This is (Not Entirely) for La Raza
I came across this article the other day. Despite my feelings regarding illegal immigration and my "cultural identity" as a Hispanic, I found this article fascinating for a number of reasons.
Hispanic parents are frustrated because children won't learn Spanish
September 23, 2007
By Tal Abbady
Jonathan Alper feels like a stranger among Spanish speakers. But immigrants see his Colombian-born mother's features in him and peg him as one of their own, often asking him for directions or trying to strike up a conversation in Spanish, a language he doesn't speak.
"They'll walk up to me and start speaking Spanish, and I'm like, Oh crap. Where's the exit?'" said Alper, 25, a deputy clerk at the Broward County Courthouse who lives in Pembroke Pines.
About half of all children of Hispanic immigrants speak at least some Spanish, research shows. But many South Florida Hispanic parents say they struggle to preserve the language at home, even in a region where Spanish beams from airwaves and beckons from storefront signs.
While Florida boasts a large concentration of Spanish speakers -roughly 20 percent of Floridians over age 5 speak Spanish or a variation at home - experts say a strong command of the language wanes with the second and third generations.
English-only advocates say that's a welcome result of assimilation.
Parents trying to raise bilingual children worry that a strong sense of cultural identity and job prospects are at stake for Hispanic youth who speak little or no Spanish.
Javier Almazan, of South Bay, the son of Mexican immigrants, bemoans the fact that his two youngest children, both middle schoolers, can barely roll their r's.
"I try to emphasize to my kids that they're hurting themselves.They're closing doors as far as careers go," said Almazan, 39, adding that he's lost hope that his youngest children will speak Spanish.
Miguel Ibarguren, an Argentine who lives in Plantation, uses rewards to encourage his two young children to respond to him in Spanish. The children win points every time they speak Spanish, and accumulated points can lead to a prize at the end of the week.
Ibarguren and his wife, who is from Spain, also enrolled his son Miguel, 6, in a Madrid summer camp last year to beef up the boy's Spanish skills.
"[It's] our duty. If there's anything we want to leave our kids it's the language," he said.
Data from a 2002 study conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center and the Kaiser Family Foundation show that 47 percent of second-generation Hispanics are bilingual. That figure appears high, but community advocates say many Hispanics who are conversational in Spanish lack basic grammatical skills and vocabulary. The number of bilingual Hispanics drops to 22 percent in the third generation. Among many U.S.-born Hispanics, the language morphs into Spanglish, a vernacular mix of English and Spanish.
Raul Martinez, of Davie, made sure his daughter, now in college,split her television time between English and Spanish programs. He also spoke to her in both languages.
His efforts paid off, but Martinez, who is Puerto Rican, worries that a strong command of Spanish, both written and verbal, is hard to find among Hispanic youth. He is president of Aspira of Florida, Inc.,an agency that sponsors programs and provides scholarships for them.
"There's this notion that if you come from a Spanish background, you don't need Spanish as a foreign language at school," said Martinez."Many Hispanic kids aren't learning Spanish diction, language, grammar and verb conjugation."
That's a natural part of assimilation, said Mauro Mujica, the Chilean-born chairman of U.S. English in Washington, D.C. The organization promotes making English the country's official language."If immigrant parents are so concerned about their kids and grandkids learning the language, they should go back to their country," said Mujica.
"My grandchildren don't speak Spanish. That's the way it is."
But as they enter adulthood in a Spanish-rich state, some second-generation Hispanics regret their English-only upbringing.
"I should have learned the language at the time," said Alper, who says he'd have more opportunities at work if he spoke Spanish. As an adult, he's asked his mother to start speaking to him in Spanish.
"Now he makes me feel guilty," said Linda Alper, Jonathan Alper's mother, also of Pembroke Pines. "He asks me 'How come my cousins speak Spanish and I don't?'"
Linda Alper said doctors advised her to speak only English to both her children because speaking two languages would have confused her severely disabled daughter, Tabetha, who died 10 years ago. "It's too late to send him off to Colombia," said Alper, referring to the practice among many foreign-born Hispanic parents of sending children to the family's native country to learn Spanish.
Rosa Castro Feinberg, a retired associate professor of education at Florida International University, said children who lose touch with their parents' language often feel rootless.
"You lose your connection to the family and all kinds of social problems can emerge," said Castro Feinberg. "If parents and grandparents can't pass on traditional values, the kids are without an anchor."
Syndia Nazario-Cardona, 39, has sent her daughter, Yimalisse, 14, to Rincón, Puerto Rico, every summer from the age of 5 to stay with the teen's grandmother and 11 cousins for a dose of Spanish and Latino culture.
Yimalisse, a sophomore at Archbishop McCarthy High School in Southwest Ranches, takes honors Spanish. But she won't break out her Spanish with a stranger.
"My confidence level isn't good, and I'd like to be fluent. With my friends, I usually speak Spanglish," she said.
Despite some grumbling from outsiders, Nazario-Cardona is glad she raised a bilingual daughter.
"A teacher once told [Yimalisse] not to speak Spanish at home because we live in this country," said Nazario-Cardona, director of the Ana G. Mendez University System South Florida Campus, a bilingual satellite campus of the Puerto Rico-based university.
