When I first started school, the only English word I could say was “Tinkerbell.” Although Korean had been my first language, it quickly slipped away once I started attending school regularly. Soon, I began speaking broken “Konglish” — Korean-English — with my grandparents and chose not to speak it at all if I could help it. 

My mom attempted to salvage my terrible skills by putting me in Korean summer school for two years. There, I barely improved my speaking and learned how to read and write — even worse. But eventually, even that stopped. 

Despite my linguistic insufficiency, I had no trouble communicating with my family. My dad grew up in California and only spoke to me in English. My mom was forced to become fluent when she moved here from Seoul at 17. Despite this, even without a direct language barrier, I always felt distanced from my cultural heritage.

In my mind, I was Korean on a technicality, as my family lineage is Korean. But ultimately, I wasn’t really Korean. Based on my disconnected idea of what being a “real” Korean meant, compared to my peers, I didn’t like K-pop or keep up with idols and celebrities and the only K-dramas I watched were outdated recommendations from my mom. Worst of all, I could barely hold a conversation. 

My claim to my heritage was stifled by a forgotten language, making me feel unworthy to consider myself a true Korean. I am not the first second-generation immigrant to feel this linguistic separation nor will I be the last. 

This experience is described by researchers as language attrition, which occurs when a native language speaker slowly loses their ability to speak their first language because they have either spent extended periods of time abroad or are learning and speaking a second language. My own experience with language attrition occurred after regularly having to speak English in school and eventually at home, abandoning consistent usage of Korean.   

In The New Yorker, writer Jenny Liao expressed her own difficulties with language attrition and communicating with her parents through translation apps, as she can no longer speak Cantonese. Liao wrote that the children of immigrants are often expected to “adopt a new language in place of our first — the one our parents speak best — without fully considering the strain it places on our relationships for the rest of our lives.” 

Similarly, writing for the BBC, author Mithu Sanyal confessed that she could not properly pronounce her name because her parents never taught her Bengali. Sanyal wrote that after struggling to learn the language time and time again, all she had learned was that “it’s simply too late for that now.” I used to think the same, considering myself too far gone to ever regain my fluency. However, this simply isn’t true. 

According to a Massachusetts Institute of Technology study, the ability to achieve native-like language proficiency declines after the age of 10, but despite this, we can continue improving our language skills over time. 

Learning a second language in later years could also lead to “higher cognitive reserve, better performance in executive control, changes in brain structure and function relative to monolinguals, and delay in dementia onset,” as discovered by a 2021 study by Caitlin Ware, Sophie Dautricourt, Julie Gonneaud and Gael Chételat. 

All this to say, it’s never too late to learn or relearn your native tongue. 

To successfully assimilate into American culture, the first thing first and second-generation immigrants are taught is to sacrifice their language. Although cultural identity is not defined by language, it often creates a difficult barrier that cannot be easily ignored. Still, it can be overcome. 

After years of only practicing my Korean by reading short restaurant signs, writing egregiously misspelled birthday cards, or talking to the few fluent Korean friends I had, I decided to take matters into my own hands and signed up for Korean III at USC, which I encourage other second-generation immigrant children to explore. 

In the few weeks since the fall semester started, I haven’t improved drastically. When I call my mom after every class, she’ll spend at least five minutes laughing at me for my amateur vocabulary and grammatical follies. But the fact that I’m speaking in sentences long enough to make so many mistakes is a reward in itself. Every small grammatical achievement and new word slowly bridges the gap between me and the cultural identity I believed lost. 

Forgetting a native language can often be disheartening, but it is not the make-or-break factor of identity. I am Korean in spite of my ineptitude and because of my willingness to learn more. 

So, sign up for that class because it’s never too late.