Living in downtown Orlando gave me some opportunities to speak Spanish, but it turns out that they were miniscule compared to the practice I’m going to get in my new neighborhood. A month ago, my family moved to the south side of town, closer to where I grew up. I feel comfortable living over here, everything we do is more convenient to our house, and we found a great Montessori school for Isaiah. I didn’t expect to be surprised by much, least of all the presence of such a large Spanish-speaking (mostly Puerto Rican) population. After all, they jokingly call this part of Orlando “little Puerto Rico.”

It has managed to surprise me, however. I officially feel like the minority, and my gringa status has brought plenty of questions to the surface already. 

First, there are the countless service personnel who have shown up of late: the pest control guy, the cable guy, the refrigerator delivery guys, the lawn maintenance guys. All Spanish speakers, all assuming I speak Spanish when they read my last name but then immediately struggling to use English when they see a white woman answer the door. When I indicate that I do, in fact, speak Spanish, they respond in one of two ways: 1) use a few words of SLOW Spanish and wait to gauge my level of understanding or 2) take a full-on nosedive into a Spanish-only conversation and appear relieved to be able to use their native language.

The reason this has me questioning my mode of interaction is that sometimes I want to feel comfortable and not be the one doing the “work” of speaking a second language. If I reveal that I speak Spanish, then it seems a given that I MUST thereafter respond only in Spanish and sometimes struggle with vocabulary I don’t regularly use (anyone know how to say “weed eater” in Spanish??). If I don’t reveal that fact, I feel like I’m being disingenuous and rude for making the person fight to speak English.

Another situation in which I’ve found myself feeling surprisingly uncomfortable is when I’m in public and not really trying to eavesdrop, but I am. Por ejemplo, in line at the grocery store, when the cashier is speaking to the customer in front of me in Spanish. The other day, I got somewhat patronizing smiles as two women had a long (too long for the checkout line!) Spanish conversation about Hispanics and the election. The second I stepped up to check out, the cashier switched and said “Hello, how are you today?” I felt awkward having understood every word of her previous conversation, but she had no idea. There’s clearly no need for me to say that I speak Spanish in that moment, but I always feel a fleeting conflict. Especially if said conversation seems to be what’s making the difference between my picking my son up on time and showing up just late enough to be last in the car line.

Perhaps what I am truly dealing with is the ever-present tendency we have to judge each other’s ethnicity and change our communication styles accordingly. While this can be a great skill, there are times when it can backfire. I hope that the shock of finding out that I speak their language has made some of my neighbors think twice about assuming that gringos do not understand them or, more importantly, do not want to meet them halfway.

Is it too much for me to ask, though, for them to meet ME in the middle? Somehow, talking about drain lines and water bugs in Spanish feels harder than writing a college paper for Spanish grammar class!

What do you think? Should I feel obligated to speak Spanish just because I can?

{Image via digitizedchaos}

Photo by sergis blog

While I was registering to get the H1N1 vaccine this weekend at the local high school, the lady who was taking in the forms very politely asked if I’d rather get the information in Spanish. (I guess she’d overheard us while we were making the line.) I, also very politely, answered that it didn’t matter because I was bilingual. I don’t know if, at first, she didn’t understand me because she asked the question again. So, I repeated that either language was fine since I was bilingual. Then she smiled and said: “You’re so lucky! I wish I were bilingual,” and proceeded to give me the flyer in English.

So that got me thinking… What does it actually mean to be bilingual? As with many other subjective questions, let’s begin by establishing that there’s no right or wrong definition. I mean, there’s the definition given by the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary: “using or able to use two languages especially with equal fluency.” But does “using” mean speaking, writing and reading? A lot of people consider themselves bilingual and they only know how to speak the language, but can’t write or read it properly.

For me, it has always come down to this: As a journalist, could I apply for a job that requires me to do research, interviews and then write a story in English and Spanish? In other words, can I write, read, understand and speak both languages well enough to succeed in the job described above? The answer is yes, not only because I believe I can do it, but because that’s basically what I’ve done since I became a journalist almost 20 years ago.

As a Latina writer who is very proud of her heritage – and I think I’ve mentioned this before – nothing would be more distressing to me than to raise children who are only able to speak my mother tongue, but can’t write it or read it. Especially the way things continue to go in this country. According to this article, bilingual Hispanics make almost 3% more money than their monolingual counterparts. Can you just imagine what the percentage will be when our children enter the workforce in 15 to 20 years?

