Comments on: Speaking Spanish is a Personal Matter

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By: Developing My Emerging Bilingual Daughter’s Sense of Language | SpanglishBaby™

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 12:01:15 +0000

[...] previous posts I have mentioned how speaking Spanish is my right and by speaking it to my daughter 100% without accommodating to those who may not understand us is [...]

By: Tash

Tash — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 22:57:30 +0000

I’ve sort of got a foot in each camp here – my paternal family is Chilean, while my maternal is Australian. Growing up, because my mother didn’t know Spanish, we didn’t speak any. My brother was fluent in Spanish when he was small (spent all his time with my Nana and Tata when I was a baby) but no longer remembers any Spanish whatsoever.
My Tata is fluent in English, as are my cousins, aunt and uncle, but my Nana isn’t. I decided to learn Spanish when I was 16 so I’d be able to talk with her. Now that I can vaguely speak it, she and my Tata are the only ones I speak Spanish to. If anyone else tries to speak it to me, I usually reply in English. It’s more to do with being uncomfortable that I learnt it at such a late stage (compared to my family, anyway) that I have an extremely noticeable Australian accent when I speak, and it’s something that my uncle tends to comment on, much to my embarrassment.
Though now, it seems this has worked to my brother’s disadvantage – my grandmother seems to think that he knows Spanish, and shoots it at him so fast it’d be hard for anyone to understand. He won’t go over there now unless my cousins or I are there to translate. She does the same to his girlfriend, who’s had no introduction to any Chilean/Latin culture whatsoever. (Our family basically makes up the entire Latin population where I am!)
Just curious, because I noticed a few people who have married Spanish-speakers – is it at all common to find everyone speaks in Spanish at gatherings, regardless of whether everyone understands? My mum frequently complains about it, and although I can understand why they do it, I’m just curious how you guys got around it if you didn’t know Spanish. Or, vice-versa. Thanks!

By: Christina

Christina — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 18:45:24 +0000

Chelsea, I agree with what you said completely! I feel the exact same way as a gringa who has always loved Latin culture and clung to it due to not really feeling any connection to it as well as the negative connotations. It’s cool to know there are other people like that out there

By: Beth Ortuño

Beth Ortuño — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 18:14:52 +0000

p.s. My strategy when I meet someone new is to simply ask. “Prefiere Ud que hablemos en español or do you prefer we speak in English?” So far it has worked out ok.

By: Beth Ortuño

Beth Ortuño — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 18:06:09 +0000

Joy, my heart goes out to you.
My parents and brother (thank God and I mean that literally) are very understanding of me and accept me as I am.
However It is very hard for me to feel at home among the extended family, at work, in my neighborhood, with people the same color as me. It’s always the same when people first meet me and make assumptions about me but then when I refuse to laugh along with racist jokes you can see it on their faces. They think “oh” … It’s sometimes impossible not to notice. I’m not “in with the in crowd”.
At the same time, I’ll always be the color I am. My husband’s family… there are still frequently times when it’s too obvious I’m, well… not one of them. Let’s face it, we live in a racist culture, and that messes with everybody.
Things that have saved my sanity:
Finding a deliberately welcoming community (for me, it’s a church) where there are other “mixed” people, “mixed marriages”, people care about EVERYONE being able to feel welcome.
I try to be deliberate about making time in our busy schedule to hang out with people who think our son being bilingual and bilcultural is cool. They make me feel positive instead of negative and most importantly, that is who I want our kid to be around!
We chose our little house in a very diverse neighborhood where my son will be far from the only “mixed” kid on the playground. Also many of the kids have immigrant parents so even if ethnically they might be just one thing, these kids are still living with two different cultures inside them.
And I am blessed that my job is very international so I work with people who speak multiple languages since childhood or hold two and even three passports!
Even with all that I still feel a little sting when somebody makes a comment they probably didn’t even imagine would bother me. I have a friend who has known me very well for 9 years and is OLDER than me but she will always call me Ud! (because I am white! she says it’s how she was raised & she can’t help it!!! what can I do?) Yeah I’m used to it but I guess deep down can you ever get used to that? It’s been years so I don’t know why still to this day I sometimes just look around and suddenly it hits me I’m the only white person here, or my son is the only brown person here. You get a bit tired of being an ambassador 24/7 and wish to be a plain-old home-girl if you know what I mean.
Are you able to make connections with your husband’s family? How long or how much time have you been with them? It’s embarrassing but at some point after a while I started to just come right out and say, um, did you mean not to invite me…? Maybe it took a while for people to make up their minds about me. But now if I accidentally overhear a relative say something about me then I will overhear one of my sisters-in-law sticking up for me… of if I have to say something I know my husband will back me up (yeah that didn’t happen right away either though!)
Good luck Joy. There’s no road map!

