Everyone has a different relationship to their mother tongue. Here are these families’ stories.
by Dynahlee Star Padilla
Starr Ramos is a third-generation Mexican-Ecuadorian born in the U.S. attending SUNY New Paltz.
At the register of Victoria’s Secret PINK in Herald Square, the cost blared at Starr Ramos: more than $200. Ramos wanted to say it in Spanish, the language her customer spoke. Though she struggled to say numbers over 100, she didn’t want to give up.
Ramos tried, but her pronunciation was off. The woman shot back: “‘Con una cara así, ¿por qué no hablas español?’” Ramos, a 20-year-old college student, understood every word: With a face like that, why don’t you speak Spanish?
Taken aback, flustered, and defeated, Ramos reverted to English. She pointed to the screen to show the woman the cost and told her English-speaking daughter to pay.
What Ramos really wanted to say to the woman was: “You don’t know my story. You don’t know that my parents were born here. So they speak English, and I don’t feel like I need to explain this to you.”
Even though Ramos spent her early childhood in the same Brooklyn home as her Mexican Spanish-speaking grandparents, she doesn’t feel comfortable speaking Spanish. When they asked her how school was, or what she wanted to eat in Spanish, she’d mainly respond in English. Or sometimes Spanglish: the strong use of Spanish grammar and vocabulary with the influence of English.
Her parents never asked her to speak Spanish. Nor did they speak it to her. English is their dominant tongue.
Still, both parents expected Ramos, a third-generation Mexican-Ecuadorian born in the United States to curl her tongue, roll her r’s, and keep the h silent when speaking. But speaking a language doesn’t just magically happen by hearing it.
As Ramos got older, talking in Spanish became uncomfortable and scary. Aware that she only retained the basics, she churned at the thought of uttering a word.
This is the language that society and her family want her to know because she is Latina. Her family even calls her “the whitest one” for self-identifying as such and not sounding like it. “I question my identity when people question my identity,” Ramos said. “Sometimes to not be or feel a part of that heritage feels frustrating. But that’s just the reality right now.”
Language Loss
The U.S. is considered “the biggest language cemetery in the world,” said Deyanira Rojas-Sosa, associate professor of Latin American and Caribbean studies at SUNY New Paltz.
By the 1900s, a wave of immigrants came here in search of jobs, safety, economic opportunities, religious freedom, and education. But when America went to war with Germany in World War I, the German language also became a threat to America’s ideology of one united nation with one dominant language. Speaking German in the U.S., or any other language that wasn’t English, quickly marked immigrants as “anti-American,” as “other.”
From then on, there was immense pressure for immigrants to assimilate. In 1906, immigrants had to learn English in order to become naturalized citizens. The law was repealed and revised in the Nationality Act of 1940. Then it was modified again in 1990 as the Immigration Act. By the 20th century, many immigrant families in the U.S. abandoned their heritage and home language to fit in socially, politically and economically.
“One potential reason for Spanish-Speaking immigrants speaking less English over time might be that the U.S. was involved in the Gulf War around the 1990s, which may have created an environment of xenophobia in the country,” said Gregory Bailey, social studies teacher and technology resource specialist of Hudson Valley Regional Bilingual Education Resource Network (RBERN). “During wartime, sometimes a larger group of close-minded people can, unfortunately, become scared of the ‘other,’ or rather, those they feel don’t look or sound the same. This fear sometimes manifests as racist comments, hateful actions, and sadly, violence. As a result, some people may no longer feel comfortable speaking or identifying with their native language.”
Maintaining language and culture is also different in the context of white, privileged Americans, said Rojas-Sosa. When they learn a second language like Spanish, they are praised by American society to keep learning more languages. According to a study in 2016 from the Modern Language Association (MLA), Spanish is the most-studied second language in the U.S.
Immigrant families who grow up bilingual in the U.S. aren’t encouraged or commended to maintain their home languages. They’re pushed to learn English because in the U.S. “languages are racialized,” said Rojas-Sosa. “They are associated with the race of the person that speaks the language.”
