Spanish is NOT an Evil Language

As some of you may know, my great-grandparents came up from Mexico in 1910. They just walked across the "border", which there really want one and moved to Tucson, AZ.

They settled, had 8 kids and were very poor. My grandfather, 1st generation, married my grandmother and they had 2 kids, my mom and my uncle in the 1950s.

It was during this time that Arizona had several incredibly racist programs designed for minority children. One of these Americanization programs called, 1-C, was designed to make these minority kids (Mexican, black and Native American)"be Americans" and forgot their roots. My mom and my uncle were Americans but since they were brown, they had to go to this mandatory class

Students were punished, usually but paddling, for speaking Spanish during 1C and on the playground, and about 60 percent of these kids dropped out of school from 1919 to 1967 while 1C was in existence.

My mom didn't drop out but it had a huge effect on her. She could have graduated earlier from high school but the principal didn't let her because "she needed all the English she could get". Nevermind the fact that she was an honors student in English.

So when she married my Dad (who went through the same program), they made the decision not to teach their children Spanish, so we would not have to go through what they did. There has been studies done by the University of Arizona about those who went through the 1-C program, at least half didn't teach her kids Spanish.

But we went through and still go through the opposite. We have been teased, shunned by others of our family and accused of not being "Mexican" enough for not speaking Spanish. It's so bad for my sister, who is much more mestizo-looking than I am, that she tells people she is Indian. My other sister had told people she is Italian.

I have always claimed my heritage. I am ashamed to say that I was embarrassed by it as a kid though. And embarrassed that I didn't speak the language. I took classes in school but even now, my Spanish is bad. I understand about 70% of it but I don't speak it at all. Just a few phases here and there.

But I find that most immigrants want to learn English, but they don't have the time to take classes because they are working to support their families. Plus, i have been told English is hard to learn at a later age.

My state legislature is fighting with the Governor about funding English Language Learning for ESL kids. They want these kids of "illegals" to learn English but they don't want to fund it! Arizona is an incredibly racist state, especially given how close we are to Mexico.

I am glad that America doesn't have an "official" language. I like the mix of different languages. My parents now say they should have just gotten over their fears and taught us Spanish but what is done is done.

All I know is when I have children, they will learn Spanish be proud of being American and embracing their Mexican heritage.

and think English and Spanish should both be taught from kindergarten on.

Learning a second language early in life makes it easier to add other languages later. Paradoxically, it also improves learning the rules of one's own home language.

There are still people from non-spanish speaking countries coming to America. Why shouldn't Chinese or Japanese or Arabic be taught from Kintergarten up. It would make it even easier to learn additional languages later, None of them are based on Roman alphabets. We need people who can speak and translate Arabic for us these days.

Why should one group of immigrants be given priority over all others? Isn't that discrimination?

I'm sorry she wasn't brought up bi-lingual. It was the fault of her parents, not the school system.

If the school system can afford it, emersion programs are an excellent way to teach children other languages and cultures. I'm all for it, but more than one other language has to be offered.

How many German speaking countries are there? Italian? Japanese? Hindi? Chinese?

It makes sense to learn what much of the rest of our hemisphere is talking about.

We don't draw our population from just this hemisphere.

As for our hemisphere, you didn't mention French and Portugese. Do we ignore them?

But living in AZ, it makes sense to have the ability to learn Spanish/English readily available.

And by the way, learn some reading comprehnsion skills---My mother knows spanish but didnt teach me because of the attitudes by others, including those on this board.

Sheesh!

It would make sense to learn French. So should they be required to learn Spanish instead?

In my county schools, there are emersion programs in multiple languages, not just Spanish.

My neighborhood elementary is not one of the emersion schools, still, it has all signs printed in seven different languages and they have translators for the parents who speak those languages. The translators may help the kids at first, until they become more fluent in English, but they are mainly there for the parent/teacher meetings. The same person may translate in several languages.

