Hernandez 1

Edwin Hernandez

English 160

Essay 1

September 4, 2019

Native Spanglish

All my life I’ve been spoken to in a mix of English and Spanish. In my household, Spanish is the main language due to it being the one language everyone in my  family has in common. But as surprising as it may be, I still have yet to fully understand the Spanish language. I hadn’t realized how much I didn’t know, however, until I got to high school and got put into a Native Spanish class. 

I had always thought of myself as a fairly decent Spanish speaker but I would also catch myself not knowing what some phrases meant or the names of certain everyday objects. What I had failed to realize prior to taking Spanish was that the language I spoke at home with my parents at home was slang. It was more of an “if you know you know” kind of thing. 

My parents come from a part of the Dominican Republic called Nagua and it’s known as “el campo,” or the ghetto. In this small pueblo, like in many other less fortunate neighborhoods, the native language was shaped into a more careless and and quick way of speaking. They cut off certain letters from words, didn’t pronounce every letter fully, and made different phrases that couldn’t be translated directly. I’d be lying if I said I understood every phrase my parents or my drunk uncles told me at family get togethers but I would get a few every once in a while.

 “Tu eres un pariguayo,” they would say when I wouldn’t understand their jokes. It was a bit embarrassing but I would just laugh it off and slowly distance myself from the situation.

 

Hernandez 2

When it came to reading in Spanish and pronouncing words correctly, I was fine. I could read aloud in front of the class and would very rarely stumble over words. Even writing wasn’t that difficult for me at first, or so I thought. I did well answering short response questions on tests and class assignments but essays were my downfall. I could always start off the essay well but I’d get lost in translation. It was difficult for me to put my thoughts onto paper when my thoughts were in English. My knowledge of the proper Spanish language was only so extensive, so I would eventually just be unable to write without it being improper. 

As my high school career continued, I eventually got the hang of the language a lot more and even took AP Spanish where I got to really polish my technical understanding of the Spanish language. My Spanish is still not perfect but I’m now able to have a full conversation with someone who speaks the more proper version of the language. Every once in a while, however, I’ll slip back into my ways and forget about all the technicalities for a second. I’ve come to learn that no matter how much you may think you know about something, there’s always room to learn and improve.