Savoring the Spanish of My Youth, as the Language Marches On

Knowing Spanish is very important, by 2050 there will be 132 million Spanish speakers in the US! That's why I'm starting a Spanish-speaking only café in Seattle, so that students have a place they can go to practice, and native speakers can help learners too. If you want to help me make this happen, please vote for my startup! http://businessimpactnw.org/annualevents/impact/vote/?contest=video-deta... (I'm currently a finalist in a business competition) Gracias!

Gracias Sr. Romero, for a great article. Living in Miami, you find people in high positions in life who have not learned English and do quite well. But of course, you enjoy life much better by knowing both languages. Thank you.

Thank you S Romero for a very useful article. My parents have lived in Las Vegas, NM for a quarter-century and still marvel at the linguistic richness in that small town. As someone with three children born in Jakarta and raised in a bilingual home, I wonder if a foreigner/outsider can be truly fluent in a language? When taking into account accents, slang, abbreviations (esp in social media use) and then adding the dimension of linguistic change over time, I believe that complete or total "native" fluency is impossible without actually being native. My children, for example, are "fluent" in English, but they lack the context behind many expressions -- old and new -- from New Mexico, let alone other parts of the country.

Why the spate of articles on how wonderful Spanish is? Sure it is but it never has needed the Times. Can't get through Cormac McCarthy westerns without it. Or go to a rodeo.

And why single out Borges, a famous lover of and writer of English?

Simon Romero great article "Spanish Thrives in the U.S. Despite an English-Only Drive" reinforces my firm belief that ALL Americans should speak Spanish. After all, this is America!
Viva El Espanol!

I speak a smattering of Spanish and was surprised at how quickly my Spanish improved when I spent three weeks in Bolivia, only to see it fall off quickly again when I came home. We used to live across the street from a Puerto Rican family. Their children and ours were great friends (still are 30 years later). They spoke Spanish at home and when in the company of other Spanish speakers. But one thing I admired about them was that when they were in public or in a group in which there were English-only speakers, they always spoke English. Just the courteous thing to do, in my view. Last year I coached my grandson's soccer team, which contained several kids whose parents were Spanish speaking immigrants. One father was shouting to his son on the field in Spanish. I said to him, "en Ingles, por favor. If you speak English, all the children can understand your advice". He looked at me as though he had never thought about that before, but he seemed to take it to heart. From that point on he shouted instructions in English. I think it's the courteous thing to do in an English speaking country...

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, immigrants and even U.S.-born minorities, such as Native Americans, Cajuns, and Southwestern Latinos, were shamed into speaking only English. This happened in my own family, when my oldest aunt's first grade teacher demanded that my grandparents speak English at home, because "they were Americans now." My father, two years younger, always regretted losing the opportunity to learn his heritage language naturally.

This mindset, the idea that a "real American" should be monolingual in English, lingers in our society in a hostility to foreign languages and deep ignorance about the process of language learning.

Look at those countries in Europe where almost everyone learns two languages, sometimes starting in first grade. I can attest to the fact that my European relatives still speak their native languages among themselves, despite their excellent command of two foreign languages.

Those who resent seeing signs in Spanish should ask themselves why this is any worse than all the signs in English that one sees in Japan and South Korea. In forty years of traveling in Asia, I've never heard anyone complain about seeing signs in English, having U.S. Armed Forces Radio available, having disaster information and other public information available in English for the benefit of foreign residents, or reading subtitles on English-language films.

Monolingual Americans need to get over themselves.

I have always loved language and studied french and spanish. My favorite language has been the one that I speak the worst - mandarin! Native speakers of Mandarin have been incredibly kind in supporting my efforts to speak their language. Is one I have really enjoyed for the challenges and the different musical tonality. They say language study is good for the brain. It is also good for the connections you can make by trying to talk to other people. It opens another world.

I worked in Spain for years and am a reasonably fluent Spanish speaker, but it is far from my native language. Nevertheless, I hear and understand the Spanish all around me, and pick up the concerns about everyday life as well as stories about immigration. I realize there is a large group of Central American immigrants in my area that really can't function in English, but it doesn't hinder me when I need their help. But their children never answer questions. In Spanish in anything but fluent English.

