How do you deal with your minorized language abroad?

 When you are in the US, you are often forced to adopt another personality. A personality that fits well in the hegemonic monolingualism, someone they can understand from the scopes of Northern American education. Many internationals even create an american name to use with friends or businesses, a name that will ease the disconfort of monolingual speakers. 🗣

These last days, I have been lucky enough to be at my first New Ways of Analyzing Variation #neav50 , where I presented a collaboration project with Dr. Rodriguez-Ordóñez and Dr. Gondra (present in our minds) about how the societal change of the Basque Country has affected the way the youth produces Basque now. 📊

At the same time, it has been the first time a Sturbucks worker writes my name correctly. It does never matter that I spell it, I never got it right. It never bothered me too much, I had assumed that only a minority would make the effort to memorize something similar, however this worker made my day. Which led me to the topic we were presenting that same day: is there a societal change in the US that is affecting their multilingualism? Is it San José just very cool? 🌎

We will never know. What we know is that if you are persistent reminding others of your origins, someone will eventually pick it up. Our accent already gives them the clue that we are not too local. 👐

⁉️ How do you deal with your minorized language abroad?