“While Spanish is appreciated as a language that you can learn, it is not appreciated as a language that you come with because it is seen as something of the past. It means that you don’t want to assimilate, that you don’t want to be American,” she said.
As a result, the U.S has a complex sociolinguistic history. Over generations, immigrant families tend to stop speaking their native language. American linguist and professor Joshua Fishman “describes language loss in the United States as a three-generation process, whereby each generation loses the language until it is gone in the third generation,” said Amy Lutz, associate professor of sociology at Syracuse University and Senior Research Associate in the Center for Policy Research.
Generally, the first-generation to come to the U.S. is bilingual and dominant in their home language. The second-generation knows Spanish and is dominant in English. The third-generation might have some knowledge of Spanish from their grandparents but speaks primarily English.
According to the Pew Research Center, the share of Latinos who speak Spanish has declined slightly: 73 percent of Latinos spoke Spanish at home in 2015, down from 78 percent in 2006.
When the children of Spanish-speaking immigrants begin school “children face a great deal of pressure to shift to English,” added Lutz. How much Spanish is spoken at home and whether parents emphasize its importance also factor into language loss over generations. Lutz and Rojas-Sosa say additional factors in language loss are community, location, interests, social pressures, and work. “Sometimes children completely lose their parents’ language,” Lutz said.
“Let’s consider the increase seen in not speaking English ‘well’ in 1980 versus 2010. Globalization looks different today than it did in 1980. Between 1980 and 2010 we had the rise of the Internet and, as a result, ease-of-access to global culture, including language,” said Bailey. “Learning a second language in 1980 meant attending classes, reading books, and/or living in a country where a different language is spoken. In 2010, there were countless language learning apps, websites, services, and products available through the Internet. As a result, the need to become proficient in English today is not as dire as it was in 1980.”
At school, programs in English as a New Language (ENL), formerly known as English as a Second Language (ESL), send a clear message. “Spanish is for home. English is for school,” Lutz said. “Ideally, you’d have a program that emphasizes both languages so children wouldn’t lose something important in the process.”
The lack of resources for bilingual children and adults in the U.S. are part of the reasons for the loss of Spanish among some Latino families. The U.S. doesn’t teach bilingual children at the same rate as English-speaking children, said Rojas-Sosa. As a society, it focuses on monolingualism, one single language. What children really need is to use their first language Spanish, to develop their second language English.
“The educational system in the U.S. isn’t supporting bilingual students and their families, and is creating second and third-class citizens because of it,” explained Rojas-Sosa. She says the lack of resources can perpetuate achievement gaps. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2017, the high school dropout rate for hispanics hit a new low.
What remains constant then for many Latinos in the U.S. is that “Bilingualism is ideal but English is a reality,” said Lutz.
Hierarchy of Spanish Language and People
Though in the U.S. Spanish is considered a subordinate language to English, for some it is still considered integral to Latino identity. Sergio Loza, a Ph.D. candidate of Spanish sociolinguistics and Spanish heritage language pedagogy at Arizona State University-Tempe, has identified a pecking order among non-Spanish speaking and Spanish-speaking Latinos.
Every Latin American country is considered to have a “cultured norm,” an idealized way of speaking Spanish. For this reason, each country has a so-called “standard” of Spanish represented by upper-class speakers. Poor and disenfranchised Spanish-speaking communities, therefore, are discriminated for their variety of Spanish. This class, race, and ethnic disparity between groups create a linguistic privilege that is artificially constructed by society.
As a result of Spanish that doesn’t follow this uniformed standard– one that doesn’t actually exist, false ideologies about language form. “One: Latinos who do not speak Spanish are considered white-washed or inauthentic by both fellow U.S. Latinos and those that immigrated from Latin America,” said Loza. “Two: U.S. Latinos and Latino immigrants who believe and judge other Latinos for having ‘a corrupt’ Spanish that has been invaded by English.”