"I say, she is who she is, a Latina. I made it my business to make sure the language was not lost."
It's rather obvious, despite the naysayers who will tell you otherwise - learning a second language is vitally important. And no, it doesn't have to be Spanish, though here in the US it might help quite a bit (like learning French in Canada isn't a bad idea either). The fact is, learning different languages expands your mind and helps you retain your mental edge as you get older. It opens more doors than it closes, and it's just plain cool.
I should note that I speak Japanese - in fact, for the majority of my life I really knew it better than Spanish (yes, I was one of those kids who got shipped back to "the home country" during several summers; I would accompany one set of grandparents or another as they visited relatives in Mexico City - on my mother's end - or enjoyed the timeshare condos we had in the beach resorts of Ensenada, Acapulco and Cancun - on my father's end), and I really learned Spanish out of a combination of half-misbegotten family responsibility, and half because my maternal grandmother kept harping on and on about it. But I learned Japanese on my own and to me, that was the language that counted.
While time for me has proven it to be partially true, it took three years of a Navy assignment directly in Spain to prove me wrong on the other half.
The language that had been a drag to me for the longest time was now saving my bacon left and right, as I started running around the country beyond the base enclave or Rota and the surrounding cities. They speak English in Rota, Puerto de Santa Maria and Jerez (Sherry) because the three cities border the base. They speak it in Sevilla (Seville) and Cadiz because they're both large cities. They even speak it in La Linea, Torremolinos and Ibiza because of the large influx of British culture there. But try getting away with it in a small, one horse town like Cuervo, where I had to stop for gas one day. Or in Vejer, where the only time los Norteamericanos ever come is during the Running of the Bulls. Or in the small villages and hamlets in the country as you're driving all over Spain. Suddenly my tertiary, liability language was saving bacon, both for me and my friends (when necessary; someday I'm sure silverlightstar's husband will spill some interesting tales).
It wasn't the only place where Spanish saved me as well. When I was in Italy or France, if I couldn't remember words and speaking English would put me at a disadvantage (American English = Tourist to be ripped off), my Spanish, combined with the local Andalucian accent I learned, saved my bacon. The same in Germany and even Bosnia. Suddenly speaking Spanish wasn't a problem any more.
Nowadays, I still use it (though mainly just to get a few laughs out of my wife) and to lament with my mom that my little brother has decided not to learn a foreign language at all (the worse for him, I believe). But I think that regardless of whatever language I learned as a secondary one, learning one at all has been far more of an asset than any liabilities (which I have really yet to see) could ever come. And if my wife and I have rugrats some day, as long as they're learning one themselves, that will be enough for me.
Hispanic parents are frustrated because children won't learn Spanish
September 23, 2007
By Tal Abbady
Jonathan Alper feels like a stranger among Spanish speakers. But immigrants see his Colombian-born mother's features in him and peg him as one of their own, often asking him for directions or trying to strike up a conversation in Spanish, a language he doesn't speak.
"They'll walk up to me and start speaking Spanish, and I'm like, Oh crap. Where's the exit?'" said Alper, 25, a deputy clerk at the Broward County Courthouse who lives in Pembroke Pines.
About half of all children of Hispanic immigrants speak at least some Spanish, research shows. But many South Florida Hispanic parents say they struggle to preserve the language at home, even in a region where Spanish beams from airwaves and beckons from storefront signs.
While Florida boasts a large concentration of Spanish speakers -roughly 20 percent of Floridians over age 5 speak Spanish or a variation at home - experts say a strong command of the language wanes with the second and third generations.
English-only advocates say that's a welcome result of assimilation.
Parents trying to raise bilingual children worry that a strong sense of cultural identity and job prospects are at stake for Hispanic youth who speak little or no Spanish.
Javier Almazan, of South Bay, the son of Mexican immigrants, bemoans the fact that his two youngest children, both middle schoolers, can barely roll their r's.
"I try to emphasize to my kids that they're hurting themselves.They're closing doors as far as careers go," said Almazan, 39, adding that he's lost hope that his youngest children will speak Spanish.
Miguel Ibarguren, an Argentine who lives in Plantation, uses rewards to encourage his two young children to respond to him in Spanish. The children win points every time they speak Spanish, and accumulated points can lead to a prize at the end of the week.
Ibarguren and his wife, who is from Spain, also enrolled his son Miguel, 6, in a Madrid summer camp last year to beef up the boy's Spanish skills.
"[It's] our duty. If there's anything we want to leave our kids it's the language," he said.
Data from a 2002 study conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center and the Kaiser Family Foundation show that 47 percent of second-generation Hispanics are bilingual. That figure appears high, but community advocates say many Hispanics who are conversational in Spanish lack basic grammatical skills and vocabulary. The number of bilingual Hispanics drops to 22 percent in the third generation. Among many U.S.-born Hispanics, the language morphs into Spanglish, a vernacular mix of English and Spanish.
Raul Martinez, of Davie, made sure his daughter, now in college,split her television time between English and Spanish programs. He also spoke to her in both languages.
