A really interesting thing I'm only starting to be able to articulate coherently... is my experience in studying Japanese. Now, at the risk of identifying who I am, I have to explain a part of my family history - and that I come from the diaspora of Japanese in Hawaii from somewhere between 100 and 200 years ago. Most of these families dropped their language learning in World War 2 for what should be obvious reasons. And due their age, the language and culture is possibly a quite old one of peasants.

An example of this came up recently - I didn't grow up in a food culture that featured cheese. All Japanese people now know cheese, probably leagues upon leagues better than I do. Of course it doesn't help that lactose intolerance runs in the family, but more than that, the only exposures I really had to cheese were things like mac n'cheese and pizza. I learned about string cheese from my haole (white) friends in intermediate (middle school). Sidetracked, but a good anecdote to explain how different my experience is from modern Japanese culture.

It is most likely that my parents show a local accent to Japanese rather than their original ethnic one. I know little about my father's side other than that they're Okinawan and most likely speak both Okinawan and Japanese. My mom's side comes from southwestern Japan and the last one that spoke was my Grandmother. I know I have this accent because of the things I struggled to learn to pronounce correctly in Japanese (Hawaiian, for instance, has a lot of vowel dipthongs so the temptation to pronounce them as in Hawaiian is really strong). Oddly we're half-and-half on the problems of vowel length as both Hawaiian and Japanese have long and short vowels, but this was not really... emphasized in my Hawaiian classes in elementary and intermediate. Just brushed over and you're off.

Anyway I never got to my point here. The thing is that learning a language like Japanese when you're ethnically Japanese is like having an invisible disability. You struggle so hard and so long... for what? And with having a foreign language as a degree, everything is about self-motivation. Drive. What would you study a foreign language for, for people that expect you to know it through and through, inside and out? And it's not like I don't look Japanese (well, I look East Asian due to the Okinawan so I've had everyone from Filipinos to Cantonese speakers asking me if I'm their ethnicity). But hey, at least I can read body language and didn't skimp studies out in that too (because you do have to learn that in another culture also).

I guess my brain is not all there because this isn't a really good essay. I'd probably need at least ten more rewrites before this is something worthy of public domain.

Anyway the feeling of judgement that you sound retarded or something (who are not really dumb but yeah) or even if they know you're from an immigrant family, look at you like you were too lazy to learn the parents' language. I dunno. Quite frankly I don't take judging looks as badly as a lot of people I could name, but imaginary ones feel really bad too.

Even in school (college but I call it school like a little kid) I had a weird position as one of the few kids not bilingual in my classes, not exposed to the language on a consistent basis, and I read a hell of a lot better than spoke or heard (I had to do my own version of cram school when I transferred to university to be able to kinda understand what my teachers were saying). Of course part of this is really common for someone with my brain... type, but at the time I was really alone. 

And every single time I dealt with something in Japanese, I would always be alone.