“When I was growing up, my parents spoke to each other in Spanish, but they didn’t speak to us in Spanish because they were told not to. In school we weren’t allowed to speak it.”
and also???
“… But America is the only country that promotes monolingualism. Here it’s English, English, English. Every other country makes their children learn a second language very early on. So as my political and social activism grew, I was like, ‘I really need to learn Spanish.’ So I did.“
idk how many people i’ve known growing up in texas whose parents speak fluent spanish but they don’t speak a lick solely because their parents were afraid or told not to teach their children. it’s unspeakably common and doesn’t in any way shape or form diminish someone’s claim to or pride in their heritage.
fuck that guy. you go eva.
lack of intergenerational language exchange is one of the leading causes of language death for endangered and indigenous languages because of this culture of shame attached to “lesser” coded languages so frankly if yr mocking people for not speaking their mother tongue without taking the colonial reasons for this into account, you’re an ignorant prick and you can go fuck yourself like
My dad was beaten by the teachers whenever he spoke Chinese in class as a child. He refused to teach me because he figured it would only bring me more of the same. And, being Toisanese, it’s not a dialect you can just go pick up a book or CD lesson plan and go learn.
It wasn’t a lack of pride in my family, it was white supremacy and white pride that beat the words out of a child and scarred them for life, that’s what got us here.
I can speak some Spanish learned in the home and in school. Spanish is my mother’s first language and my grandparents etc speak/spoke Spanish fluently My mom forgot a lot of her Spanish because my grandma wanted her kids to speak English to help my grandpa learn so as to not face as much discrimination at work with white bosses. My grandpa was an immigrant from a small town in northern Mexico who came here during the war. My grandma was born here but just barely. My youngest uncle doesn’t speak or understand Spanish at all. At that time, being English-only was thought to give the kids better chances and face less stigma, etc. It was a compliment for the lighter-skinned family members if somebody thought you were Italian rather than Mexican, for example. (Although certainly there are Mexicans of Italian descent.) Speaking Spanish just came with the shame of being the wrong kind of “other.” Pride in speaking Spanish is a good thing, but it’s kind of newer thing, IMO.
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