My “Englishes” Experience -Usman

My first language was Urdu, I was born in Brooklyn and moved to the city of Hewitt in Texas, let’s just say Hewitt doesn’t have much diversity. I moved to Texas in the middle of 1^st grade, so I was still in ESL classes, which are classes to learn/improve your English language skills. Personally, I was never made fun of the typical “Indian” accent however I have seen people being bashed simply because English isn’t there first language. Growing up in a city where there arent many people as you can make you feel like a outside. From 1^st grade to 8^th grade, I wasn’t pronouncing my own name correctly. Teachers and students would pronounce my name incorrectly but back then I didn’t correct them instead I went with it and started pronouncing my own name like that. My name is Usman pronounce (oos-maan) however people would pronounce a Z sound instead of a S o(oz-maan). After watching Hasan’s video about his name and how he said “takes me 19 years to learn how to pronounce my own name in public” it reminded me of that period of my life where I didn’t pro ounce my own name correctly.