So Latinos who don’t understand Spanish at all and only speak English are at the bottom. Native Spanish speakers judge them for not knowing the language of their ancestors. Latinos who understand the language, but cannot respond in Spanish are also judged. Latinos who are less proficient and prefer English are judged harshly. Still, Latinos who can speak Spanish even get criticized for their non-prestigious varieties of the language, said Lazo. They use words that may be inappropriate in the context, but not incorrect or ungrammatical, added Kim Potowski, professor of Hispanic linguistics and director of the Spanish Heritage Language Program at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Spanglish, although considered a derogatory term by some linguists, is their friend.
As mentioned before, native Spanish speakers are part of a social ranking, too. “There are interethnic tensions between regional dialects within the same country and also between nation-states,” Loza said. “Such as studies that show in N.Y., Puerto Ricans along with Dominicans are judged harshly while Colombians are at the top of the hierarchy. They are said to have a prestigious dialect of Spanish.”
Non-Spanish speaking Latinos get criticized in part because other Latinos believe they only value English, Loza says. Native Spanish speakers, on the other hand, get criticized in part because they only know U.S. Spanish or ‘estadiounidismo,’ Spanish words and phrases that are considered to have originated in the U.S.
U.S. Spanish is recognized in the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language (RAE). Still, family members from their countries of origin argue that ‘estadiounidismos’ aren’t “true” Spanish as there are many borrowings from English. However, they’re not considering the linguistic variations of the Spanish language across the world and in their own Latino/Hispanic communities, said Potowski.
Hector Limon, associate director of residence at the University of California Irvine, used to challenge Latino people’s identity and their relationship to the Spanish language. He had a resident assistant colleague named Jessica in his undergrad at San Diego State University who self-identified as Latina but didn’t speak Spanish.
“I thought I was better. I thought I was more authentic, more Latino than she was. But I was wrong,” Limon said.
Limon would constantly call Jessica out for not being Latina enough in front of other colleagues. Jessica became fed up and reported him to their resident director (RD).
The RD told Limon that he needed to be mindful of his “personal biases.” She mentioned that his negative attitude about Jessica’s Latina identity was a barrier to potentially building a friendship with her.
This thought stayed with him. He decided to research and write a thesis in 2009 for his master’s degree at Iowa State University about non-Spanish speaking Latinos interacting within a predominantly white institution. Throughout the project, he was able to explore what it meant to be perceived as a “black sheep” in a community.
“You have two cultures that you’re negotiating. You’re negotiating the Latino culture and trying to figure out: how do I get accepted by this culture so I can feel welcomed and appreciated in this culture and make it feel like a whole piece of me? But then you also have the dominant culture where you live. And in that culture, you’re being told, you’re not really with us. You’re not really our group. So, you’re in this third culture between two spaces where you don’t fit in either of the two.”
This type of ostracization happens to every ethnic group, Limon said. With Latinos, it’s the language. With African Americans, it’s their skin color. For others, it’s their music. Bringing outside leaders to talk about these issues can guide students of color through their experiences as minorities in white institutions, he said.
Now, as a university official, he encourages his staff members to acknowledge their own biases. These biases might limit how they could refer other students to organizations and services they feel welcomed in, as his once had. He pushes them to ask questions in order to understand students’ stories, values, community, and culture.
Cultural values are what can actually unite a group, he said. Alignments on religion, loyalty, immigration, etc. can bring people in these groups together — not just the language. Jessica and he aligned on all things Latino except the Spanish-speaking part. Being white and developing a Spanish language skill, however, doesn’t automatically make that person Latino, and that’s the difference, Limon added.
Fear of Discrimination
Rising anti-immigrant sentiment and racism play a role in how families make choices about language. President Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric has made some native Spanish speakers wary about when they speak their mother tongue. They worry about hostile glances. They don’t want to be questioned or threatened by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol. Nor do they want to be judged on how well they speak English.