But it’s more than that. For me, it’s a very personal thing. I can’t imagine my daughter – who I’m training to be a bookworm like her mami - reading Mario Vargas Llosa in English (kudos to those who have, but I’d be lying if I said it was the same) or my son unable to write a Christmas card to his monolingual bisabuela in Spanish.

For some reason, I tend to take for granted that, even though I was raised mostly in South America (Perú, México and Argentina), English was always a part of my life, one way or the other. Not only did I attend a bilingual British school in Perú for several years before we moved to the States, but I also lived in Johannesburg, South Africa, for an entire year when I was 10. In other words, I was exposed to English in a school setting from the time I was very little.

That is why when we moved to Miami after my fourteenth birthday, although it was definitely a culture shock for me, at least I didn’t have the added pressure of not knowing the language and having to enroll in ESL courses. As for my Spanish? My foundations were pretty strong to begin with, so I just cemented them by reading and writing as much as I could. I also used my Dad as a walking dictionary. 

Today, I feel as comfortable in English as I do in Spanish. Sometimes, depending on my mood, I prefer to read books in English. Other times, I’ll only read books in Spanish for a while. But mostly, I read other stuff in both. Magazines, newspapers, blogs. Same thing when it comes to writing. My life is definitely richer because of it.

Ojalá un día mis hijos puedan decir lo mismo.

I hope my kids can say the same one day.

So, what is your definition of bilingual? What kind of bilinguals are you raising your children to be? What kind of bilingual are you?

Photo by Juria Yoshikawa

More than one study has proven that the best way for children to develop their language and reading skills is through dialogue. This is particularly important for bilingual children. It is a fallacy to think that just sitting your child in front of the television set to watch a program in Spanish or to let them mouse around with a bilingual computer game will expose them to the kind of vocabulary needed to become proficient in the minority language.

So motivate your child to interact verbally with you and you’ll be teaching him the basics of language: phonetics, vocabulary and grammar. These will eventually help him develop more complex skills such as reading and writing.

5 Ways to Enrich Your Child’s Vocabulary:

1) Don’t change the way you normally speak – You don’t have to simplify your vocabulary when you talk to your children. They will get what you’re trying to say even when they don’t understand every single word. I’m pretty sure part of the reason why my daughter’s vocabulary is so extensive for her age is because I always speak to her the way I would if I were talking to, say, my husband.

2) Expand on the conversation - You can do this by responding to your child using longer sentences based on his simple phrases. When my 3-year-old daughter, Vanessa, says something like: “Yo amo mucho a mi perrito”. I say something like: “Yo también lo amo mucho porque es bueno y juguetón. Y, ¿tú por qué lo amas”? I also do this a lot when I read her a book and she points to something in particular. I expand on what she says by asking her to describe the object in more detail or relating it to something we did or saw recently. That always gets her going.

3) Understand that her mistakes are part of her progress – Grammar and pronunciation errors will happen as your child establishes her own knowledge of the language. Maybe she understands the rule about conjugating certain verbs, for example, but she’s not aware of the exceptions – and if you know anything about Spanish, then you know those abound. Just give her the correct model in your response, but don’t make a big deal out of it. My daughter does this constantly with the verb poner. So she’ll say, “Por qué papito ponió su mochila ahí”? And I’ll respond, “Papito puso su mochila ahí para no olvidársela“. I’m pretty sure that, as with other things, she’ll eventually get it.

4) Turn everything into a topic of conversation – Try to provide your children with all kinds of experiences in as many different places as possible and as often as possible. I love taking walks around our neighborhood with Vanessa because just about anything going on out there becomes a topic of conversation and helps expand her vocabulary: children playing basketball, Halloween decorations, the mailman delivering a package, etc.  In fact, it was thanks to one of our walks that she learned the phrase “darle la vuelta a la manzana” which translates as a walk around the block. Now, whenever she wants to take a walk, she says: “Vamos a dar la vuelta a la manzana, mami“.

5) Learn to listen. Being a good listener is such an essential trait, yet not everybody possesses it. My father used to say: “Calla y escucha”. Roughly translated into: “Shut up and listen.” The truth is you learn far more from listening than from talking – especially when it comes to helping your child enrich his vocabulary. It’s absolutely normal for little ones to go off on a tangent when verbalizing an idea or sharing a story with you. Just listen without interrupting and then you’ll be better equipped to ask the kind of questions that will lead to even more conversations.

What are some strategies you use to enrich your child’s vocabulary?

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