Conserve your Cultural Heritage and Native Language
Keep your native language and invest in the future of the Latino community.
In a few words, celebrating your Quinceanera is honoring you roots and expressing your cultural heritage. This tradition encompasses many ideas and is seen through food, dance and celebration. This tradition of plurality and cultural diversity becomes evident in the interesting ways Quinceañeras are celebrated across the world.
There are those who love the Hispanic culture and their different contributions to the society as a whole. However, it’s amazing how the traditional Spanish language is fading away from everyday life and being replaced by a more American oriented mindset. This is especially evident in Hispanic families, who are starting a new life and gradually are adapting to an unknown nation. So begins my experience…
In 1993 I had just returned from a year in Japan, where I taught English to sophomores and juniors as a post-graduate fellow at Kyoto’s Doshisha University. Upon returning to Miami, I knew that I wanted to continue teaching, and I soon found a job teaching four levels of Japanese and one class of Spanish level 1 for Spanish Speakers. Having been born in Nicaragua, I figured teaching Spanish would be a piece of cake, while my Japanese classes would be a challenge. After the first day of class, however, I realized I was way in over my head…with my Spanish class! How could this be? Shouldn’t a native speaker be the ideal teacher for this course? About a week later, I begged my department chair to let me teach Spanish 1 for non-speakers – I could explain the difference between ser and estar much better than I could explain accent rules in Spanish.
When I was nine years old, my family left Nicaragua and what was to be a short vacation to the United States quickly turned into a new life, filled with the challenges of a new culture, a new school, new friends and, above all, a new language. I was lucky enough to have the support of friends and family, and my assimilation to the United States went relatively well. My mother, my brother and I gradually went from speaking to each other in Spanish at home to speaking to each other only in English. My father, on the other hand, always insisted we speak to him in Spanish, despite the fact that the more time I spent in the United States, the less cooperative my tongue became.
It wasn’t until I had been teaching for about ten years that I heard of the “Kitchen Spanish” phenomenon. Typical for recent immigrants, many of us maintain our Spanish around the house, while otherwise living in an English dominant world. As a result, while many of us can still order our cafecito and commiserate about the heat, we may struggle to participate in a conversation about the upcoming presidential election. However, it is amazing how immigrants learn to look forward by adapting to a different culture and language, learning the hard way. It is clear that there is a need for us to preserve our cultural and linguistic heritage. It is this heritage which makes us better global citizens, capable of easily straddling two cultures and languages not to mention better local citizens and greater assets to our communities.
One of the best ways in which we can maintain the gift of bilingualism is by continuing to improve our skills in our heritage language. It is not enough for us to communicate in our kitchens. We must refine our knowledge and remind ourselves that language learning, even for heritage and native speakers, is a never-ending process. Across the country, there are thousands of schools that offer Advanced Placement Spanish Language and Literature. In 2011, the College Board administered over 130,000 Spanish Language exams across the United States and abroad, and of those, more than 80,000 students indicated that they had extensive exposure to the language outside of the classroom, such as living in a Spanish-speaking country or speaking the language at home.
You are beginning a difficult age in your life and even if your media is totally related to the English language, you are the owner of your way and future. We have seen the numbers of such examinees grow by leaps and bounds in the last few years, as more of us realize the importance of maintaining our language skills in a country that increasingly values linguistic versatility. Planning your Quinceañera is a search for your past and ultimately becomes wonderful and rewarding path. Also, preserving our language takes time and effort, but let’s not forget that it is also part of investing in ourselves. By encouraging our youth to maintain or improve their skills in Spanish, we are indeed investing in the future of the Latino community as a whole.
This post is also available in: Spanish
