This article investigates how two young newcomers navigate an institutional policy of "English only" in a Finnish primary school and how this policy impacts opportunities for voice. From a discourse analytic and sociolinguistic perspective, the analysis takes an ethnographic path to a focal event of language conflict in the classroom. The analysis reveals that these two learners negotiate more powerful voices for themselves, despite responding differently to normative practices for code use in the classroom. (Contains 3 figures, 3 extracts, and 2 notes.)