"And they don't want the same thing for their kids. "First generation parents, for example, suffer a lot when they get here because they don't speak English or they don't speak English well," said Torres, whose book on Spanish language use in Chicago comes out next year. against other languages, especially Spanish and indigenous languages, languages that aren't considered prestigious, and the people who speak it," Torres said.ĭuring the first year of the pandemic, half of Latinos in the United States reported experiencing some form of discrimination and about 23% said they were criticized for speaking Spanish in public, according to Pew. The loss of Spanish is not due to an individual problem of Latinos not wanting to learn or maintain the language but rather the "really hostile context in the U.S. "On the other hand, Spanish can be exceptionally stigmatized in certain parts of the country, and linked, because of political discourses, to toxic identities, identities that are constructed as criminal."įor many Latinos, it takes "an extraordinary effort" to preserve their Spanish, said Lourdes Torres, a professor in DePaul University's Department of Latin American and Latino Studies in Chicago. "On the one hand, Spanish can, depending on the region, hang on longer than other languages," Carter said. ![]() Spanish, however, may be retained longer than other languages in areas of the country like Florida's Miami-Dade County, where there's a large percentage of Spanish speakers, or Texas, where the language has a historical presence, Carter said. The share drops to 24% among third or higher generation Latinos. According to a 2017 report by Pew, about half of second-generation Latinos are bilingual. In the United States, immigrant languages that aren't English are usually lost after three generations. Language abilities tend to diminish across generations. born," said Phillip Carter, a professor of linguistics at Florida International University. "We're talking about the share of Latinx people in the United States who speak Spanish the share is decreasing because the language is being lost among the U.S. ![]() In 20, virtually all Hispanic population growth came from births, according to Pew. The drop in the share of Latinos speaking Spanish at home is because the growth of the Latino population has been driven by births as immigration from Latin America has slowed. Among U.S.-born Latinos, the share has decreased from 66% to 55%. ![]() But many factors, including English dominance and language discrimination, make maintaining Spanish difficult for many Latino families in the United States.Įven though the number of Latinos who speak Spanish at home has been growing, the share has declined-from 78% in 2000 to 68% in 2021, according to the Pew Research Center. Many U.S.-born Latinos like Gore face the pressure and expectation to speak fluent Spanish. "She kind of had this basically, like, perfect Spanish and I was far enough behind that it was kind of that feeling of like shame that, if I wasn't able to do it perfectly, I shouldn't do it at all," said Gore, a 20-year-old college student in Chicago. Her family in Peru didn't expect her to speak the language, and when she did, it was "a big deal-it was just not the kind of attention that I wanted." And she compared her level of fluency to her older sister's Spanish. But early on in life, Gore lost her fluency in Spanish.
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