“Estoy terminado,” is what my son says every time he’s done eating. Not, “he terminado,” or “ya terminé.” When he wants to know what something’s for, the question is, “¿Qué es eso para?” And it drives me absolutely crazy. Because both examples are such direct translations from English. I am finished. Estoy terminado. What’s that for? ¿Qué es eso para? As I do whenever my boys say something that’s not quite right, I correct them gently without quite correcting themRead More ...
Last week I was pretty taken aback when I heard someone say that “el Spanglish es una aberración” (literally an aberration, an outrage). The craziest thing is that this person — an old colleague and friend of my husband’s who is Argentinian, but has lived in Miami for a long time — said this as he admitted to using it himself! Then I realized I got exactly what he meant because I used to be one of them: the anti-Spanglish,Read More ...
Welcome! ¡Bienvenidos! We’re so thankful you are here! In case you didn’t know: SpanglishBaby was born out of a real necessity almost two years ago. Two professional, successful, bilingual Latina amigas became mothers and had nowhere to turn for answers to their burning questions about how to raise their daughters not only to speak both their languages, Spanish and English, but also to be very proud of their Latino raíces. While we know a lot of you have been withRead More ...
It’s been a while since the last time we took a look at the media buzz regarding bilingualism. In the past, we’ve let you know our reaction to newspaper articles, blog posts or videos related to bilingual education, Latino culture and the Spanish language. Now, we constantly share them on our Facebook page and strike up a conversation there. But what was in the news last week deserves a more in-depth look. The Los Angeles Times, printed three op-ed articlesRead More ...
This week my daughter and I met up with a Spanish-speaking amiga and her 3 and a half year old son. Camila and him have a preschool, platonic-love relationship and are always looking forward to their play dates. While at the park, my friend mentioned that the only other kid her son interacted with in Spanish is my daughter. I thought that was a little odd since my daughter is still at a stage where she is sorting out bothRead More ...
It’s starting to happen. English is slowly creeping into our house. My almost four-year-old is consistently using more and more English. She never fully speaks solely in English to me, but whereas before she’d say an English word or two in a sentence, lately she’s been known to say full sentences. I know there’s nothing wrong with this and I was expecting this would start happening, but it seems like it’s happening a bit faster than I anticipated. I can’tRead More ...
I used to be pretty harsh on myself if I couldn’t finish a sentence without going back and forth between English and Spanish when speaking with other bilinguals, an action commonly known as code-switching among linguists. Like many bilinguals and monolinguals alike, I simply believed this was wrong. I thought it meant I wasn’t really proficient in either language—even when I knew this not to be the case—or that I was simply forgetting my Spanish. I was wrong! In theRead More ...
Ana
Roxana
We are two Latina moms – best friends since college – who are extremely passionate about ensuring our children not only speak both our languages, English and Español, but that they also grow up proud of both their cultures, Latino and American. Over three years ago we realized there's was a lack of information available for parents raising bilingual + bicultural children, so using our background in media, we launched SpanglishBaby.