Simon Romero reminds us that it is better to savor the richness and variety of languages, and to embrace their ability to adapt, share, and grow, rather than using language as a proxy in a political fight.

I started spending time in Spain in 2003 and I clearly remember my first trip back to my birth city of Dublin, Ireland, after a few months of immersion in the Spanish language and culture. As much as it was lovely to hook up with family and friends, i noticed that I was really missing the happy sound of the Spanish language. After a couple of days I was invited to a party, where I met some Spanish people and I was delighted to have the opportunity to speak Spanish again.

The sound of a language is an energy that one may either like or dislike, depending on personal taste and the language in question. Apart from the wealth of information laid out by Simon Romero in this superb article, I feel that the Spanish language relfects the happy atmosphere of a country and culture that favours fiestas and food over some of life's more serious elements.

As an Irish person, I have also been through the experience of having an element of our national identity taken away from us, due to English occupation. Aged 10, I chose to spend a year in an Irish speaking boarding school to learn our national language as fluently as possible.

To conclude, I say Viva Español and all other languages around the world. Expression is such a precious aspect of life.

Turn a map of the world sideways and you will see the Americas as one long continuum of people, moving backwards and forwards, from one side to the other, meeting and learning to get along in each other's languages.

You see, viewed sideways, there is no superior or subordinate in the map, just neighbors. We have so much we can learn from each other!

I am from New York and married into New Mexico with a beautiful Santa Fe girl. As my late father-in-law, Geronimo ("Jerry" to his friends) would have said, "bueno" to Sr. Romero for this wonderful, uplifting article. We look forward to his continued insights about New Mexico and Hispanic America.

I am bilingual, fully fluent in Spanish and English. But I could have been trilingual, as my parents' language was Cantonese. My parents were Chinese, but I was born and raised in Guatemala. As I child, I resisted Chinese because I wanted to belong. What a mistake, but I was just a kid!

My example should be instructive to those who fear English will disappear among the horde of immigrants. The last thing the children of immigrants want is to appear different. They want to speak English, and they want to speak it well.

I learned English in school in Guatemala, starting in kindergarten. I learned it well enough to attend Yale.

Learning another language (or more) is the way of the future, improving one's chances for success, personal and professional.

Perhaps we could look to India when we think about languages? Most Indians speak at least 3 languages, and many speak more. Hindi, Bengali, Kannada, and many others accompany English there, and rather than squabbling about what language defines the nation, people simply pick up the ones they need.

The more languages the better, I say. My 3 year old is in Spanish immersion preschool and he's already teaching me words and songs. In a couple of years we will add a French tutor to the mix. My 7 yr old nephew in Mexico City is in German immersion at a Swiss school.

Being multi lingual opens so many possibilities. As the saying goes, knowledge is power.

Here's the Spanish of my youth: My parents came here from a Central American country. When they wanted to speak to one another so my sister and I couldn't understand them they spoke Spanish.

What a wonderful read, how amazing if we could be interested in other people and our own evolution instead of mistrustful and hateful. As we have seen the explosion of latent white supremacy as a result of the trump presidency, as a country we are embarrassingly bad at dealing with difference.

I visited Turkey about 10 years ago and ended up in a rug shop in Istanbul. The owner was at lunch, but his two sons were there trying to sell us several items. My Turkish is limited to yes, no, thank you and where is a bathroom. The sons didn't speak English well enough for the extended negotiations required to buy rugs in the Middle East. I suggested German since I knew there was a lot of Turkish/German commerce, but we quickly settled on Spanish. They had more Spanish speaking tourists visit their shop than English or German speaking! Boy, was I shocked. When the owner came back, we finished in English because he didn't speak Spanish, but he had lived in New York City for ten years. BTW, I lived in Brasil for a while and their Portuguese is very different from the Continental version. It is a gorgeous language, but talk about dropping consonants! And the phonic switch from 'r' to English 'h' and 'd' to English soft 'g' takes some getting used to. A "radio" in Brasil is pronounced "hagio" unlike Spanish and Continental Portuguese where the consonants are very similar to English.

I am all for the learning of multiple languages. I took Spanish class in high school but whatever skill I had developed died because I didn't have anyone to communicate with in Spanish.

