The speaking of Spanish in the US has become a focus of the culture wars, with some Americans seeing it as an assault on ‘American values’. When Bad Bunny, a rap artist, performed in Spanish at the Super Bowl, Donald Trump complained that nobody understood a word he was saying.
That wasn’t true, though. Not even close. In fact, America has almost as many Spanish speakers as Spain – about 40 million – with many more studying Spanish at school or college and speaking it well as a second language.
At the same time, however, families who move to the US from Spanish-speaking countries tend to assimilate quite quickly, becoming primarily English speakers within a couple of generations, and finding out, when they visit their countries of origin for their holidays, that it’s hard to have a conversation with their Abuelita. And Spanish speakers in the US, and to some extent in Latin America, make abundant use of loanwords from English, like ‘picop’ (pick-up truck] and ‘jaiscul’ (high school), and even import grammatical structures from English.
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: linguistic diversity is beautiful, and there’s no reason why people can’t happily speak two or more languages. The more communication the better!
We’re sure that Abuelita would agree.
Photo Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/a-flag-on-a-pole-JPNh_hW_SPk
