Planned Bilingualism: Five Questions to Consider by François Grosjean from Psychology Today — Another useful article from Prof. Grosjean perfect for those just about to embark in the journey of raising a bilingual child.

Surge in immersion programs spreads from the Star Tribune — In Minnesota, the number of dual language immersion programs has doubled since 2006 with a total of 85 at the elementary and middle school level, with some programs even in high school. Reading stories like this one is like music to my ears!

Stolz, Amerikaner zu sein (Proud to be an American) from The Economist — For all those who ask why Latinos can’t be like all other immigrant groups and just learn English and forget about Spanish, this is a MUST READ! The description of how how Germans used to live in small-town America decades ago, sounds eerily familiar to how Latinos live in not so small-town America today.

Speak Spanglish, Baby from Vida de Latinos — Check out the interview about bilingualism, SpanglishBaby and blogging, Ana did for this very cool website for and about Latinos in Singapore.

One of the things that scared me the most about raising my son to speak three languages was that he would speak them all incorrectly. When I heard him say “parqueadero” for parking instead of estacionamiento I didn’t know what to say, I almost cried!

Now that he is 9 years old, he is making fewer and fewer mistakes and I am not worried about his misuse of words anymore. Kids just mix them as they learn and it is okay!

What do you do when your kids say something in Spanglish that is just simply horrible to your ears? How do you react? We invite you to share your kids’ “not so cute” Spanglish on Words on Wednesday discussion at SpanglishBaby Playground.

Melissa Cunningham shared her son’s “annoying Spanglish” words: “Voy a bringuer las cosas conmigo… Mom, she gasts all of our time/money/paint.”

What do you think? Join the conversation!

Photo credit: blmurch

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, anti code-switching type. And, apparently, I was not alone.

One of the most respected scholars, experts and authors in the realm of bilingualism, and a bilingual himself, François Grosjean, wrote about this very topic just last week in his blog on Psychology Today:

Even though it is widespread, code-switching has been criticized by some who feel that it is done out of pure laziness and that it is a grammarless mixture of two languages. Many pejorative names have been used to characterize this bilingual form of communication such as Tex-Mex and Franglais. Even the word “mixing” has now taken on negative overtones. One consequence of this is that some bilinguals never code-switch and may look down upon others who do, while others restrict it to a situation in which they will not be stigmatized for doing so.

For me, it wasn’t so much that it bothered me when others code-switched, it had more to do with my own use of Spanglish – as I’ve written about before. Sometimes I still think it’s amazing that I used to think that way.

Luckily, one of the grandest things the SpanglishBaby community has brought into my life, is my own understanding and acceptance of what it really means, at least for me, to live bilingually and biculturally. I’ve finally learned to embrace the fact that I feel completely comfortable speaking both English and Spanish and that both of them — and the cultures that come with each — define me. I absolutely love that if I’m with someone who feels the same way, I can go back and forth between languages, sometimes mid-sentence, with a comforting ease that makes the conversation that much better!

So, of course, I went on to share all I’ve learned about bilingualism, mixing languages and code-switching with my husband’s colleague. After he listened to me a while, he was genuinely interested in what I was saying and told me he had never really looked at code-switching that way. Even more amazingly, he confessed that code-switching actually helps him when his stuttering gets out of control. In other words, if he’s speaking to another bilingual in, say, Spanish and he starts stuttering, he’ll switch to English to say the word he’s stuck on and then get back to the original language of their conversation! Absolutely amazing, ¿no creen?

Well, I wanted to gauge what your own thoughts are on Spanglish and code-switching, so I went to our Facebook page to ask and this is what you told us:

It looks like one of the main things is trying to figure out the definition of Spanglish or code-switching. I don’t say troca for truck either, but I do go back and forth between languages — not ALL the time. Whenever it happens, it just comes out my mouth naturally. Here’s some more:

So, what do YOU think? We’d love to continue the conversation and learn from what you have to say, so please share your thoughts on this topic!