By: Joy

Joy — Sat, 20 Oct 2012 05:14:02 +0000

Sorry about all the grammatical errors I made in English! hahahaha It’s 1 am and I’m tired!!

By: Joy

Joy — Sat, 20 Oct 2012 05:09:52 +0000

Thanks for your honesty and transparency in this post. I appreciate your experience. I have to admit that reading it stung a bit with a venom of disappointment and rejection. My preference is to speak Spanish with native speakers because the experience is the most authentic. I have always had this emptiness, a deep desire to connect with the Mexican family I have never been able to meet. I am mixed black and Mexican. A part of my father’s family are immigrants from Mexico. I’m sure there is some deep connection with his absence and my desire to connect to and be apart of Latino culture. I have experienced so much rejection from the African-American community. Articles like this one remind me that I truly don’t belong anywhere.

I always feel like I’m walking on pins and needles when the time comes to decide whether or not I should speak to someone in English or Spanish. If I speak Spanish will they feel offended because they think I automatically assumed that they don’t speak English? If I speak English and they aren’t comfortable with the language will I agitate any preexisting insecurities they may already have as a native Spanish speaker in a English-speaking society? If I make a grammtical error will they simply see me as a gringa and keep their distance?

My heart is always to find a personal connection…to find a place of belonging; to offer who I am, what I have to a community that has always hidden itself from me, has made elusive promises of giving me an identity. So I learn Spanish, try my best to teach my children Spanish, wrestle with teaching them Spanish, wrestle with my husband who is fluent to teach them despite his apathy to do so; immerse myself in the anthropological study of worldwide Latino culture.

The community-based work I ‘ve done here and across seas makes it all worth the trouble, but at times I sit back and the disconnect washes over me and I feel like I do now after having had read this article and I question if any of it is worth it.

As a young adult mother it is disappointing to still be contending with my own identity as I try to give my children one.

By: Beth Ortuño

Beth Ortuño — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 19:13:24 +0000

I think it’s very common at least by my experience as the non-native part of the equation. I have felt sometimes people kind of held back until they make up their mind about me. If the person is as much or more comfortable in English, and speaks with me in Spanish, I do get the feeling I’m being “let in” (and believe me… I appreciate it!)

By: Casey

Casey — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 14:18:35 +0000

Suzanne,
I think that your feelings about with whom you speak Spanish are very common among Chicanos and many other Latinos in areas of the country where Spanish and Latin American culture area looked down upon. A friend of mine who grew up in central TX was instructed as a child not to speak Spanish in school, restaurants, or anywhere public really. This is why my husband and I, and I’m sure you do the same for your children, make sure that our son sees us speaking Spanish in public contexts proudly, not in hushed whispers, but in a normal conversational tone. That is something we have to think about consciously as educated parents who have access to the best for our children and who advocate for others who don’t have the same resources available to them. I think though that being an educated, white, middle class mother of a Latino child, makes me especially militant, because I never experienced discrimination or prejudice until I saw it happen to my husband and child. But then we are all parents here and I can’t imagine any of us can stand to see people treat our children badly because of their ethnic identity.