Who is to say that the child who speaks Mandarin should be given less assistance than a child who speaks Spanish just because they aren't the majority of the minority.

Maybe Arizona has a strong Mexican influence, but few of the hispanics here are from Mexican backgrounds. Most are from further south, from impoverished Central American countries. They have had a hard life and hopefully their children will have it better than they have. Many of the women have had NO education and cannot read or write. Their families didn't want to waste their precious resources on educating the girl children. Even though it is easer for children to learn literacy, there is hope. We have a Neighborhood Resource Center to assist these souls in some of the basics of navigating in an English speaking world. It holds ESL and literacy classes as well as basic computer and other classes. I don't like the fact that it is referred to as the NRC. I have heard of some other organization with those initials. (National Republican Committee)

There is no time like the present to become emersed in your family's history. Languages are harder the later in life you try to learn them.

...And the 1950's was not a good time to be a student for a lot of us. It was like an hour before daylight in education.
Common learning problems like dislexia and ADD were not known of and those kids were branded as stupid and shoved to the back of the room so as not to disrupt the calm, obedient children up front. We didn't know that sugar made a child hyper. The concept that Children had different ways of learning was unknown. Even children with higher IQ's were shoved to the back of the classroom because they became bored and disruptive. Teachers could spank and humiliate students in front of the classroom in those days. The teacher was always right even when they weren't. In segregated white schools, blond children were given preferential treatment by many teachers.
Teachers were only required to have a two year teaching certificate back then and child psychology was unknown. Teachers were paid poorly.
It is almost amazing that education has evolved this far in 50 years.

that are close to Mexico and French on the areas that are closer to Canada.
Just for functionality if nothing else.

and Mandarin, Latin, Italian, Arabic, Xhosa, whatever in high school...

Sigh. I wish my public school kids would learn SOME other language before high school.

(1) Spanish is spoken in many countries of the world and is therefore a useful language to know. In our hemisphere, it is especially useful, along with English.

(2) Spanish was spoken here before English was, and has been spoken on our continent and in our nation (though it was not one at the time) since shortly after the discovery of the New World. It's part of our heritage, like English.

(3) In several parts of the country, Spanish is spoken by a substantial portion of the population. Just as Dutch-speaking (or Walloon-speaking) Belgians also learn French (and vice versa), we could be learning each other's languages to advance understanding within our own country.

I don't think it's discrimination to address the fact that Spanish is and has long been an important language here. Where other languages are strong, I see no problem with their being taught in local schools. It is always an advantage to know another language, particularly if it is used by many of one's neighbors.

As for "more than one other language," I'm all for it. But Spanish is quite useful, especially in the Western Hemisphere.

local predominant immigrant languages they want. It would be a different assortment for each community. Those who would rather learn the language of their own heritage should be allowed to do so.

It's the first foreign language that's hardest to learn. Learning Vietnamese or Somali (in the Twin Cities) or Russian or Korean (in Portland) doesn't preclude learning Spanish at some later date.

The more languages spoken by more of our citizens, the better off the country will be.

official language. CA, AZ, NV, TX, for example.

This thread is mostly about the system encouraging people to forget their roots.

language rather than having Spanish mandated.

I'm so happy that she's getting Spanish twice a week (good teacher, too). We're working on it at home (it is one of my minors), and she's picking up more all the time.

The best part is that she has a few latinos in her class, and she's jealous of them that they speak Spanish and English at home all the time. She asks sometimes if we can do the same, but then she gets frustrated when she doesn't understand me. We're working on it.

I agree with you about starting a second language as early as kindergarten. I don't care what the second language is, just as long as younger kids are exposed to something other than English.

a bilingual nation.

because there French is mandated as some sort of right of law and it is many times considered superior to English whereas here we use two languages to help the kids actually learn academic English. There is a purpose. It has nothing to do with cultural superiority reasons. It's all academic; however, there are some great cultural benefits.