Photo credit: AnyaLogic

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 the last couple of years, I have read countless of definitions of code-switching (alternating between two languages), but none had really explained it as clearly as the one I recently read in the book, Bilingual: Life and Reality. Written by Professor Emeritus François Grosjean, a bilingualism expert of international stature and a bilingual (English/French) himself, the book has been a real treat to read. For the first time, I’ve gotten explanations to some particular behavior associated with bilingualism about which I’ve always wondered.

Reading the chapter dedicated to code-switching was an eye-opener. I found particularly interesting what Prof. Grosjean had to say in terms of debunking the beliefs that bilinguals who code-switch do so out of laziness or because they don’t know either language well enough to just stick to one language. According to the author, code-switching is actually not easy to do. He goes on to quote linguist Shana Poplack who’s done extensive research on code-switching and presents an entirely new (to me) definition of this behavior:

“Code-switching is a verbal skill requiring a large degree of linguistic competence in more than one language, rather than a defect arising from insufficient knowledge of one or the other… [R]ather than presenting deviant behavior, [it] is actually a suggestive indicator of degree of bilingual competence.”

I had never really thought about this as an option, but the more you think about it, the more it makes complete sense. It’s crazy the bad rap that code-switching has been given—and I am the first one to admit I propagated the myth—when in reality is an intrinsic part of being bilingual. I would like to point out; however, that code-switching is not the same as another type of behavior common among many bilinguals: borrowing. According to Prof. Grosjean, this has more to do with using a word of short phrase from the minority language and adapting it in form and sound into the majority language. Something similar to what I described my daughter doing in this post.

Another excellent part of Prof. Grosjean’s chapter on code-switching is his exploration of why bilingual do it.

Reasons Why We Code-Switch

1) Sometimes the other language has a better word or phrase to express a particular idea.

I talk about this reason in particular in the post I mentioned above. I do this a lot with adjectives, for example, and it really has nothing to do with not knowing the equivalent in either language. It’s rather a matter of using the better word to describe what I am trying to say.

2) Sometimes the words we code-switch are the only ones we have or they are more readily available in the other language.

This is not to say that we don’t necessarily know the correct word in the language we’re using. This has more to do with something extremely interesting Prof. Grosjean calls the “complementary principle” which basically has to do with the notion that for bilinguals different aspects of life, such as work, family, school, sports, hobbies, etc., require different languages. For example, I spent a large part of my career as a television producer and although I worked for Univision for many years surrounded with bilinguals (with different levels of proficiency), we would always switch to English whenever we were talking about technical terminology related to, say, editing video. It just made more sense to do so since in the case of editing video, for instance, the software was in English.

3) Sometimes we code-switch as a communicative tool, including to exclude someone or to show expertise.

If you’re bilingual, you’ve surely done this: switched to the minority language so that those around you can’t understand. Sometimes it might be to say something specifically about those you’re excluding; sometimes you just don’t want others to listen to what you’re saying. If you’re bilingual, you’ve surely been embarrassed when you found out the person you were trying to exclude actually spoke the minority language, too!

Note:

While I was extremely happy to find another way of looking at code-switching, it’s important to remember that in terms of raising bilingual children, the experts agree that while they’re learning both languages it’s better if they’re exposed to each of them in a monolingual setting. In other words, children learn by example, so the less mixing you do, the less mixing they’ll do—at least until they become proficient in both languages.

Prof. Grosjean’s book, Bilingual: Life and Reality, has tons of extremely interesting information regarding what it is like to be bilingual. I plan on sharing a series of posts regarding some of these aspects later on, not to mention an interview with the Professor in the near future.

Update:If you’d like to find out more about Prof. Grosjean, including his answers to specific questions about bilingualism, I invite you to check out MultilingualLiving, an awesome new website I’ve been meaning to share with all of you. MultilingualLiving is the new site by the founder of the Bilingual/Bicultural Family Network and publisher of Multilingual Living Magazine, an amazing digital publication which unfortunately ceased to exist last year.

In the meantime, what is your definition of code-switching? Does (or did) it also have a negative connotation in your view? Why?

