Latinos Open Up About Their Relationship With Spanish In Response To New Research

About a quarter of Latino adults in the United States do not speak Spanish well enough to carry on a conversation, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center.

“It’s really tied to the recency of immigration. For example, virtually all Latino immigrants speak Spanish, as you might expect,” says Mark Hugo Lopez, director of race and ethnicity research at Pew Research Center. “But when you talk about the U.S. born children of immigrant parents, about 70 percent of them are fluent in Spanish enough to be able to carry on that conversation.”

For Americans born in the U.S. who are third-generation and higher, Spanish-speaking ability decreases significantly. “Only about a third, 34 percent, say that they're able to carry on a conversation…understanding and speaking Spanish,” Lopez says.

Growing up in bilingual households

LAist 89.3's daily public affairs program AirTalk asked listeners to share their own experiences of growing up with one parent speaking Spanish and the other English.

“My mother spoke to me in Spanish… My dad, he was bilingual, but spoke to me in English, and I resisted [Spanish] many years as a youth, and my mom, I think she was hurt by that,” said Ricardo in Valencia. But he says he had a change of heart after college.

“I decided to sell my car, to go and live with some relatives in Mexico… I spent a year and [when] I came back, and I was able to speak to my mom, really, in her native language for the rest of her life.”

Raul in Highland Park said his parents “tricked me into being bilingual because my dad only spoke English to me if I wanted toys or anything like that. And my mom at home would speak Spanish to me if I wanted food or anything to do with the house.”

About being bilingual, he feels “very lucky about that, to be able to have that extra asset.”

A lost generation of Spanish speakers

For listeners of a certain generation, speaking Spanish was discouraged to promote assimilation. Rochelle in Duarte told "AirTalk" host Larry Mantle “I'm 50. My family pushed me away from speaking Spanish. Even my father barely spoke it. I'm ashamed I can't speak the language.”

Denise in Pasadena shared a similar story: “My father grew up in Corona and was punished in school for speaking Spanish. My father didn't want us to experience that, so my level of Spanish is probably equivalent to a third grader, and my children aren't fluent.”

Frank in Pasadena also spoke of generational trauma associated with speaking Spanish. His parents “were children in California public schools in the thirties through fifties and were physically abused by teachers and school administrators due to poor English skills, Spanish accents, etc. Because of that, they deliberately didn't teach our generation to speak Spanish to defend us from incurring the abuse they had themselves.”

Shame is a factor

Pew reports that more than half of non-Spanish speaking Latinos have been shamed by others because of their lack of fluency.

Alexis in Brea said her daughter “understands [Spanish] but doesn't speak it, but she's being teased at school because she doesn't know the language and she's being mad to feel like she's not Latino enough.”

Alexis continued, “so now we're working on paying for classes for her to not feel that way at school.”

“One of the questions we've been asking about for a while now is, do you have to speak Spanish to be considered Latino?” asks Mark Lopez. “And even though the majority of Latino adults, 78%, say that you don't, what's interesting is that we still do have some folks who are ‘gatekeepers.’”

Teaching the next generation

For Saul in Highland Park, Spanish “was something I took for granted growing up…I'm second generation, so we always spoke Spanish at home…It wasn't until later, when I became a father, that I realized the importance of preserving that part of the culture and speaking Spanish to my daughter.”

Stephanie in Alhambra stressed the importance of being able to communicate with older generations who may not speak English: “I know too many people with the experience of not being able to communicate with their grandparents because they never learned Spanish.”

Pew's Mark Lopez added “When we've asked Latino parents, do you want your children to learn Spanish? Virtually all Latino parents say yes.”

Listen to the conversation