Sid

Have become like second class citizens. As a result there have been major pushes to secede. There has even been terrorist actions. When you have a multicultural nation like the US or Canada language is one of the critical uniters.

Before French became an official language of Canada? Would they be better Canadians if French were forbidden?

I don't see cause & effect here.

Language is part of culture. Therefore, we have more than one language in the USA. I certainly encourage everyone to learn English, for their own good. ESL classes fill up pretty fast. But Spanish is not going to go away.

This battle is fought annually in South Florida between Cuban immigrants that don't want to learn English and White people who don't want to learn Spanish. You'd think education was a bad thing...

at my old school website.

Does that make Latin evil, too?

It goes something like this.

"The government is giving food stamps to people who speak Spanish. Only English speaking people should get these things."

Yes, it was said to me and I've heard many variations of this as to why I should be appalled about jobs or services going to people who speak Spanish.

People don't know when I meet them that I am one of those evil people who speak Spanish and carry the blood of Spain and America in me and because it got mixed up with northern European blood I don't quite look like their stereotype of a hispanic.

That's disgusting. My stand is that people who immigrate here should learn English, as that IS the primary language of the country (even if it's not the "official" language), but to say that people who speak Spanish should NOT get benefits -- especially LEGAL immigrants -- is just plain crazy. Good grief, some people are too stupid to live.

Than English. Often, the "others" can speak some English, but prefer to use their original language when talking to each other. And they like to patronize businesses with signs in their own language--although the signs always have English translations, too. The merchants are glad to sell to all!

Spanish has a long history in Texas, of course. Czech was once the #2 language, although I haven't checked recently. I remember my surprise hearing 2 African-American ladies speak French, years ago. Frenchtown was the part of Houston settled by Louisiana creoles & the birthplace of modern zydeco.

Now we've got Houstonians speaking every language under the sun. The Houston ISD offers classes in Mandarin Chinese, French, Japanese, German, Italian, Hebrew, Arabic, Latin, Russian, Hindi & Spanish.

I've studied Spanish. Yes, it's harder for us old folks. But it's not impossible & studying a language is excellent exercise for the brain. A few people in my classes learned some Spanish at home, but had trouble in class. Their accents were excellent, but nobody ever taught them the rules for subjunctive (for example).

We also have Spanglish speakers. They can usually speak both of their languages "correctly" when they choose. At other times, they choose to give "purists" from both sides of the river conniptions.

A team leader spoke in Chinese to another member of the team at meetings. She seemed to have more to say in Chinese than in English. We wondered if the other employee was getting better instructions or if they were just being conversational on our time. I considered it rude. Both of them spoke English and no one else in the group spoke Chinese.

I'm sure they weren't really making fun of you!

I thought it was rude, like whispering in front of people since no one else in the office spoke Chinese. I didn't report to her, but the others, who did, resented it a lot.

in which a Spanish-speaking parent has lost custody of their child because the judge considered it to be a "bad example" for the child. Yes, it happens. There are "English-only" laws in place that allow an employer to ban employees from speaking Spanish, or any other language, when talking amongst themselves. Not to mention all the complaints I hear about "those people" speaking Spanish all the time. People are very prejudiced against Hispanics, & because I look like a nice Aryan girl, I get to hear it all. I'm not sure if there's a "War on Spanish," but there's lots of evidence of our society's efforts to punish & shame those who speak a different language.

whenever I call the utility company or the bank. That's all I have to say about that.

And the language of hate seems to be so prevalent in this country now. As for Spanish, or any other language, "evil"? Why would people even think that?

English you speak to business.

French you speak to lovers.

Italian you speak to children.

German you speak to dogs.

and

Spanish you speak to God.

To explain how the cleaning needs to be done,
it is not the language of international diplomacy,
nor is it about to storm the halls of washington.

