The interview that a journalist tried to do with a child, in the middle of a jubilant celebration of fans of the Mexican national team in Los Angeles, California, went viral last July.
-Baby, what is your name?
-Mmm… my name?
-Why did Mexico win?
-Mmm… what?
“He is very excited,” said the journalist to justify the child’s lack of response, while another commentator on the live broadcast of the ESPN network pointed out: “It is a generation that no longer speaks Spanish.”
The video was shared thousands of times on social networks, in which many comments included a term that is heard in the United States in this type of situation: “No sabo kid.”
The expression is used by some Hispanics to refer disparagingly to others who do not speak Spanish. Most of the time they are children or young people, children of migrants from Latin America who grew up with English as their mother tongue, which is why they are called “kids.”
And this phenomenon is not sporadic.
A study by the Pew Research Center (PRC), an institution that analyzes demographic issues in the United States, indicated that 40% of Latinos in the country have heard jokes or ridicule from other Latinos for not speaking Spanish well.
“It was very striking that the comments of many questioned why that child (in the video) does not speak Spanish, which is a shame because the parents are not speaking Spanish to that child,” Mark Hugo López tells BBC Mundo. , director of the PRC’s Race and Ethnicity department and co-author of the study.
And although the US is considered one of the countries with the most Spanish speakers in the world, the command of the language varies greatly among its speakers.
In the PRC survey, 75% of respondents said they could hold a conversation in Spanish well or very well. But of the rest who did not speak Spanish, half admitted to having been shamed by others for not speaking the language well.
At the same time, 8 out of 10 Hispanics interviewed said that it is not necessary to speak Spanish to be considered Latino.
“These results show the importance of Spanish, on the one hand, but also that a person can be Hispanic in the United States without speaking Spanish,” says López.
“Many say it is a shame, because that person is losing their culture, their identity, for not speaking Spanish. But for others, it is not important to speak Spanish in the US to be Latino,” he adds.
Growing up without speaking Spanish
Vanessa Ávalos, an American of Mexican origin who lives in Chicago, rejects the term “no sabo kid,” pointing out that this puts the negative burden on the children instead of the adults in their environment who do not give them the knowledge of the language.
It is something that he has experienced in a very personal way.
“My parents didn’t want my brother and I to speak Spanish,” he explains to BBC Mundo.
His family lived in the 1980s in the state of Texas, where there was then an atmosphere of discrimination towards those who spoke Spanish. “My parents wanted us not to have bad moments of racism.”
Ávalos and his brother, who speak English as their native language, learned Spanish in middle and high school classes through their own initiative and interest. “We fight for the language, to recover it. We knew we wanted the language,” he says proudly.
Some time later, Ávalos realized that Spanish is important not only to learn more about her culture, but also because it is a factor that unites Latino families in the US.
“My grandmother doesn’t speak English. Unfortunately, most of my cousins do not speak Spanish. So when we were at her house, we all spoke English and she felt like ‘Well, here I am at my house and no one is talking to me because they don’t speak Spanish,’” she says.
“I didn’t like seeing that. My children can talk to my father-in-law. “My daughter likes soccer and they watch the games together.”
That’s a phenomenon rooted in U.S. Latino culture. As PRC studies show, most of the 40 million people in the country who know Spanish speak it at home. Especially, in those homes where there are migrants who were born outside the country.
And 6 out of 10 Latinos use the Spanglish: the mixture of Spanish and English.
Teach Spanish to Latinos
Ávalos says she didn’t want her children to take too long to learn Spanish like she did.
Her husband is also of Mexican origin, but does not speak Spanish. “I thought: ‘If we don’t speak any Spanish to our children, they’re going to lose it too.’ At that moment I saw what we could do with our children,” she explains.
Other people in the Latino community in Chicago also wanted their children to speak Spanish, so they got to work and this year opened a space that offers educational and playful classes to approach the Spanish language for children.
Children from 1 to 5 years old learn Spanish through songs, knowing the shapes of things and talking about basic situations such as breakfast. Those from 5 to 9 years old write, read and speak Spanish through a didactic method.
“It’s something fun for the kids. Right now we are exploring Latin American music. Mothers have told me that their children’s Spanish has improved and I am glad to hear this,” explains Ávalos.
“The curriculum was developed by a Latina teacher who has a program for computers, an application that the children can practice on when they go home,” she adds. The goal is for the children to be bilingual in three years.
Unlike the past, Latinos in the US have changed their perspective on how valuable it is to speak Spanish as a complement to their life and even as a work tool.
“People who were young in the 50s and 60s say that their parents said it was more important to speak English and not Spanish, because they were afraid about their children’s future in the job market and in society in the US.” explains López, from the PRC.
“But not now. Now it’s different: a 2019 PRC survey indicated that the majority of Latinos who have children want their children to also speak Spanish.”
In addition, the success of music in Spanish worldwide has sparked great interest among Latinos in the language of their culture.
Preserve the language
However, the Spanish spoken by many Latinos in the US seems to be used more in everyday communication at home and in informal situations, rather than in the professional sphere.
The majority do not have the level to speak it in a job that requires a certain level of formality, according to PRC studies.
Another phenomenon that occurs in the US is the loss of the language of the parents or grandparents among the new generations.
Spanish does not escape this trend: 65% of third-generation or older Latinos cannot maintain a conversation in Spanish, the PRC study shows.
“Schools in the US do not have many Spanish classes that are mandatory to obtain a diploma,” López points out.
“We have had dialogues about the importance of bilingual education for 3, 4 decades, but there have not been many changes. “English is the language of schools,” he adds.
Given this, parents become a key factor so that their children know Spanish and make it their own.
“It was hard for me that my race made fun of me, because I didn’t know the language,” says Ávalos.
“Instead of reproaching a person for not speaking Spanish, we should help them. If you’re going to make fun, no one will want to speak Spanish and we’re going to lose it. It is the duty of parents to guide their children so that they know their culture.”
Keep reading:
* Experts warn of discrimination against Spanish speakers in the United States
* Is Spanish really a difficult language to learn?
* Do you speak Spanish? | 14 Spanish words and expressions that are used in English in the United States
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