, vocabulary lists, simplified conversations. I still spoke English, but unevenly. It was present, but quieter.

Everything changed in sixth grade, when my family moved to Tennessee for one year because of my mother’s research. Looking back, that year was the turning point of my life — not academically, but linguistically and emotionally.

During the first week of school, I was asked to take an ELL pre-assessment. No one had explained what it was. I remember opening the test booklet, skimming the passages without really reading them, and realizing I understood almost nothing. I went to the bathroom and cried.

When the results came back, they showed that my English proficiency was equivalent to a third-grade level. To others, it may have been a placement tool. To me, it felt like a verdict. I had spoken English before — but suddenly, it was measurable, ranked, and inadequate.

A few days later, fear caught up with me. One morning, as my classmates lined up to board the school bus, I froze. My feet wouldn’t move. My sister urged me to hurry, but I couldn’t. I turned to my mother and told her I couldn’t go to school.

My mom spoke to my teachers and asked if I could use a translator device in class. This was before smartphones and instant translation apps; it was a small electronic machine I carried with me every day. My teachers didn’t just allow it — they encouraged it. They enrolled me in ESL support and made space for me to learn at my own pace.

With time, something shifted. My vocabulary expanded. I relied on the translator less. Eventually, I stopped bringing it altogether. I made friends. I participated in class. By the end of the year, English no longer felt like a wall — it felt like a door.

Then we moved back to Taiwan.

I was determined not to lose what I had gained. I read English magazines daily, listened to English radio programs, watched movies, and attended language schools to maintain my speaking skills. I treated English like something fragile — something that would disappear if I didn’t protect it.

Back in Taiwan, I attended a highly competitive local school. I struggled with STEM subjects, but English became the one class that anchored me. At first, my motivation was external: I scored well on exams, so I told myself I liked it. Over time, that motivation became internal. I wasn’t just good at English — I was curious about it and in love with it.

In ninth grade, I noticed that many words in my textbooks were already familiar. They were words I had learned years earlier, during that single year in the U.S. That realization made me proud. What once marked me as behind had quietly become my advantage.

Later, I transferred to a bilingual high school, where English and Mandarin coexisted in the classroom. I felt more expressive in English, more confident in discussions, more myself. At the same time, something uncomfortable began to happen: I started to feel distant from Chinese.

Chinese slowly became an obligation language — something I used to communicate with family, not to express who I was becoming. English, on the other hand, felt like movement, growth, and adulthood.

When I came to college in the U.S. as an international student, that divide sharpened. Visa regulations and constant reminders of my legal status made “foreignness” impossible to ignore. Over time, I began to associate that feeling with my nationality — and, by extension, with the Chinese language.

I avoided Chinese-speaking spaces. I avoided eye contact when I heard Mandarin in public. I didn’t join Chinese student organizations. 

I didn’t avoid Chinese because I disliked it, or because I rejected where I came from. I avoided it because speaking it suddenly felt heavy — loaded with expectations, explanations, and assumptions I didn’t always know how to carry. In Chinese-speaking spaces, I felt pressure to perform a version of myself that no longer fit entirely.

At the same time, I found comfort in more linguistically and racially diverse spaces, where language didn’t immediately define who I was supposed to be. There, English felt lighter — not because it was better, but because it allowed me to exist without having to constantly explain myself.

Once, when someone asked where I was from, I panicked. In the split second before answering, dozens of American cities raced through my mind. I said I was from Los Angeles.

That was when I realized I wasn’t just confused — I was hiding.

I had begun to believe a quiet lie: that identity was a loyalty test. That choosing the language I felt most alive in meant betraying the place I came from.

The truth took longer to surface. Identity, I eventually learned, isn’t a passport category. It isn’t a fixed nationality. It doesn’t demand that you choose one language and abandon the other. Identity can be hybrid, fluid, and context-dependent.

Taiwan will always be my root — my family, my childhood, my emotional origin. But English is the language in which my adult self formed: my confidence, independence, humor, and worldview. One language holds where I came from. The other holds who I became.

I didn’t immigrate.
But my language did.

That realization — not certainty — is my golden state of mind. I no longer hide the in-between. I no longer treat language as proof of allegiance. Instead, I let each language carry what it does best. I sometimes still find myself negotiating, even now.

My story isn’t about fluency or accent. It’s about learning that belonging doesn’t require choosing sides. Sometimes, the most valuable thing isn’t clarity — it’s integration.

My language story is not dramatic, but it’s real. It’s about growing up in one language and growing into myself in another.

That realization-not certainty- is what feels golden to me.