Many elites believe that the nation is the mayflower,
and the english-heritage... these persons look down
on spanish conquoreds, like israeli's look down on
palestineans (some). its the same settler prejudice
syndrome over those whos turf got stole. The israeli's
surely percieve their own language as priory over some
language of their conquored... and with it, an embedded
not so subtle perpetual class thinking.

I don't see spanish ever having equal shake in the US.
nope... it'll always be a regional/ethnic/class language
for american political culture. I'd rather be wrong about
that, but i can't see more than that. God bless the
spanish culture, may it have equal franchise... but therein
lies the political hot button.

it has become an international language and it would behoove everyone to learn it. However, it's not an excuse to blame people who speak another language for your misfortunes.

spanish is a fine language,
Hablo espanol un poquito, ademas.
Pero, no creo... i don't think, that
it's realistic to expect, given what i
have seen, nationwide, in life expereince,
that spanish will not be a "lower" class langage than english,
because of the immigration siatuation of the southwest
and the economic direction the language ends up
spoken in (down).

Surely in a few hundred years, it will be like welsh
is to english in britain... where english is still percieved
as a superior in london to speaking welsh there... but in wales,
more power to welsh... but i wonder whether they've diluted the
ethnic epsanol blood enough to keep southern california from
going separatist in the long term.

The OP's parents were taught that Spanish was evil. Later in life, they regretted not teaching it to their children.

It IS sad to speak only one language. You miss so much. In Texas, Spanish is a very practical choice. But I did not begin studying it seriously until I bought a bilingual anthology of Federico Garcia Lorca's poems. Despite my limited knowledge of the language, I realized that I would have translated a few bits differently. So I signed up for a class.

The official languages of Israel are Hebrew AND Arabic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel

language debate is that maybe, just maybe, this country will realize that requiring students to learn a second language, be it Spanish, French, German, whatever, in school would be a very good and sensible thing to do. I wish that had been a requirement when I was in school.

Americans, even Democrats, are quite insular & don't know much about foreign languages or culture. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is furiously studying America's success & learning. Most Europeans speak 2 - 4 languages & that's true of most educated people around the world. Except here, of course. Because we function based on the arrogance that our language & customs are the only ones we need to know. And for a while, we were so powerful that that was true. I don't think it's true anymore. If we aren't able to compete in a global marketplace, America will become a backwater.

ARe all state documents in both?

I am lead to understand that the arabic persons
in israeli culture are barred from certain areas.
I really am not so referencing officialdom, but the
endemic culture. Los angeles has equal spanish and
english on the ballots, but when you investigate the
neighborhoods, hte upper class preference clearly is
english.

When jerusalem starts preferring arabic... then
it'll be equal... but lik i said, i'm dubious.

funny way of being equal.. When jerusalem starts preferring arabic.....

but you dont understand.....arabic persons are not barred from certain areas......(socially they are...just as jews are "barred" socially from certain areas, as are bedoin, christians etc....as in all societies with various subcultures-none of it legal)

so since your facts are wrong...are you still "dubious"....

My history book for israel is indeed revisionist, but i do
believe i read it properly. Clearly a lower class is
taking the brunt of a class/race war, and that lower class
is not hebrew; excuse again how it is typically excused.

*so* everyone has equality there, that explains why the
bloody place has exacerbated divisiveness and terrorism
the world over my whole lifetime... obviosusly because
the've got their class situation sorted out with an
equal-equal solution.

There *IS* a class strife subterfuge in Los Angeles with
spanish, and i do indeed believe the metaphor applies
perfectly well to the israeli repression and theft of
the land of its original people. Both involve the subtle
denegration of the original cuture and its language, that
it is the language/culture of the defeated, economic
migrant lower classes, for all the equality, arabic is
not used in the knesset. Spanish is not used in congress.

And i'll wager that there will never be a law written
100% in spanish, passed by the congress and signed by the
president. I'll wager as well, that there will never be
arabic legislation passed in the Knesset.

you being extremly ethnocetnric (egotisitical) to bring your western terminology in to the middle east. The world does not revolve around your "western interpretation of the events. Israel sits in the middle east where a different culture exists.

