NOT too long ago, a young Mexican-American co-worker not far from me sneezed. Salud, I quickly said.
“What does that mean?” the young man – an 18-year-old named Frank – asked. I stood there for a second, completely perplexed. “Salud ( means `health,’ just like gesundheit in German. The expressions both mean `to your health.’ ”
As Frank turned around, I noticed he had on a low-rider T-shirt with three obviously Latino faces across his back. Here was a young Hispanic man who takes pride in his ethnicity but who didn’t know what salud meant.
A few days later, Frank volunteered an explanation: His parents, natives of New Mexico, speak Spanish, but they just never taught him. He is not alone.
In a country where the term “Spanish-speaker” passes as a synonym for “Hispanic,” as much as 20 percent of the nation’s Latino population does not speak the language of Cervantes, according to census data. Even Latino celebrities, including ’50s rocker Richie Valens, ’70s TV star Eric Estrada and ’90s Tejano superstar Selena Quintanilla Perez, grew up not speaking the language.
Public discourse on Latinos almost always focuses on speaking Spanish as if it were some kind of Latino racial trait, one genetically hard-wired into us before birth.
The reality is that U.S. Latinos are the only ones under this ethnic umbrella on the planet who speak English at the same rate they speak Spanish. Moreover, we are the only Latins on the globe who live, work and socialize in a country where 89 percent of the population is not Hispanic. For the most part, aqui se habla ingles.
Yet the mainstream public seems to continue to believe that Hispanics speak only Spanish, fueling a hysteria among a number of English speakers to protect the language of Shakespeare, as if speaking Spanish were some kind of public health threat that needs to be stamped out like polio or tuberculosis.
In the otherwise squeaky-close elections last fall, the voters overwhelmingly passed propositions to enhance English as the only favored language in their states. In Utah, voters heartily endorsed English as their official language. Arizona’s voters trounced bilingual education in favor of English immersion, a measure called “English for the Children” that mimics California’s Proposition 227.
But what do the votes mean for Latinos?
So far, California’s Proposition 227, making bilingual education illegal, has garnered mixed reviews, from gushing praise to stinging criticism, for its efforts to push Latinos to learn English. One thing is clear: Latino children are learning English – at the expense of Spanish.
In an otherwise upbeat story about Proposition 227, The New York Times reported “an unforeseen consequence” of the referendum that has affected 8-year-old Gabriela Diaz, a third-grader from Oceanside, Calif. “When my friends from Mexico come here,” she said, “I don’t understand what they’re saying.’`
Is all this necessary? Latino children are usually the first in immigrant families to learn English. Even in households where the parents or guardians watch television exclusively in Spanish, the children watch more programs in English than Spanish.
Imagine what it must be like for a young Latino student, lacking in self-confidence, to succeed in math, science, history and English when he or she cannot properly speak Spanish, something that helps define who he or she is.
To me the problem isn’t learning English. It’s retaining Spanish. Proper Spanish, grammar and all. But without at least some educational support for Spanish, Latino children born or educated here are losing the ability to communicate, not only with family members, but with most of residents of this hemisphere.
In the public’s haste to ensure that Latinos learn English, the discourse has overlooked the consequences of emphasizing only English.
By emphasizing only English, public policy is turning U.S. Latinos into Hispanics who can’t speak Spanish. In the process, the proponents of English-only are taking away our identity, our children’s self-confidence and their chances of success in life.
To stem the high school dropout rate among Hispanics, maybe what schools really need isn’t “English for the Children,” but “Spanish for the Children.”
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