This has happened in America’s history of immigration before. James Tager, deputy director of Free Expression Research and Policy for PEN America, believes that Latinos and any other minority group should be able to speak their mother tongue without being policed by ordinary citizens, family members, strangers or authority.
“They have every right to speak that language,” he said.
Angelica Silva Perez, 18, tells people she’s “Mexican-born, America-raised.” She is a recipient of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), an American immigration policy that allows entry of undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. before the age of 16. She attended daycare and part of Pre-K in Mexico, where instruction was solely in Spanish. Her mother also taught her how to read and write in Spanish.
When she moved to America, she was enrolled in a public school to complete her studies. But because English was the primary level of instruction, she quickly began losing her formal education of Spanish literature, writing, and grammar as early as kindergarten.
Because of English-only instruction, she felt embarrassed to speak what she thought was informal Spanish. So, she stopped speaking it in public.
Later, when most kids her age in middle school chose to study French, she chose to improve her skills in her mother tongue. She was constantly switching from English to Spanish in her Mexican household, but wanted to relearn Spanish because she felt she “wasn’t that good.”
Young white American boys challenged her, asking, “Why are you taking Spanish if you already know Spanish?” They claimed she was just trying to get an easy A. Other classmates taunted her for being Mexican. They’d ask her about her legal status. In elementary school, a classmate’s mother called her a “dirty Mexican.”
“We use language as a proxy to carry out discrimination,” Loza said, especially when Spanish is often associated with a lack of patriotism, education, and being rural, among other reasons.
This was the language and culture Silva Perez identified with as a Latina, but the attacks on both were only following her. In a discriminatory encounter like this, “Sticking to English,” Loza said, is “something natural.”
Angelica Silva Perez created this painting in her senior year art class to represent her Mexican identity in America.
In middle school, some of Silva Perez’s friends created a game named “Over the Border.” Picture: kids trying to get over a snowbank without being attacked by snowballs representing batons and border patrol. Silva felt she would never win. First, her classmates attacked her for wanting to speak her first language. Then, they attacked the whole idea of immigration.
“The meaning behind the game just wasn’t okay,” Silva Perez said.
Although she didn’t think it was funny, she never said anything. In 2016, President Donald Trump won the presidential election. The day after he won, a white American boy sitting in the front row on Silva Perez’s right began chanting “Trump” over and over to be funny. This time, she asked him to stop. He stopped but asked her why.
All she could think of was: “The wall. Deportation. ICE. And all the risks that can happen,” including dehydration and snake bites.
He was chanting for a man “who holds so much hate against people he doesn’t understand.” People in the community like her family, like herself, residing in the Hudson Valley and around the world. She began to tear up and moved to the back of the class. She asked to sit next to another classmate who denied her the seat. She couldn’t believe how upset Silva Perez had felt about Hillary Clinton losing.
Her frustration, however, wasn’t about feminism, politics or politicians. Her tears were from a place of love about human rights, decency, respect and courtesy.
“It just hit me that so many people just don’t understand, and I started to cry,” Silva Perez explained. “That boy didn’t know anything about what that election meant for undocumented immigrants, Dreamers, visa holders, etc. He was a representation of various uneducated people who don’t see the whole picture because of the lack of discussion and resources in general classes.”
Oblivious to the bigoted scene in his backyard, she returned to her front seat without the teacher noticing.
“It’s not like you come to America, you have a home, you have everything. No. You have to work to get all that stuff,” Silva Perez said.
Developmental Challenges
21-year-old Skyler Gomez was bilingual until about age five. As a first-generation Latina from the U.S., she was naturally alternating from English to Spanish in her Ecuadorian and Puerto Rican household. This is called code-switching, and Gomez, along with her triplet sisters, were mastering it.
But then, her Puerto Rican father told her Ecuadorian mother to start speaking only English to the triplets. At the age they should have been formulating sentences, they were only speaking gibberish to each other. He thought they weren’t speaking proper English because they were getting confused by hearing two languages in the house. He also did not want them to have an accent, fearing discrimination among school peers.
