13-year-old fluent in four languages speaks at National Chinese Language convention

From: Xinhua

by Angela Efros

SAN DIEGO, the United States, May 12 (Xinhua) — A crowd of over 1,300 fell silent as 13-year-old Kamila Carter told her story of being raised by deaf parents from two different countries and how she crosses U.S.-China barriers in the world of sounds and silence.

To communicate with her father, mother and grandmother, Kamila had to learn three different languages. A 7th grade student at Tierra del Sol Middle School, she was the youngest speaker at the 2019 National Chinese Language Conference in San Diego in western U.S. state of California. On a Friday’s panel titled “Student Study Abroad Experience: Impact and Best Practices,” young Kamila spoke about conquering her fears to travel to China all alone.

The annual National Chinese Language Conference is the largest annual gathering in North America that brings together leaders and practitioners in the fields of Chinese language and culture education and U.S.-China education partnership.

“The mother is from Mexico, she’s totally deaf. The father is from the United States, he is totally deaf. He uses the American sign language, and she uses the Mexican Spanish sign language,” a mentor and teacher, Lilly Cheng, PhD, director of the Confucius Institute at San Diego State University, told Xinhua.

Kamila talks to her father in American sign language, to her Mother in Spanish and Spanish sign language and to her grandmother in English.

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