Tell us, what are your reasons for teaching your child Spanish?

Encuentra este y más de nuestros artículos favoritos en español en el blog Mamás Latinas: Hijos Bilingües en Discovery Familia.

Photo by JAG Photography

Although I know most people would just find it funny–I mean, even I chuckled when I first heard it–the truth is I was pretty disturbed by what happened a few days ago while my daughter, Vanessa, was building a house with her pink and purple blocks.

We were in the living room and she was telling me what she was doing when, all of a sudden, one of the towers she had built toppled to the ground. Her reaction was to calmly tell me: “No ipota. La casa se cayó, peyo ahoya yo la voy a fixear“. At first, I didn’t really pay too much attention because I got what she was saying, but then I realized what had just happened. Quickly I asked: “¿Qué?” dreading the answer, hoping I had heard wrong. Of course, I hadn’t. She went on to repeat the sentence the same exact way it had originally come out of her mouth. I can’t lie, my ears hurt!

Ok, so let me backtrack a bit to update you as to what’s been going on this summer in terms of Vanessa’s language development. Vanessa’s English vocabulary has exploded. Not one day goes by that I am not amazed by the amount of English she knows–and I didn’t teach it to her. I mean we’re talking full-fledged sentences, not just words. And it’s more than just the basic: “here you go” and “that’s mine.” No. We’re talking stuff like: “I want to go to my house now. I’m tired, mama (not mamá).” Or, “What are you doing? I want to help you with that.”

My response each and every time is to tell her I don’t understand what she is saying. I’m pretty sure she knows I’m bluffing, but it works, so I use it while I can.

I’ve been trying to figure out how this happened and I guess there’s a few answers for this. First, she’s been spending a lot more time away from me and at a drop-in daycare this summer where she interacts with both children and caretakers solely in English. Second, she’s also been spending a lot of time (well, she drives her to daycare a couple of times a week) with my neighbor across the street, who is like a Granny to her. English only in that situation, too. Finally, she’s three years old and I believe her vocabulary is just supposed to expand exponentially at this point.

Even though I am truly proud and amazed by her language development, I have started to kind of worry about how this will affect her usage of Spanish. Mostly, how it will affect her perceived need to speak Spanish–which, as we’ve said in the past–is one of the major pitfalls of raising a bilingual child.

Another thing that I’ve noticed lately is the kind of behavior that I would describe as code-switching and which so many parents raising multilingual children constantly worry about. In other words, Vanessa will say stuff like “Mama, you wanna play con this?” Why? Did she forget the word “with”? I don’t know the answer, but then again, I haven’t been worried enough about this type of language usage to find out.

However, the event described above is another story.

Some people have expressed their concern or unease with the word Spanglish. I guess both Ana and I were aware that it would bother some of our readers when we decided to use it as part of our blog’s name. In the end, I think it just depends on how you define the word. To me, it basically means what I do on a regular basis: go back and forth between English and Spanish. I believe it’s expected after being raised among two cultures and two languages for the majority of my life. Although I know I feel more comfortable speaking Spanish, as you can see from the last six months, I don’t have any problems communicating in English. However, and I’ve said this in past posts, sometimes it feels like part of what I want to express, sounds better in English if I’m speaking Spanish and viceversa. So, I go back and forth.

That said, I would never be caught dead saying something like what came out of my beautiful daughter’s mouth the other day: fixear. That simply would not ever sound better to me than using the word fix or arreglar. That’s the kind of Spanglish that I do have a problem with, the kind that hurts my ears.

Anyhow, I was hoping that episode had been a fluke. I was mistaken. A couple of days after that event, we were sitting down to have breakfast and Vanessa spotted a picture of a child on a swing on the box of cereal. Without any kind of hesitation she said: “Mira mami, ese niño está swingeando.” And this time, I truly wanted to die! I calmly told her the word was “columpeando,” but then I realized this could become an issue.

