Lessons learned from linguistics
I received a request to write about the question, “Where are you from?” and how the languages you speak can affect your answer. I hope you like it!
Where am I from? I’m from a city of juxtapositions.
A city that is part of an English-dominant country—the U.S.—but that also happens to be the place where the most dialects of Spanish are spoken in the world.
A city where the majority of speakers speak only Spanish at home, but where Spanish is dying cross-generationally.
A city which is the birthplace of two-way immersion (bilingual) programs, but where bilingual education is becoming more and more inaccessible to those who need it most.
A city with a high number of bilinguals, most of whom are comparing themselves to monolinguals.
That is my city—Miami; those are some of the ideologies that pervade it. In many ways, Miami is a microcosm of the contradictions that exist in the world at large.
Here are my reflections looking back at my upbringing in Miami and the lessons I learned from doing research in this city.
“I don’t speak Spanish”
Some of my earliest memories take place at my Colombian grandmother’s home (for context, she’s a monolingual Spanish speaker). I remember telling her when I was four “I don’t speak Spanish. I don’t want to learn Spanish. And that’s final.” I had full-brat meltdowns. And I would make my grandmother—at the ripe age of 82—learn and speak to me in English.
Thankfully for all of us, this era of my life didn’t last too long. I got a late start to Spanish, but eventually I learned to speak it with my family. In school, I had around 1-2 hours per week of Spanish class. My school didn’t differentiate between Spanish as a foreign language and Spanish as a heritage language, so everyone (regardless of whether they spoke Spanish at home) was lumped together. Every year, it felt like we would start again with hola, cómo estás, and more of the basics.
You speak Spanish
Suddenly, in my last two years of high school, I was thrust into Advanced Placement Spanish and Spanish literature (to gobble up some college credits) and it was suddenly assumed that I knew how to read high-level texts and write full-on analyses in Spanish. After all, I was Latina. I should know how to do this.
I don’t know at what age it happened, but at a certain point, it felt like society expected me to be at the highest level of Spanish speaking, to make no grammatical mistakes, to understand all words.
And I know I’m not alone. Having conversations with people around me, it feels like most bilinguals in my city aren’t happy with either their Spanish or English. I commonly hear things, like, “My Spanish has changed since I moved to Miami. When I go back home, they can hear that something’s different.” Or, “I wish I would’ve learned English, but it’s been so many years and the language is so hard” (most of these people have strong receptive skills).
Linguistics has allowed me to reframe these experience for myself. And here is what I learned:
#1: Language learning should be about more than just language
Young children are smart. They know which language is the dominant language, which language will get them bullied, which language to use with specific people. These ideologies are never explicitly said, but they are well understood at a young age. When learning my heritage language, Spanish, I would have benefitted from any sort of discussions on having a bilingual identity and bilingual competencies. Instead of focusing on what I could do, I spent most of my life embarrassed about what I couldn’t do in Spanish. Those feelings caused me to feel shame and reject Spanish at a young age.
#2: Mainstream expectations of language learning are ludicrous
I only heard Spanish at my grandma’s house (maximum 10 hours a week). I only had 1-2 hours of Spanish support at school. And yet, society magically expected me to acquire the language. Compare that to my experience with my dominant language, English. I spoke it primarily at home, exclusively with my sister, friends, teachers. I spent most of my day engulfed in English. And I would go home and do all my homework and readings in English. There’s a drastic difference between the amount of input and academic support I had in both languages—so why the expectation of being a balanced bilingual1?
#3: Compare and despair, language edition
Similar to the last point, comparing my language to those around me is pointless; there are too many variables at play. I compared my Spanish to those of my friends (all of my friends moved from Latin America between 8-15 years old and spoke Spanish at home). That’s not a fair comparison for many reasons. Even in my own family, I compared my Spanish to my sister’s. That’s not a fair comparison either because research tells us that older siblings are more likely to “fully” acquire the home language (for several reasons, one being that younger siblings tend to talk to their older siblings in the dominant language).
#4: Monolingual standards hide strengths
For me, shame stemmed from not reaching monolingual standards. However, now I’m able to see that I’m able to do a lot with language. I have a close relationship with my grandmother and we’re able to talk about everything in Spanish. I talk to friends and family in Spanish. We laugh. We tell stories. We bond. (If that’s not what language is for, I don’t know what is). I also read books in Spanish and understand several varieties of Spanish. And on top of that, I speak my dominant language, English. Celebrating my strengths while acknowledging what I could improve has helped me create an emotional shield. When people point out a mistake or make a comment about my Spanish, I know all that I can do with language.
#5: My experience is statistically probable
Shame comes from feeling alone. One of the biggest lessons I learned in graduate school is that my experience is statistically probable. Most people with my background are in my same boat. I remember seeing a chart that showed what areas of Spanish heritage speakers find most difficult, and they were the exact areas I found difficult (i.e. the subjunctive, the imperfect/preterite)!
#6: Language is political
Not directly related to my experience, but I also learned that access to quality bilingual education is political. Even though Miami is the birthplace of bilingual education in the U.S., most schools in Miami are monolingual. The ideas of dominant languages and monolingual standards, are also inherently political concepts.
Conclusion
Speaking and learning a heritage language is different from learning a foreign language—for one, it relates to a person’s background, where they’re from. For me, my heritage languages are tied to my identity and who I am. While this isn’t true for everyone, I hope you could gain from my experience how the ideas we have about language matter and how they materialize in the world.
Keep learning:
An article about children not wanting to speak the home language.
An article about language being political (U.S. context).
A book about how and why Miami became the birthplace of two-way immersion bilingual schools in the U.S:
Coady, M. R. (2019). The coral way bilingual program. Multilingual Matters.
A paper on language acquisition and siblings:
Keller K, Troesch LM, Grob A. First-born siblings show better second language skills than later born siblings. Front Psychol. 2015 Jun 3;6:705. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00705. PMID: 26089806; PMCID: PMC4452798.
I’m using the term “balanced bilingual” to mean someone who has equal competency in both languages.