Bicultural Vida

I’ve always thought I was a laid-back kind of gal.  I don’t think I’m much of a control freak.  My motto might as well be, “Go with the flow.”  At my wedding, my bridesmaids wore whatever they wanted to.  The day before, my sister-in-law picked up a truckload of whatever flowers looked nice at a flower stand and my guests made our floral arrangements, and my bouquet.  My husband and I met our realtor at a bar and figured, hey,Read More ...

What?! What?! I hear this refrain countless times a day from Marisol, my toddler. Sometimes she hasn’t heard me, or, often, she doesn’t know what I said because I said it in Spanish.  ¡Qué pena! This is the not surprising result of my being too bone-tired to speak to her in much Spanish after the birth of her sister two months ago (despite my best intentions).  With little sleep and round-the-clock nursing, I just had to use the words thatRead More ...

Thus far, I have written a lot about my struggles and successes in speaking Spanish with Isaiah, but very little about his use of and exposure to English. While there are distinctions in his life between the people with whom he speaks each language, he has a peculiar mix of input methods because he has two houses with two distinctive language setups. Last year, when Isaiah and I moved in with my mother, he began getting daily exposure to English,Read More ...

“If you really want to hurt me, talk badly about my language.” –Gloria Anzaldúa (Scholar of Chicano Cultural Theory) “We don’t use Tex-Mex here.” —Those were the words that were uttered to me (and Sabrina) at one of the pre-school centers I was checking out for next fall. As the woman continued to tell me about their wonderful school and the taught curriculum I couldn’t stop thinking to myself, “How can she say that? She doesn’t even know me. WhatRead More ...

Like many of you reading, I had it all planned out.  I had read about One Parent, One Language and knew that was how I wanted to raise my children.  It was what my parents had done at home with me.  My husband was completely on board.  Making sure my children learned Spanish was important to me for many, many reasons. And then they were born and it was just the strangest thing–I found that speaking to my babies inRead More ...

Our cat died not too long ago.  My children had both been fond of her, and were very aware of her absence.  My two and a half year old had a lot of questions for me as to where our pet had gone, and I found myself addressing the topic of death with him.  Of course I adapted my explanation for his age and maturity level, explaining that our cat, Amiga was in heaven and that she was happy thereRead More ...

I am not sure how to explain my son’s latest language development phase, except to say that he now knows he speaks two languages. He has always responded to two and spoken two, but only in the past few weeks has he started naming Spanish and English as separate entities. I am fascinated by his sudden realization, because this is yet another example of something kids pick up yet are never explicitly taught – a reminder that we are bornRead More ...

I was at a Dual Language Education conference a few years ago when the keynote speaker mentioned something very intriguing about phonological development in babies. He said that the gibberish babies’ express could very well come from a multitude of languages. In other words, infants are literally taking in every sound they hear! He went on to explain that while parents are cooing back at their baby, their baby could actually be reiterating bits and parts of the Farsi theyRead More ...