My Language Story
"Do you speak spanish?" might be one of my least favorite questions in the world. I never know what to say. Would it be lying if I said yes with no other pretext? Or should I just say no to keep it safe and simple? Or do I always break into a shpiel about how I understand it way more than I speak it? I am a second generation puerto rican- american and spanish has always played a big roll in my life.
My parents were the first generation to have been born in the states, so my grandparents only spoke and understood spanish. Spending as much time with them as I did forced me to understand a good amount of spanish that has stuck with me forever. There are still to this day words tat I am learning the English meaning for. Avacado has is the newest addition to my vocabulary. Avoacate is what it's been called for as long as I could remember. Speaking didn't happen, though, because as they learned more english I found it much less frustrating to communicate if I didn't sit and try to find the spanish words and grammar to express myself if they got the point of what I was saying. Thus weakening my conversational fluency. By the time I'd grown out of that phase and genuinely wanted to perfect my spanish, my grandparents were no longer around.
This marked the next phase in my language story. My parents are fluent in spanish but once it was no longer a necessity to speak it, the less it seemed to be used with us. I began classes in school and I was awkwardly placed at first because I knew enough vocabulary and on top of my accent sounding like i would know exactly hat to say, it was intimidating. But I was always scared to really challenge myself because I felt like I would look like a fake. Or a shame, I should already know this. This is my family's language, and I can't smoothly hold a conversation that requires more than basic grammar or common vocab. To some it sounds silly but I had too much pride to really show my level of knowledge, which in turn never challenged myself and I never really got any better.
Even to this day, I am still struggling with internalizing all of the factors of spanish that will better my fluency. However, I'm more determined than ever because I fear that if I never learn then I will not be able to keep it alive in my family for the future. For example, my little brother who is only 8, recently said "I'm not puerto rican, I don't even speak spanish. I'm american." And that absolutely broke my heart. Not only because he is at a point where he has no type of motivation to learn the language, but because we as a family have not instilled the same pride and appreciation of our culture that was so prominent in my life growing up. It's so upsetting to me because I always thought that was one of the things that made my life so interesting and great, that we had traditions and tendencies that not everyone had.
i love my heritage and I love my language, so I want to do everything i can to keep it alive.
