SM as a trilingual?
hey y’all, new here but i am someone who was diagnosed with and “used to be” selectively mute from the ages of 4-8, particularly in school settings. although i’ve made a lot of progress with my social skills and ability to even speak (though i still have many lingering struggles), i’ve only recently realized that my progress has been limited to when i speak english.
i live in canada, and speak english, french, and my mother tongue. i spoke my mother tongue before i even learned any english at all, and am decently fluent for someone born in a country where there’s not many people around me who speak it. i’m also fluent enough in french to where my quebecois teacher assumed my parents were francophone. i’m in no way close to being a native speaker in either language, but i’m also not just “barely proficient.” i understand both of the languages well, even when the speaker is speaking in a different dialect from my own. despite that though, i can never “show off” my language skills, no matter how much i want to. particularly to family, friends, and the wider social circle of people connected to my family and friends (those are the WORST). that same ursula-stealing-my-vocal-chords-and-replacing-them-with-a-rock feeling that i’d experience in english as a child? that’s exactly what happens… but i somehow never made the connection with SM until today. maybe because i didn’t face the same stigma i would in english, and instead the other person would just assume my silence was due to a lack of fluency in the language?
i’ve also noticed that with the people i’m comfortable enough to actually speak in my other languages to, i only speak with the most basic and limited vocabulary. it makes me feel and look so dumb, but i have a fear of making a mistake and then freezing up so i stick to areas where there’s the lowest risk of that happening. i’m feeling half continued frustration from this all right now, but also half relieved and like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders after the issue turned out to be something “familiar.” i’m curious now to hear if this is a common experience among ppl with SM who speak more than one language?