Abandoning Spanish

I want to start this by saying that I don’t have one specific moment for this personal narrative and its kind of a little different than what most people did. I wasn’t born out of the country, and I’ve barely even been out of the state. My grandmother on my mother’s side came to America in her mid-20s and that’s where my family started. My other grandmother also came here but she was much older than my mom’s mom. Once they came here, they passed on their language to their kids, who were my mom and dad. Back then, it was more of a necessity for them to know how to speak Spanish because that was their only ways to communicate to each other. As my parents got older, they learned more English and eventually, were at least decently fluent in both languages. Eventually I was born, and I was stuck with either learning both or staying with English as my only language. What my parents decided was to only pass on English rather than both. I’m not exactly sure why that was their decision, but I think they have their reasons for such. More than likely it was just easier for them, and it could be the fact that we were born in America where English is the main language. Me not knowing Spanish wouldn’t really affect me in most events in modern day life because of that fact. It’s the language that’s mostly spoken and usually its placed higher than most other languages in this country. It’s also the language that is used in all schools. And with that Knowing English is of high importance in our society and the better you are with at English, the smarter you appear. You’re at risk of being perceived differently, if you’re not at least somewhat fluent in the language. If I was to have grown up being bilingual with English not being my first language I more than likely would have been treated differently than how I do today. I would probably have been looked down on for the way I spoke English because it would have more than likely formed differently. I don’t think that that’s the process that my parents had specifically, but it is something to think about. The fact that I wasn’t born bilingual that could have changed my experience in this topic completely, and I’d probably have more negative experiences with my language than I do.

            Growing up, I heard the same things, like “why don’t you know Spanish”, “why didn’t your parents teach you Spanish” or “you’re not really Hispanic if you don’t know Spanish.” That’s something that I had to deal with whenever the question of Spanish got brought up. I have no real answer for it, and I do wish sometimes that I had learned Spanish back then. It brings me back to my past when I would go to Church with my mother. It was a Spanish church so there of course there wasn’t much English spoken unless it was someone who was new. My mom and I would go every Sunday, and that’s where I spent a lot of my childhood. I would always have the members of the church come up to me and try to talk with me. I mostly didn’t want to talk and that’s one problem but another was that I just couldn’t understand what they were saying. In their attempts they would use the words they knew which would usually be a few words strung together, in an attempt to create a sentence. It happened so often so I can’t really remember a specific time, nor can I remember what they said of course since I didn’t know. Afterwards they would go to my mom and question her on, firstly why I’m so quiet, and then why I don’t know Spanish. They would tell her that I should know Spanish. They would be hard on my mother for is and it really didn’t make sense to me at the time, why it was so important for me to know? I mean when I go to school, I’m not speaking Spanish to anyone and when I’m home everyone around me spoke English most of the time, so I wasn’t learning it from anyone. None of the kids at school were speaking it either so it didn’t really seem to matter, English was the dominate language for me and that was how it was going to be. There were also the times where I would be talking to other Hispanic people who would complain to me about the fact that I should know the language and, how I’m not truly Hispanic because I don’t. While being an unnecessary and untrue statement, I personally feel like it makes sense in a way. Mostly because knowing Spanish is important to who I am, it’s my history. With Spanish I probably could have gotten to know people better. I could have been able to talk with those people at the church so they wouldn’t have to complain about it. Without Spanish I sure missed out on plenty of things since I was unable to communicate with the people around me like for example my grandma and grandpa. Whatever conversations that we could have had was cut short into little fragmented sentences. They tried their best to translate but even with that there wasn’t much that we could say with each other without that barrier coming in front of us. That personally just shows how important it is to get to know your language, whether it’s what your relatives use or it’s just a language that is used among a group. It’s important to have access to those connections because otherwise you’re losing out on a lot.

            I feel that not knowing Spanish was an unfortunate thing for me. With it, I could have done much more like I said previously, being able to communicate with my relatives would have allowed me access to my past and I would have been able to talk with a of those people in my past without having to think, what are they saying? It was never anything I really thought of until I began writing this essay and I think it’s very important to pay attention to things like this. It’s something that a lot of American people don’t need to think about, because they’ve already adopted the English language as their own. It’s important to look at your language because it opens that door to see your past and or where you come from, your culture. Culture and Language are intertwined you can’t have one without the other and I think that it shows when you speak, it reflects a person’s cultural background and how they are. Because I didn’t have Spanish, I didn’t really have access to my culture and didn’t get to know about it. I didn’t get to know my past very well because of that mistake. It would   I think that anyone in this same situation should try and make that effort to learn for their sake. The benefits outweigh the negatives when it comes to learning a different language. Learning opens many doors whether that’s, history, culture, identity, and so on. And hey, it’s never too late to learn how to speak Spanish myself, maybe one day I can fill that hole giving me the opportunity to pass that down onto the next generations of my family.