I guess I’m going to be needing the expertise of one of our Ask an Expert panelists. In the meantime, what do you think about this? Am I crazy? Am I overreacting? Or is this the kind of thing I need to deal with now and if so, how?

Photo by Mooganic

Hola and Happy Easter to all! We’ll spend the afternoon decorating eggs and helping our daughter during her first-ever egg hunt, but more than anything, we’ll be spending a lot of time en familia and we hope you will too!

But first, our weekly round up of links you might be interested in checking out:

1. Raising a Child in Two Worlds – My child doesn’t look quite like me (Caucasian) or her father (Colombian); she’s something new for both families. When I was pregnant, the thought of having an “exotic” looking child based on our combined genetics – Jose’s inky black hair, dark eyes, and round face coupled with my waspy, delicate looks and tiny build – hadn’t really occurred to me. Then I gave birth to our daughter, Nina, and race and culture became, for the first time, an “issue.” I just read this and I’m still trying to digest it, so I don’t really have much to say about this except: you NEED to read it. And, expect a post about this article at a later date…

2. Learning Two Languages – Raising multilingual children offers opportunities as well as unique challenges. Parents may ask a range of questions: Should they speak to their child in their native language? How will that affect their child’s ability to learn English? If they speak to their child in English, will he lose his native language? And what happens when parents speak to their child in two languages? Although here at SpanglishBaby we’ve covered this topic at length, it never hurts to read more of the same. Plus, PBS always does it right.

3. New Wave of Authentic Latino Flavors Hits the US – American Latinos and non-Latinos alike are driving a ‘new wave’ of authentic Latin American foods and flavors set to enter the mainstream in the US, according to a new report.

4. Fluent in Spanglish – Have you ever made the mistake of saying a few phrases in Spanish, only to have the other person speak for the next 45 minutes in the mother tongue, while you have little clue as to what they are saying because it is too fast, and you don’t know how to stop them? I laughed, even though I can’t identify with the author, and you probably will too!

5. Latino USA with María Hinojosa – Latino USA is committed to informing Americans about the people who are increasingly becoming their neighbors, friends, and co-workers. From the outset, Latino USA has understood the complexity of the Latino community and has been driven to break down the notion that there is a monolithic Latino point-of-view. The program has not shied away from reporting on problems and divisions within Latino communities. Hosted by María Hinojosa, whom I truly respect not only as a Latina, but as a fellow journalist, Latino USA has been around for about 15 years. This is their website, which for the last year has been working toward increasing the dialogue about what the transformation of the USA actually means for all of us. If you’ve never heard her, it’s time to check her out!

6. Last, but not least: We love GIVEAWAYS and we love supporting a great cause. Click here for a chance to win one Jumbo pack of Pampers diapers or pants + four “One Pack = One Vaccine” Pampers/Unicef  campaign onesies. Deadline is tonight at midnight EST.

I was pretty excited when I found out journalist Jorge Ramos had written his first children’s book last year and I was even happier when I found it at my local library. As a fellow journalist, I have always admired the work of Ramos–Univision Network’s nightly news veteran anchor–and although I have only read a couple of his books, (he’s written eight), I’ve always been interested in the subjects he covers: immigration, politics and journalism. However, since writing for children is a completely different thing, I was extremely interested in seeing what “I’m Just Like my Mom, I’m Just Like my Dad“ was all about.

For those of you not familiar with Jorge Ramos, he has been the co-anchor of Noticiero Univision, the Spanish Network nightly news, for over 20 years. In that time, he has covered virtually every historical event and has interviewed a multitude of influential world leaders including Bill Clinton, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and Barack Obama. Ramos also hosts Univision’s weekly public affairs program, “Al Punto,” which provides an in-depth analysis of the week’s top-stories as well as exclusive interviews with newsmakers. Time magazine has named him one of the “25 most influential Hispanics in the United States.”

Photo courtesy of Univision.com

On bilingualism…

During a recent conversation I had the privilege to have with Ramos, he told me how absurd it sounded to him when people in this country claimed that one language is better than two.