However, if you move to a country you should have to make an effort to learn that country's dominant language. Bad things happen when you have distinct groups of people who can't communicate with each other. I have family that emigrated from Italy and they learned to speak passable English, and their children were certainly fluent in English.

Spanish will help greatly when we engage in commerce, culture and even military affairs with China. Get off your high horse and shake your moral superiority. It's "nice" to speak Spanish, but absolutely necessary to speak English

Languages are dynamic "organisms." They evolve and change, or die. For the United States I predict a day when the dominate language, English, will morph into something that is used as a term today. Spanglish. The two languages will meld in some fashion, presenting an entirely new language the future may use. You can hear it already in the children of mixed culture couples. Or not. Time will tell the tale, but won't it be glorious, whatever it is that comes out of our melting pot?

John~
American Net'Zen

One of the regrets of my youth is that I never really learned Spanish, even though my father spoke it, along with seven other languages. Nor did I figure out Yiddish, my mother's first language because back in the '50s in south Miami Beach, Yiddish was the secret language of the grownups. I tried to learn. Took four years of Spanish in jr/sr high school. But it was taught incompetently. We needed to learn how to speak, not conjugate verbs and the teacher took one look at me and informed me that I, like my sister, my two cousins and even my mother (in an adult class) would fail her class. It was ordained. Four years of that witch. As an adult, I tried to take a class at a local community college but, again, it was verbs, not words. What a lost opportunity! A second language should be mandatory in the US and it should be taught conversationally first. Figure out the formal grammar later.

How wonderful to find this article after yet another morning of reading the latest Trump's "I-don't-do-Twitter-storms" insane rantings (note to retired Marine General Kelly: Don't include current job on future resumes).

And wonderful to read that the author is from a place significant to me -- I lived in Las Vegas, New Mexico, in 1968 as a 21-year-old student. Having been born and raised in a small town in Florida, I began to learn in New Mexico the richness of history: the imperial United States; Mexico; colonial Spain; Pueblo peoples; early humans.

Those rich lines of history connect us all -- one to another, throughout time.

Why is it that the newly arrived Chinese immigrants learn English so quickly. Indians learn English quickly. What is the author advocating?? A bilingual nation??

I'm surprised that neither article on the endurance of Spanish in the US paid real attention to the United States's Spanish-speaking Caribbean territory (and, perhaps, soon to become state) Puerto Rico. Puerto Rican Spanish (and Spanglish, a Spanish journalist told me once that it took him a moment to realize that his housekeeper in San Juan did not intend to vaccinate the attaché-case [vacunar la carpeta] when she said "vacumar la carpeta" but vacuum the carpet, which for him would have been "limpiar la alfombra" [clean the carpet]) have a flavor of their own. In addition, they've had a significant influence on New York city, and on other major conurbations. There are also a lot more Puerto Ricans than there are New Mexicans.

Beautiful article! Let's get behind bilingual education in our elementary schools, and raise a generation of Americans who can thrive in both of the rich cultures of the Americas. The future belongs to the fluent!

Many of the people in New Mexico who speak Spanish more often than English are the descendants of ancestors who were in New Mexico before The United States existed. Some of them speak Tewa or other Pueblo tongues in addition to English. The theme or idea that they should 'learn to speak English when they come to the United States' doesn't exactly fit here.

English is the most widely spoken language in Australia Federal Government legislation requires immigrants applying for citizenship to have a better than average comprehension of English, both written and oral. In addition, they are demonstrate an acceptable knowledge of our culture and history. If you speak English, Spanish is a very easy language to master as the structure ((nouns, verbs etc ) are pretty much identical. Roman legions brought "Spanish" to Spain with a form of spoken Latin. English is the most important language in the world primarily because of its use in business and commerce. A Russian passenger jet on approach to Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow, will be communicating at all times with air traffic controllers English. As will a China Airlines jet at Pudong International Airport, Shanghai, China. The most important language in the world after English is Mandarin. As spoken primarily in China, whereas Cantonese is dominant in Hong Kong, China. In Australia, we have determined that a four or five year preschooler, will soak up a second language like a sponge, whereas a 12 year old will struggle to learn. A second language, while not a requirement, is taught in a significant number of kindergartens and the teachers present the knowledge as a "game". The language taught is optional with the pre school but includes Mandarin which is the second most widely spoken language in Australia.

