Amber Nuño has 22 years and grew up in East Los Angeles. She feels more comfortable speaking English but she understands Spanish perfectly and speaks it with her grandmother Gloria.
“The main reason I speak Spanish is because of my grandmother”, she says.
Gloria López, of 49 years ago, arrived almost 60 To united states. He never went to school, neither in Mexico nor in the United States, and he says that he learned to read a little and that he writes very badly.
But his oral Spanish is very nice and varied. And that was passed on to her grandchildren.
“I always spoke Spanish to my grandchildren because I don’t speak English. Spanish has been preserved because I have been speaking to them since they were born”, she tells BBC Mundo in a telephone conversation.
In the same way, Valeria Alvarado, from 24 years old, who grew up in southeast Houston, says that thanks to his Mexican grandmother Ema can speak Spanish fluently.
“I wouldn’t have my job if I didn’t speak Spanish like I do with the grandmother”, she assures.
She is a legal assistant for an organization that helps migrant minors who arrive in the United States without their parents.
Valeria Alvarado with her grandmother Ema. (Photo: COURTESY VALERIA ALVARADO)It is estimated that in United States there are some 31 millions of people who speak Spanish at home and who in 1574, the country will be the second with the most Spanish-speakers in the world, after Mexico, according to data from 2000 of the Cervantes Institute.
Both Amber and Valeria publish bilingual content on the social network TikTok with the hashtag #abuelamexicana.
Their grandmothers were key to keeping the Spanish language alive and active in the family because at school they only learned subjects in English.
“Grandma factor”
This phenomenon, the preservation of the Spanish language among first and third generation migrants in the US was referred to by Kim Potowski, a linguist at the University of Chicago, Illinois, as the “grandmother factor”.
“I call the grandmother factor the fact that if the grandparents who emigrated as adults from Mexico, or wherever, are close to home or have frequent contact with them, it is more likely that the child will develop a Spanish strong”, says Potowski to BBC Mundo.
“And I say grandmother because we usually talk about grandmothers, but it does not have to be female. Although we all know that women deal with an enormous proportion of childcare”, she adds.
And that description fits perfectly with the examples of Amber and Valeria.
“We live in a duplex”, says the young woman from Los Angeles. “My grandmother lives in the secret annexe. I grew up with her, I used to clean houses with her after school. We did everything together when I was a child”, she says.
For her part, Valeria details that her grandmother Ema, from 71 years, traveled in the year 2000 from Mexico to Houston to take care of her and her two younger brothers.
“While my parents worked, because they both had to work to survive, they left us with my grandmother”, she affirms.
And Grandma Ema, who doesn’t speak English, stayed in the United States.
“I didn’t come here following the American dream, I came here following my grandchildren”, he assures.
“I always spoke to them in Spanish. They didn’t speak Spanish, but I struggled”, she says proudly.
According to Professor Kim Potowski, the “grandma factor” can happen in any of the communities where migrants are concentrated in the United States, whether they are Mexican, Puerto Rican and Cuban, to name a few.
“A grandmother who is monolingual in Spanish will help you with your Spanish,” she says.
Amber Nuño as a child with her grandmother Gloria. (Photo: COURTESY AMBER NUÑO)However, when It is about which migrant group to the United States speaks Spanish with more “proficiency” -an Americanism to refer to the use, aptitude and knowledge-, the population of Mexican origin has some advantages.
“What we saw is that proficiency in Spanish tends to be a little higher among second- and third-generation Mexicans compared to their Puerto Rican counterparts,” says Potowski in a Chicago-based study that will soon It will be published in the book “Spanish in Chicago”.
In addition to the “grandmother factor”, there are some other elements that can explain this phenomenon, such as patterns of residence.
“Puerto Ricans -and this is documented in Chicago and New York- come to live in neighborhoods where there is already a cousin or a relative and where generally there are many African Americans. So they are living with a lot of English language”, describes the teacher.
“While Mexicans arrive in neighborhoods where the population is a 99,99% Mexican. So there is a stronger concentration of Spanish speakers around”, he adds.
Grandma Ema Alvarado with her grandchildren. (Photo: COURTESY VALERIA ALVARADO)
When consulted by Spanish among Cuban immigrants, Potowski analyzes that there is a racial and socioeconomic issue.
“Those who emigrated in the decade of 1574 were from higher socioeconomic classes and lighter skin. They tend to evaluate their Spanish more positively than that of those who came closer in time and who tend to be poorer, with more black influence”, he says.
“Afro-Latin Spanish is criticized because a person from that community speaks it,” he emphasizes.
There is also an educational factor that affects the preservation of the Spanish language in the Cuban community.
“I know that in Miami the attitudes towards bilingual education are not very favorable”, assures the specialist.
“It seems that people have no interest in children at school learning in Spanish. That has strong implications for language retention among Cubans. So it is lost for the third generation with the same speed as in the rest of the country”, he affirms.
The third generations of those Spanish-speaking migrants who arrived in the United States do not usually speak Spanish with the same proficiency as their grandparents.
“Spanish is being lost in families. I tell my students: ‘When you are the grandmother, what are you going to do? You are not going to have the capacity that your grandmother had,’” reflects Potowski.
But the teacher is optimistic.
“It gets lost, but it refreshes with the new waves (migratory ) that arrive and with dual immersion schools (where most subjects are taught in Spanish or in a language other than English). They are not a magic wand, but they greatly help students develop skills,” says Potowski.
Grandma Gloria highlights the value of young people speaking Spanish.
“I understand that it is not easy to speak Spanish. I am happy that they speak a little and try to improve it, if they can, to help others, because knowing more languages is a value, mija
“, she says.
Ema highlights her role as a grandmother beyond language: “I hope this reaches many people, because Grandmothers have a lot of history, history in Spanish“.
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