Their Ecuadorian mother didn’t agree with that decision. She thought it would be okay if they were confused at first. That is how they learn. It wouldn’t matter if they had an accent. They wouldn’t get bullied, she thought. They’re just little girls. Being bilingual would also make them more competitive in the real world.
So, she compromised. She spoke to them half the time in Spanish and half the time in English. Their father, on the other hand, chose solely to speak to them in English.
Skyler Gomez is a senior at SUNY Paltz who is Half-Puerto Rican and Half-Ecuadorian.
Their decision to divide the home languages did not work. It was still taking the triplets a while to develop speech patterns and coherent dialogue. Soon after, their parents had a consultation with a speech pathologist who told them their confusion stemmed from not maintaining one dominant language, English.
Dr. Inge Anema, an associate professor of communication disorders and sciences at SUNY New Paltz, focuses her research in bilingualism. She believes that the advice given to Gomez’s family was meant to help the toddlers communicate in a simple manner. But it all depends on the individual case, she said.
“The linguistic construct is a more involved process: the speech sounds, the order of them, the meaning of the words you’re using. So whether you do that in Spanish or English, French or Mandarin Chinese, it doesn’t make it simpler,” Anema said. “It’s still how we use language. But taking away the mother tongue, the emotional aspect, is not really helpful.”
Though Gomez’s mother didn’t want her little girls to stop learning Spanish, their father and speech pathologist insisted on sticking to English. Eventually, Gomez’s mother gave in. She trusted them because they were from America and she wasn’t.
“If she thought speaking Spanish was hindering our ability to speak properly, she would’ve sacrificed anything to correct it,” Gomez said.
English, therefore, reigned the Gomez’s household. But it was a different story at Cristo Rey New York High School, a predominantly Latino and African-American community. “I felt like I was going into some type of territory I didn’t belong in because I didn’t grow up speaking Spanish consistently,” Gomez said.
Their father now wishes his daughters had maintained Spanish at home.
Gomez has started to relearn Spanish as a second language. She visits her family’s countries of origin and does her best to practice Spanish. Her reading and writing skills are at an intermediate level, while her language skills are at the beginner stage.
Lately, she listens to her favorite Spanish songs by artists Ozuna and Bad Bunny, trying to sing along. She also writes about Latina authors for her internship at Literary Ladies Guide, a website regarding classic women’s literature and global authors Here, she’s written about Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral, and Puerto Rican poet Julia de Burgos.
“It makes me proud when I can communicate back to someone and they just assume that I am from the country,” Gomez said.
“Speaking Spanish continues to be noteworthy when someone maintains a language into the third and fourth generation of being American,” said Betty García Mathewson, program director for Opening Doors Diversity Project at SUNY Brockport, a three-day workshop built on creating change in diversity through a foundational framework.
García Mathewson’s plan was to maintain Spanish with both her daughters. When her first daughter Sienna was born with Down Syndrome she stuck to her plan. But at two, Sienna still hadn’t started talking.
Similar to the Gomez family, García Mathewson took it up with a speech pathologist who suggested some advice to stick to English. As a result, “We took Spanish out of the house,” she said, choking back tears. “I cried for weeks.”
“When they speak their own language, it binds them to the child in a different way,” Anema said. “If speech is still delayed, we build a communication system for that child alone. We are trying to see what level of understanding and production the child can handle. Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) encompasses everything that is not speech-based — using some communication abilities the child already has and building on it without using speech.” Given the technology and resources available now, AAC might have been a better option for Sienna.
This decision to take Spanish out of the home was around the time Sienna’s sister, Tara, was born. So Tara didn’t get as much exposure to learning Spanish as Sienna did. For a long time, Tara told her mom that she was angry at her for taking the speech pathologist’s advice. García Mathewson was able to give Spanish to Sienna, even if only temporarily. But Tara never got that mother-daughter opportunity.