“I have traveled all over the world and this is the only country where multilingualism is not valued,” Ramos told me. “In the United States, many people have the wrong idea that what unites the country and its people is the language, when the reality is that it’s all about its values, its laws, its attitudes and the fact that they have always accepted people that come from all over the world.”

Ramos doesn’t understand how others can’t see that speaking more than one language opens up our minds. Being bilingual will open the doors to the rest of the world, other ideas, countries, languages and cultures, he explained. How can that be bad? I don’t understand either…

Especially when there is no stopping the future: Hispanics are the largest and fastest-growing minority group in the country. Currently, one in four kindergartners is Hispanic. In fact, according to a recent study, by the year 2023, there will be more minorities–including Hispanic, African-American and Asian-American–school-aged children than whites. Did you know that more Spanish is spoken in the United States than any other country in the world, except for Mexico, of course. Wow! Aren’t you happy you’re teaching your kids español? (All these statistics, by the way, courtesy of Ramos.)

On Spanglish…

Although some of this info was unexpected, what really took me by surprise was when he told me that he was a “defender” of Spanglish. I assumed, wrongly, being a journalist and all, he’d be one of those who gives the term a negative definition: the bastardization of the Spanish language, that’s what my Dad would’ve said.

“Spanglish is just how we talk, it’s the combination of living in English and Spanish,” he told me. “It is our reality and we can’t deny it.”

Even though he doubts Spanglish will ever become an actual independent language, he told me the most marvelous thing about languages is that they are constantly changing. As you all probably know, the Spanish–and for that matter, the English–we speak today is, by no means, the same one our ancestors spoke 100 years ago.

“We often use Spanglish when delivering the news because it helps us communicate with our audience,” he went on to explain. “In this era of globalization, it’s all about the mixture of cultures, languages, peoples of all colors.”

On his first children’s book…

Interestingly enough, a “mixture” is exactly how he describes his first venture into children literature: his bilingual book “Me Parezco Tanto a Mi Mamá, Me Parezco Tanto a Mi Papá.”

“Es una mezcla completa,” he told me and went to on to explain why. “It combines the past, the present and the future. English and Spanish. Boys and girls. Why? Because this is how we live, in a mixture.”

Have you noticed that children always want to know who in their family they look like. My daughter is too young for that, but whenever anybody meets her for the first time, they immediately pronounce: “Es igualita a su papá.” (This doesn’t make me happy because I swear she looks like me when I was her age, but that’s a story for an entirely different entry!). Ramos has written a book that addresses this question and the cool thing about it is that once you’re done with the story of how this girl is just like her mom, you can flip the book and read all about how this boy is just like his dad.

I’ve read it to my daughter a few times and although she doesn’t yet get the whole deal of who she looks like, she definitely understands what it means to be part of a family and so she likes to point out who each person is in Ramos’ book because there are children and their parents, but also los abuelos.

Ramos revealed that he came up with the idea about 13 years ago after his father passed away and during an interview with renown Chilean author, Isabel Allende, who was also mourning the premature death of her daughter.

“She told me that the people who we truly love never really die because we repeat them in our gestures, our expressions and in the way we look. It was the best advice I ever got.”

I know exactly what that’s all about. I see my father in Vanessa every single time she pouts.

Oh, wait…there’s a giveaway!!!

As a special gift to SpanglishBaby readers, Jorge Ramos is giving away one autographed copy of  “Me Parezco Tanto a Mi Mamá, Me Parezco Tanto a Mi Papá” to one lucky visitor. Gracias, Jorge! Here’s what to do:

1.  Leave us a comment telling us who your kids look like or anything they do or say that reminds you of a loved one.

2. For a second entry, subscribe to our feed either by email or RSS and leave a comment letting us know. *You must have left a comment (step #1, above) to receive a second entry*.

3. Want a third chance to win? Blog or Tweet about this giveaway. Just make sure to send us the link in a comment.

For the part that nobody likes, but we’ve gotta have, check out the Giveaway Rules.

This giveaway ends at midnight EST on Sunday, March 22nd.