When a Language Is Lost, Other Losses Follow

As once more I read letters from student authors at Vaughn Street School in Pacoima, I am amazed at the correctness of the notes, written in English and Spanish. Maria and Noemi, budding authors, have attached drawings. In squiggly lines of perfect Spanish, they thank me for coming to their class and reading from my book, “Hoyt Street,” set in Pacoima. I envy their bilingualism--the ability to read and write in English and Spanish. To have retained a language I was not allowed to speak in school. To be in bilingual classes.

As a child of Mexican immigrants, el Espanol was lost to me in infancy. By the time I was in first grade, I had all but forgotten how to speak Spanish! My birth name, like those of my friends, was Anglicized by teachers; Maria Elena gave way to Mary Helen. Like those opposing bilingual education, our teachers immersed us in el Ingles without taking into account what it means to lose a mother tongue. Their goal: to mainstream us into the dominant society.

Mine was a common experience. Like my friends and siblings, I strove to read and enunciate the words in our schoolbooks in a way that would make me una Americana. Prodded by teachers at Pacoima Elementary, I put aside el Espanol, the sonorous language heard at 16 of September fiestas and in church, and became immersed in English. My friends and I began to disdain Spanish. It was too foreign!

I find it difficult to understand why some Latino parents are against bilingual education and want it abolished. Rather than continue with programs that allow children to gradually move into English-only groups--while preserving their natal language--they ask that their children be immersed in English-only classes. Forget Spanish!

Yet, in today’s world, command of more than one language is a plus; many employers welcome language diversity. Conversely, grappling for words in a language rarely spoken can be traumatic. Recently I attended a function where the keynote speaker, a Chicano attorney with offices in Beverly Hills, spoke in a Spanish that was so bad he was almost hissed of the podium. Pobrecito. At the reception that followed, when a Mexican poet read his works, few in the group appeared to understand what he was saying. Still, the Spanish I learned as a child refuses to die. Through trial and error I translate stories from English to Spanish, but each time I present a paper at a Mexican university, I sweat buckets.

One might ask: Of what use is Spanish in an English-speaking world? Let me enumerate.

Knowledge of Spanish has introduced me to the music of Joaquin Rodrigo, Manuel Ponce (not a relative) and allowed me to fully grasp the art of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Had I not been exposed to Spanish I might have never read the works of Rosario Castellanos, Elena Poniatowska, Juan Rulfo. An interest in literatura Mexicana has led me to write biographies of Mexican women writers, whom I interviewed using my best Spanish. Because I retain a feel for this most beautiful of languages, the words just flowed.

And yet, what might I, and others like me who were robbed of our mother tongue, have accomplished had we been allowed to grow up bilingual in Spanish and English? To read, write, and think in the language of our ancestors? Why did not educators--or our parents--see the value in bilingualism? Why not do as the Japanese: Send us to Saturday school to retain the language and culture of la madre patria, the motherland?

Those who demand full student immersion in English, rather than a gradual weaning, should consider this change with care. Why not draw on children’s innate ability to grow in more than one language? As someone who has lived the experience, I can assure them, loss of language is irretrievable.