Our "equality within israel with the variety of cultures and people is by far is one of the most liberal culturals around...dispite the fact that its in a constant state of war....and if you would like some simple proof:

israeli arabs have no intention of moving to the independant palestine....quite the opposite...and the arab/middle east culture is alive and well in israel..as much as the israeli arabs want to preserve it....as do many national agencies...

we're not in Los angeles....

I expect a tough upbraid, but racism is racism,
no matter where you put your country, and who you
take the land from.

It is not so impressive, all the behaviour.
Israeli ex-soldiers i've met in india have proven,
very racist and very coarse indeed, so i can see
how the problem keeps rolling.

I apologize for my ethnocentric egotism, i have
indeed benefitted immensely as a child of the great
imperial boom of the americanaisraeli military
cooperation. I have met many aerospace israeli
engineers working in the bombs and missile plants
of america working to keep the world safe, back when
i believed that keeping my job in a missile
component factory was a good idea to keep the world safe.

But there was a point, at the invasion of lebannon,
where something went askew, reaganism, thatcherism,
and the rise, in every culture of "something askew".
And osama commented that the world trade center was
initially conceieved in the beirut nightmare, so hmmm.
the thing came back to bite, that invasion of lebannon
and all the fucked up shit in that place.

I want the middle east people there to sort out their own fucking
mess and shut the fuck up. I'm sick of hearing from
them and about them an their ugly way of murdering
and imprisoning each other. I'm so angry with the
"mythical them" and it comes across in my egotistical
ethnocentric remarks. And most frustrating of all, seems
that the people doing the killing is my own president and
his buddies the state terrorists of the world.

Sometimes, the shit just stinks, and i think the whole
load of people involved in that mess, the worldwide lot
of them who've participated in that fuckup, from the
zionist purges of russia and europe, the nazis, the
phalatgist(sp) militias, the jewish murder helicopters,
and i see an ugly continuous case of evil abuse
begetting another generational evil abuse, and here
we are in generation <xyz>, continuing with more abuse.
Its inexcusable what israel has become, if the place
claims to be governed by civil people.

I'm furious with those civil people for making me and
my loved ones all over the world, look at their ugly
garbage war, like they have a civil right to abuse me
through world media for being born on the earth,
all because they have a perpeptual cutlure of
ongoing abuse that hops from continent to continent
in search of new ground for war profiteering.

If iran is looking to make nuclear missiles to defend
itself from a nuclear israel then who the heck is there
to blame for that? Who is doing the nuclear terrorism
threatening with the first implied arsenal?

The ethnocentric view that "its one of the most liberal cutlures around",
depends on which culture you mean. All i see is a prison,
ethnocentric liberalism enforced at the barrel of a gun,
liberal indeed.

/rant

There you go. Proof positive. It IS SO an evil language!

:sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm:

a dialect of Quechua, a native language spoken in the Andes with many similar dialects.

But many other languages are:

www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=VE

Aymara that is spoken in the Andean parts of northern Chile. Chavez looks like an indigenous Andean to me so therefore I made the assumption. I know it wouldn't be Quechuan but a dialect of it. I throw words out sometimes that everyone is familiar with rather than nitpick the details. However, if Chavez's origin is in the rainforest then his language would be different.

It's quite possible that his first language was Spanish.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Ch%C3%A1vez

abuelitos (grandparents) spoke their native language in the home. I lived in S. America and I know that the indigenous people were considered an underclass so many of them tried to shake off their culture to fit in. It doesn't mean that they didn't learn it at home.

I heard Spanish all the time (DUH!), although it was not the language of the
part of Spain where I was living (Catalan was). Nonetheless, not once
did I hear anyone there say that Spanish was an evil language. Not even
the Basques came up with that line.

