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It was 2015, we were three months into our parenting journey,
and there we were, new baby in arms,
discussing a big topic that would change our family life.
My husband and I were talking about what it would take to go from being an English
speaking household if we committed to becoming a Spanish speaking one.
To give you a little bit of context, my husband and
I share a similar heritage background.
We're both Mexican-Nicaraguan-American but we're different generations.
For me, my parents had been the immigrants to this country.
I'd been born in San Francisco and raised in a Spanish speaking home.
But for my husband, his grandparents had been the immigrants to this country.
His parents had been born in Los Angeles, and raised at a time when they were
beaten in school if they were heard speaking a language other than English.
In large part, the policy had its intended effect.
My in-laws lost their Spanish and
eventually raised my husband in an English speaking household.
Fast forwarding back to our conversation that day, my husband said, but
I'm an adult.
Aren't I too old to learn another language?
And what about all those things about American culture,
the things that I grew up with?
If we choose to speak Spanish at home,
will I be able to share those with my kids?
I reminded my husband that a choice to speak Spanish at home didn't mean that our
kids wouldn't learn English.
They would learn English and
we wanted them to as choosing to speak Spanish at home was more about
choosing to value both languages for our kids and not one over the other.
I reminded my husband of all the times that he'd shared with me how he'd
regretted not knowing Spanish,
how it meant he didn't have the closest relationship with his grandparents.
I asked my husband,
if we tell our kids it's really important that you learn multiple languages, but
we didn't find use for bilingualism in our own lives, would they buy it?
Would they think we were hypocrites?
There are two things that I could talk about today,
why Americans should be more bilingual or how we become it.
Now given that we're in an academic setting, I'm going to assume that many of
you have already heard about the benefits of bilingualism, how bilingualism has
been linked to improved learning outcomes, enhanced cognitive abilities, more
financial opportunity, the development of empathy and interpretive skills.
Many of you might know that bilingualism has been linked to delays in
manifestations of aging, like dementia and Alzheimer's.
Given that this is Stanford after all, some of you may even know that in 2016,
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences released a report that said that fluency
in English is no longer sufficient to meet the needs of America in a shrinking world
nor the needs of individual citizens who will interact with other peoples and
cultures more than at any other time in human history.
The overwhelming recommendation of the commission was that Americans learn
to value language education the same way we value education in math and
English as a persistent national need.
So instead of talking about why America should become more bilingual,
I want to devote the rest of my time to talking about how.
How do we go from our current state, where 80% of Americans are monolingual and
start inching towards becoming more of a bilingual society?
I'm going to suggest we can take three immediate actions to move us in that
direction.
First, businesses need to recognize the incredible opportunity in this space.
When my husband and I decided to speak Spanish at home,
we were shocked at how few resources we had to support our decision.
Things like an alphabet puzzle where the letter corresponded to the word in
Spanish or books that had a rich depth of vocabulary, we couldn't find them.
We ended up having to write our own books and
create our own resources to support our decision.
This is a huge business opportunity.
We're one of millions of American parents that are no longer okay,
raising a monolingual generation.
American parents are looking for
ways to fold language learning into their family lives.
I myself am starting a business in this space,
where we provide in home support and guidance for parents, and a platform that
connects individuals with language fluency to language learners in their communities.
I'll never forget last summer after one such community session,
a mom coming up to me with tears in her eyes.
She said, Anna, we've chosen to speak Spanish at home.
But I've been worried for
years that my daughter would just associate the language narrowly with us,
with our family life, that my daughter wouldn't see its larger place in society.
Getting to come to this outdoor session,
how's my daughter see its larger place of belonging?
Her words meant a lot to me because that was the goal of what we were doing.
American businesses have an incredible opportunity to create space for
other languages to belong in our society and culture.
My second recommendation is that
American adults take up a practice of lifelong language learning.
Now, I know what you're thinking.
I'm just bad at languages.
Most American adults feel that way.
But the truth is American language education is broken.
Languages shouldn't be learned in classrooms through reading and writing.
Languages need to be lived.
Languages should be acquired through hearing and speaking.
So it's not that you're bad at languages,
you likely just haven't had a fair shot at it.
The second thing I bet many of you are thinking is what my husband said,
I'm too old.
I'm an adult.
Don't studies show that if you don't pick it up as a kid, you have no chance at it?
The truth is that learning a language early in life gives you the benefit of
speaking the language in native proficiency,
which simply means you won't have an accent.
But there's nothing wrong with accents.
Accents are beautiful.
Accents are our proof that it's never too late to learn another language.
So let's remove this stigma around accents in the United States so
that more American adults are willing to engage in language education.
I learned Arabic as an adult.
And though I can't tell you it is easy, I can tell you it was incredibly enriching
and something that continues to, that I continue to be grateful for to this day.
My third recommendation is that American parents or future parents,
make space in your homes for family language learning.
Do it together.
Kids look at parents for cues.
And one of the best pieces of parenting advice I received
is that your kids will do what they see you do, not what you tell them to do.
Make space in your homes for language learning,
devote an hour a week to speaking to one another in that target language.
Maybe your kid's in an immersion program, bridge that learning back home.
Maybe your kid's in middle school, in learning a new language,
surprise them with a phrase that you're learning.
You are or can be your kid's safe space.
Do language learning together.
It will make a really meaningful impact for your kids and our future generations.
Is it possible for the United States to become more bilingual and
is it worth the effort?
My husband speaks really good Spanish today.
And he has this renewed relationship with his grandparents that's priceless.
My son is turning five this month which I can hardly believe.
And the other day he ran up to me and said, Mommy,
Mommy, let's sing the Arabic number song and he kicked us off.
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>> [LAUGH]
>> He loves that song.
And I love that teaching it to him has led to this deeper interest.
He wants to know how other things are said in Arabic.
He's fluent in English and Spanish.
He's learning sign language in school.
And perhaps most importantly, he truly believes he can learn any language.
It is possible to raise a generation of Americans that embrace bilingualism.
And trust me, it's so, so worth it.
Thank you.
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