We're in the US and English is the predominant language, therefore it's inevitable that when
the children go to school that English becomes their predominant language.
There's this natural cycle in which it is often difficult for first generation speakers
to completely learn the language fluently, second generation speakers are often bilingual,
by the time they're third generation speakers the new language, English, would be the dominant
language and then it becomes a struggle to keep this important heritage alive by maintaining
Spanish.
I have two Hispanic students and they speak English in their Spanish.
It's really funny, but they're there because they have to take it for college.
And they do their work but I can tell their English is better than their Spanish.
And they make mistakes and when they come to the board, the other kids say, "You're
supposed to know this!"
And I explain to them, no.
No, because all they do is hear Spanish from their parents.
This semester I'm teaching what we call a writing intensive class and I've seen the
roster already and I know that I have some students of Spanish heritage and I see the
same problems that I see with my sons with them.
The other students can't realize that just because they are Hispanics, it doesn't mean
that they can read, write, and speak it.
One of the things that happens is that you have children who speak Spanish up until the
time they're six, they grow up in the home when they're very young, speaking Spanish
with their parents.
They get to the school system, they feel a lot of pressure to speak English, they learn
English, and then they start to feel pressure to speak ONLY English.
So maybe around the time they're in third grade or so, they start refusing to speak
Spanish at home, and then they actually lose it.
So you end up with someone who's 21 or 22 who once was a completely fluent speaker of
Spanish and now doesn't know enough to order Mexican food at a restaurant, for example.
And I think it's very sad.
That's a resource that these children had and they lost it.
It's like if you had a six year old who knew how to play chess and then you made them forget
it.
I lost a good part of my Spanish ability growing up.
I would see Spanish, speaking Spanish, as a bad thing because of the early conditioning
that had in my school system.
But when I went to college, Texas A&M University, and starting to compete for jobs, I saw language
as an asset.
I had to completely forget about my Spanish background to focus mainly on my, to learn
English.
Because I remember when I was in California and one of my ESL teachers told me that in
order for me to learn English I had to sleep, eat, drink, everything had to be English.
And that was my main goal.
I think we know a lot more about bilingualism and about the bilingual mind now than we did
a generation or two ago.
I think teachers are less likely today to oppose a bilingual student's bilingual maintenance.
But still we have a long long way to go.
We do tell the parents not to worry, to keep using their Spanish at home because they need
both languages.
And I think I have taking advantage of having both languages and knowing both of them.
So I tell the parents, "Listen, your son is going to be able to speak English and speak
Spanish and you have to have a communication in one language."
And if they don't speak English, they need to keep speaking in Spanish, not to be ashamed
of speaking Spanish, but to keep communicating with them.
It's the minorities that are forcing their children to speak Spanish.
They are speaking Spanish to them, but whenever the kids kind of like look the other way,
they don't force it.
And I didn't force them, I can see that.
I didn't force it on them.
And, you know, one time they told me, they said, "Mom, that was bad that you didn't."
I think people underestimate the amount of work it takes for a parent, whether it's both--
Because we actually know parents, the kids that have both parents that are, you know,
their native language is Spanish, but it's still, maybe because they're in an English
speaking world, it's very difficult to raise that child as a Spanish speaking child.
I guess it would be hard, sometimes when you're at the grocery store and, you know, you're
young and you don't want to speak Spanish to your parents because, you know, you might
think somebody will be thinking you're weird.
But, you know, after a while, you've got to understand what's important and what you have
to do what you're used to.
I have a daughter, she's six years old now, and we do speak English sometimes because
she's kind of confused, which one's Spanish, which one's in English.
But she knows how to speak in English, she knows how to speak in Spanish and even she
knows how to write and read in Spanish already.
But I told her that we have to speak always Spanish at home because I don't want her to forget that.
And, I mean of course she will know English.
The normal thing is that Spanish dies out and that's what we find in Los Angeles, that's
what we find in New York with Puerto Rican-American speakers.
The interesting thing is that these new communities that are growing up in the South and in North
Carolina and in other places are going to have a chance to do things differently if
they want to.
So the kids that are born there now are going to be growing up in a time where we have more
value for other languages, where we have a little bit more appreciation for diversity.
So there's a chance that this pattern may be different for them, that they might have
a chance of retaining Spanish if they work at it.
But the expected pattern would be that after a certain time, people do lose Spanish in
the community.
I think it's very nice to know two languages because you've got more opportunities and
plus it's just something good for you not to forget where you're coming from.
And if white people or Americans want to learn Spanish and we have the, you know, opportunity
to know it from home not to do it.
I'd encourage Latino parents to encourage their children to learn English and become
proficient in English, but at the same time show them the importance of valuing the language
of the culture, which is Spanish and making that a part of their lives as well.