There are so many reasons why we Americans as a people should embrace bilinguality. Among others, children raised speaking two languages have been shown to be more empathetic with others -- which could lead to more peaceful relations among people.

Thanks, Simon Romero, for writing about our unique New Mexican polylingual culture!

The NYT's decision to send Mr Romero to report from a base in New Mexico for a few years was a very good one.

Por supuesto! But half of our country remains ignorant, afraid and allergic to change. France has its share of recalcitrants as well...

I remember my Los Angelino grandparents (both sides) talking about becoming part of a linguistic minority with a certain vehemence decades ago.
And so? That's where we started isn't it?

I have learned Spanish, French and more than a bit of Italian because it's interesting as hell and opens doors in many ways. Do I feel that immigrants should make an effort to learn the language of their country of adoption? Absolutely. But there is something to be said of the use of lingua franca as well; as the goal itself is communication, isn't it?

All languages evolve, all peoples mix. The past is past and the future will be... different.

Contracts are still better in English.

Six years ago a cab driver in Burgos and I agreed that Chinese, English and Spanish are the essential languages of these times, My part in that conversation would be much improved today because my Spanish is much better. I'm 77 and still a long way from fluency, but I enjoy the effort to learn esa heromosa lingua.

So informative, thanks! Thanks also for the links to more info. Gracias!

As a second-language learner of Spanish for some 20 years now, I find the nationalistic trend for English only a rather foolish one. As a child my mother wanted me to learn French; she had some old world notion that that language was a sign of sophistication. (And when I watch a film like Sense and Sensibility I wonder if I missed out on something.)

In school I studied Latin, in the army language school German and in my adult life Spanish for my employment. A study and use of language has never been a detriment. I find myself jealous of 9 year old kids who have fluency in both English and Spanish. In parts of Miami you don't know where you are without a second language.

I'm hard-pressed to think that the United States will ever be a LEGALLY multi-language country like our neighbor to the North. But a complete suppression of the daily use of second languages -- not a chance. And not a country as fascistic as it would have to be to achieve that complete suppression where I would want to live. Vive la difference or however it's said.

Three separate articles on how Spanish is the new English? Hmmmmm

There are places in the southern band of states where one encounters many people who speak no English. In days past travelling in Florida and New Mexico, before I became linguistically "woke", I would deeply resent that "those people" would come to "our country" and not even try to speak English. There is nothing like a bit of self righteous jingoism to offset feelings of insecurity I found.

This reflex reaction is very common for Americans, and is a pity because it is so limiting. Information is power, and the foundation of information is linguistic fluency. Besides, there is a kind of satisfaction to be had when one demonstrates multi-lingual fluency when it is not expected; especially when that person is calling you names in their own language.

You truly fortunate dog! Portuguese is such a Beauty language to hear and you can use it to communicate!?

Did you that we use TECOLOTE for policeman? That we use CUATE for friend, or any guy? e.a. Bill is my CUATE. There was a CUATE at the entrance.

Simon Romero's delightful article recalled the Spanish of my youth in a barrio in New York City. As a first generation child wanting to fit in, I put aside my first language for years. When I married into an Anglo family, my in-laws introduced me to crumpets, and I introduced them to garlic. A college course on Cervantes's DON QUIXOTE changed the course of my life. Like Romero, I now savor "the Spanish of my youth." His closing paragraph about present-day Britons wanting to learn Spanish may surprise readers. "The wheel has come full circle," as Shakespeare would say. And he read DON QUIXOTE in its first English translation.

I so wish I could speak Spanish! Being able to speak more than one language is a gift.

I quickly skimmed this article but want to register my strong support for bilingual speakers. That part of Trumpism that states that only English be spoken in the USA is abhorrent to me. It denies the lifelong benefits which science can demonstrate related to brain plasticity. It denies the joys of learning about other cultures, travel, food. I was born in Holland and spoke Dutch for the first 5 years of my life before starting school in Australia. I later was proficient in learning German, a closely related language and that boosted my grade average at a time when students look for a boost. I now have two children growing up in Mexico City where they attend school which teaches in English. It is impossible for me to imagine why this would not be regarded as valuable to society.