The Spanish spoken in Spain sounds like it has a swishing, lisping sound to it. I have a lot of people in my town who are day laborers from Mexico Central America, and South America, and their Spanish is a lot "smoother" in the sense that I rolls off the tounge better than Spanish spoken in Spain. BTW, if you ever read Catalan, it looks more like Italian than Spanish in terms of alphaebet, and a little like French. Also, you should check out Galician, which looks a lot like Portuguese (Galicia is a province of Spain directly north of Portugal, so Portuguese and Galician used to be the same language a one point.)

They lisp all of their "s's" into "th's" & also have some obscure verb forms that aren't present in Latin American Spanish. In Andulusia & the southern regions of Spain, the ends of words are chopped off & slurred together. As someone trying to learn the language, I found Latin American Spanish much easier to understand.

He took a trip to Spain, I think around 1992, and he was in southern Spain for most of the time. The same year, Spain was hosting a World's Fair in Seville (or, in Spanish: "Exposición Universal de Sevilla, Expo ’92.") Instead of saying "expo," most of the people in the region say "epo" and leave out the x entirely.

What sucks about the vosotros forms of verbs is that they are only spoken in Spain and think in parts of Argentina. As a result, from my experience, I took three years of Spanish in high school, and we never learned it. Then when I got to college I was forced to learn this verb form that I had spent in high school skipping in the pages of my textbook. The funny thing about Vosotros though, is that it's English equivalent is "you all" or "y'all." It's the informal version of "ustedes" which means "you guys."

They should NOT be discouraged from speaking in their native tounge or teaching their children how to. If the grandchildren of Mexican immigrants don't speak Spanish, I hope it's only because of natural assimilation (which is why you don't see many Italian-Americans speaking Italian, Irish-Americans speaking Gaelic, or Polish-Americans speaking Polish), and not because of racist discouragement.

My grandfather refused to teach his children any Italian whatsoever. He only spoke Italian when he was on the telephone with relatives in Italy. It was a matter of pride to him - he felt that he would be doing his children and grandchildren a disservice to do anything but fully assimilate our family as soon as possible. (Thank goodness he didn't feel that way about food!)

I'm not saying this is right or wrong, just how the immigrant I know handled it. If there was any discouragement from identifying ourselves as Italians, it was from my grandfather!

hispanics use English instead of Spanish.

Of course it's not an evil language, and her point was "why were we made to feel like it was?!"

I could be wrong, but that's my read.

Just as teachers in Louisiana discouraged French. And teachers in Ireland discouraged Irish.

Spanish is not a lanuage that came from abroad into the United States. The United States, in various military actions and treaties, annexed Spanish speaking peoples and were obligated to respect their cultural, linguistic and religious peculiarities.

are all at fault for forcing the indigenous people to speak our languages.

Spanish and English were languages of empire, only Spanish allowed more access to native peoples than English. Anyway, my point was that the United States, even if the language of law and government is English, cannot be considered monolingual.

We should be learning at least the basics of Spanish, Mandrin Chinese, Japanese, and Hindi.

And not to be culturally rounded, but out of pure common sense. Look at the map.
In our part of Germany, it's an hour's drive to Holland, 2 hours to Belgium, and
three hours to France. An hour's plane flight, and you can be in Italy, Poland,
England or Denmark. Your job opportunities in Europe are reduced to TV repairman
if all you can do is speak one language. My daughters grew up bilingually as I
spoke to them in my native English and my wife spoke to them in her native German.
They have now attended school in both countries, and the younger one spent some
time at the Sorbonne in Paris, as well.

My brother's wife is from Japan, and their elder son is furious with his mom
for always having spoken to him in her broken English, as fluency in Japanese
is a guaranteed ticket to a decent job for an American kid. Always be fluent
in the language of the country you are living in, no matter where it is, but
always learn as many other languages as you can.

Unless, that is, your dream career is to be the local TV repair man.