Sienna, Betty, and granddaughter Arabella. Photo courtesy of Betty García Mathewson.
That didn’t stop Tara from bringing her mother’s home language outside. She began taking Spanish courses in elementary through tenth grade. This instruction, however, was based on worksheets, which didn’t prioritize conversation. She sought other ways to develop the language she “thought should have been a birthright.”
When she studied at Northwestern University for college, she took more Spanish courses that fused her grammar skills with speaking skills. Tara even landed an internship her junior year of college that required her to interview farmworkers who mainly spoke Spanish throughout New York State. This immersion enhanced her ability and confidence to reproduce the language with fluidity.
A year later, she designed a thesis project for sociology that built upon her previous experience. She’d be interviewing more farmworkers in New York along with their families in a small town in Mexico. All of these interviews were conducted and transcribed in Spanish.
She developed friendships with people she had met in Mexico and stayed in contact with them back home in Chicago. She has also cultivated relationships in her own community which has a strong Latin-American, Spanish-speaking presence.
Today, Tara is raising her child, only a year old now, in a bilingual household. She doesn’t want her daughter to struggle to become bilingual. With her Panamanian father, her mother now fluent in Spanish, and a Dominican, Spanish-speaking babysitter, Arabella can keep Spanish as a part of her life.
Tara García Mathewson and her daughter, Arabella. Photo courtesy of Betty García Mathewson.
“That home that you grew up in is your roots. Some of it supports you and affirms you in life, and some of it you have to heal from,” García Mathewson said.
The Future is Spanish
When Hurricane Maria, a Category four storm, hit the eastern part of Puerto Rico in the municipal city of Humacao on Sept. 20th 2017, Cathi Castillo, executive secretary to the college president at SUNY New Paltz, welcomed her niece and her niece’s young daughter into her home in Plattekill, New York.
They arrived in October. Although her niece is bilingual and fluent in English and Spanish, her little girl didn’t speak English. For the first time, Castillo’s family chose to speak only Spanish at home, even though English had always been their primary language.
Castillo’s nieces’ first-time apple picking in New Paltz, N. Y. post-Hurricane Maria. Photo courtesy of Castillo.
Her two sons could communicate using basic words like “hola,” and point to things to get the young girl’s attention. But Castillo’s daughter, who has a better understanding and Spanish-speaking ability than both her brothers, was more fluent. She began asking the little girl questions and enticing her to play.
“It was a gratifying moment to actually hear my daughter communicating with her,” said Castillo.
Her children’s Spanish knowledge was based on overhearing conversations from Mami (mom) and Papi (dad), and hearing Spanish words and conversations exchanged between their grandparents and other family members when they visited. To see their efforts to communicate with this little girl was heartwarming.
Spending time with her great niece, and seeing how her adult children interacted with her, made her wish she had taught them Spanish at home.
Cathi Castillo and her husband. Photo courtesy of Castillo.
“I realize that my generation and my family will probably be the last generation that will speak Spanish. And that makes me really sad,” Castillo said.
The little girl, Anastasia, now three years old, attends daycare and has quickly learned how to communicate in English. She is growing up learning, speaking, and understanding two languages at the same time. Her mother, Alejandra Maisonet, wouldn’t have it any other way.
Anastasia saying her name and how old she is in Spanish.
As pictured from right to left: Cathi’s great-great niece Anastasia, and great-niece Alejandra Maisonet, Maisonet’s mother Carmen Milagros and sister Victoria Milagros.
Maisonet often sings Anastasia Spanish songs she grew up singing from Puerto Rico, including “Los Esqueletos” (The Skeletons). Her grandmother, aunt and mom all sing along to the song, swaying back and forth in their chairs, smiling, laughing, cheering Anastasia on to join in. She giggles, and chimes into the tune with a few Spanish words.
“My hope is for this little girl to change the pattern of language loss for her entire generation,” Castillo said.