His efforts paid off, but Martinez, who is Puerto Rican, worries that a strong command of Spanish, both written and verbal, is hard to find among Hispanic youth. He is president of Aspira of Florida, Inc.,an agency that sponsors programs and provides scholarships for them.
"There's this notion that if you come from a Spanish background, you don't need Spanish as a foreign language at school," said Martinez."Many Hispanic kids aren't learning Spanish diction, language, grammar and verb conjugation."
That's a natural part of assimilation, said Mauro Mujica, the Chilean-born chairman of U.S. English in Washington, D.C. The organization promotes making English the country's official language."If immigrant parents are so concerned about their kids and grandkids learning the language, they should go back to their country," said Mujica.
"My grandchildren don't speak Spanish. That's the way it is."
But as they enter adulthood in a Spanish-rich state, some second-generation Hispanics regret their English-only upbringing.
"I should have learned the language at the time," said Alper, who says he'd have more opportunities at work if he spoke Spanish. As an adult, he's asked his mother to start speaking to him in Spanish.
"Now he makes me feel guilty," said Linda Alper, Jonathan Alper's mother, also of Pembroke Pines. "He asks me 'How come my cousins speak Spanish and I don't?'"
Linda Alper said doctors advised her to speak only English to both her children because speaking two languages would have confused her severely disabled daughter, Tabetha, who died 10 years ago. "It's too late to send him off to Colombia," said Alper, referring to the practice among many foreign-born Hispanic parents of sending children to the family's native country to learn Spanish.
Rosa Castro Feinberg, a retired associate professor of education at Florida International University, said children who lose touch with their parents' language often feel rootless.
"You lose your connection to the family and all kinds of social problems can emerge," said Castro Feinberg. "If parents and grandparents can't pass on traditional values, the kids are without an anchor."
Syndia Nazario-Cardona, 39, has sent her daughter, Yimalisse, 14, to Rincón, Puerto Rico, every summer from the age of 5 to stay with the teen's grandmother and 11 cousins for a dose of Spanish and Latino culture.
Yimalisse, a sophomore at Archbishop McCarthy High School in Southwest Ranches, takes honors Spanish. But she won't break out her Spanish with a stranger.
"My confidence level isn't good, and I'd like to be fluent. With my friends, I usually speak Spanglish," she said.
Despite some grumbling from outsiders, Nazario-Cardona is glad she raised a bilingual daughter.
"A teacher once told [Yimalisse] not to speak Spanish at home because we live in this country," said Nazario-Cardona, director of the Ana G. Mendez University System South Florida Campus, a bilingual satellite campus of the Puerto Rico-based university.
"I say, she is who she is, a Latina. I made it my business to make sure the language was not lost."
It's rather obvious, despite the naysayers who will tell you otherwise - learning a second language is vitally important. And no, it doesn't have to be Spanish, though here in the US it might help quite a bit (like learning French in Canada isn't a bad idea either). The fact is, learning different languages expands your mind and helps you retain your mental edge as you get older. It opens more doors than it closes, and it's just plain cool.
I should note that I speak Japanese - in fact, for the majority of my life I really knew it better than Spanish (yes, I was one of those kids who got shipped back to "the home country" during several summers; I would accompany one set of grandparents or another as they visited relatives in Mexico City - on my mother's end - or enjoyed the timeshare condos we had in the beach resorts of Ensenada, Acapulco and Cancun - on my father's end), and I really learned Spanish out of a combination of half-misbegotten family responsibility, and half because my maternal grandmother kept harping on and on about it. But I learned Japanese on my own and to me, that was the language that counted.
While time for me has proven it to be partially true, it took three years of a Navy assignment directly in Spain to prove me wrong on the other half.
The language that had been a drag to me for the longest time was now saving my bacon left and right, as I started running around the country beyond the base enclave or Rota and the surrounding cities. They speak English in Rota, Puerto de Santa Maria and Jerez (Sherry) because the three cities border the base. They speak it in Sevilla (Seville) and Cadiz because they're both large cities. They even speak it in La Linea, Torremolinos and Ibiza because of the large influx of British culture there. But try getting away with it in a small, one horse town like Cuervo, where I had to stop for gas one day. Or in Vejer, where the only time los Norteamericanos ever come is during the Running of the Bulls. Or in the small villages and hamlets in the country as you're driving all over Spain. Suddenly my tertiary, liability language was saving bacon, both for me and my friends (when necessary; someday I'm sure silverlightstar's husband will spill some interesting tales).
It wasn't the only place where Spanish saved me as well. When I was in Italy or France, if I couldn't remember words and speaking English would put me at a disadvantage (American English = Tourist to be ripped off), my Spanish, combined with the local Andalucian accent I learned, saved my bacon. The same in Germany and even Bosnia. Suddenly speaking Spanish wasn't a problem any more.
Nowadays, I still use it (though mainly just to get a few laughs out of my wife) and to lament with my mom that my little brother has decided not to learn a foreign language at all (the worse for him, I believe). But I think that regardless of whatever language I learned as a secondary one, learning one at all has been far more of an asset than any liabilities (which I have really yet to see) could ever come. And if my wife and I have rugrats some day, as long as they're learning one themselves, that will be enough for me.