Please click here to read Part One of this guest essay by Alice Gray of Bilingual Baby. In Part One, Gray charted the experiences before motherhood that shaped her decision to raise her daughter in non-heritage Spanish; she also chronicled the early years of their language experiment.
In Part Two, Gray updates us on her language journey with her daughter. But she also widens her scope to consider the contexts of race, class, and citizenship that situate her decision. Gray’s discussion here—of how non-heritage speakers are often praised for learning a second language while heritage speakers’ bilingualism is often seen as a deficit—is timely on a personal level. In August, my almost-5-year-old will transition from his freewheelin’ forest preschool to our neighborhood public school for kindergarten. His school has a dual-language program, with a mix of instruction in English and Spanish, like the one Gray describes below.
Gray’s piece also brought to mind this essay I read with my freshman composition students in the early weeks of the semester, when I was asking them to question previously held writing advice, to scrutinize the myths they’ve grown up with about writing. On my campus, a majority of students come from Latinx backgrounds, and many of them have their own complex and varied personal and family relationships to the Spanish language. In his essay for Bad Ideas About Writing, writing researcher Steven Alvarez questions the assumption that “Official American English is Best.” As Gray does here, Alvarez asks that “rather than approach the diversity of our voices in the United States as gaps to be overcome toward learning English,” we recognize them instead for what they are: “linguistic gifts.”
Garden Fence
“First he ate some lettuces, and some French beans; and then he ate some radishes; And then, feeling rather sick, he went to look for some parsley.”
–Beatrix Potter, The Tale of Peter Rabbit
As English became more prevalent in my daughter’s world, it nibble away at the Spanish I had so carefully planted, like everyone’s favorite English bunny, Peter. After an entire day at her cousin’s house on the weekend it could be difficult for her to say the simplest things in Spanish. She had to warm back up to it. There’s no question that my daughter is fluent in both languages and is definitely a native English speaker, but she’s not a native Spanish speaker—she lacks the native part, the cultural part, the association with a birth country where the language is spoken. So what is she? In her book, Dr. Zurer Pearson says that it’s possible to have more than one first language. This, I decided, describes her perfectly.
If you foster both languages equally, and provide the same amount of input for both, they can remain equally as strong. But, as Zurer Pearson points out, that never happens. Most bilingual children get more exposure to whatever the majority language is outside the home, and the majority language always begins to dominate. That also describes my daughter. She’s four years old now, and the older she gets, the less she wants to speak Spanish, and it makes perfect sense. Nearly all the language input she gets that isn’t from me is in English, especially the important input—that from other children. She goes to a private Spanish immersion preschool, and her teachers certainly speak only Spanish to her, but the language of play and friendship among the kids is English. For a while it worked to remind her that if we ever saw her friends from Costa Rica again, she would need her Spanish. If you don’t speak it, I reminded her, you’ll forget it. But it’s been almost two years since that summer, nearly half her life ago.
The other day she was trying to tell a knock, knock joke in English and had to ask me how to say caballo (horse). But these little moments where Spanish comes out stronger than English are fewer and further between. I used to take comfort in the fact that when she woke up in the middle of the night and was at her sleepiest and neediest, the words out of her mouth were always in Spanish. To me that was some kind of sign that the language was deeply ingrained in her, a part of her subconscious and a language of comfort. But now it’s hit or miss—she’s just as likely to call out to me at night in English as she is in Spanish.
Tragically, the same properties of the Language Acquisition Device that make children perfect little language learners, also make them especially good at losing language. The brain, which at one point, could distinguish every sound from every language, lets the unimportant fall away, keeping only what it needs. An overabundance of neural connections formed in childhood (over 1 million new connections per second) gets pruned to back by about half to something reasonable and useful. If there’s no more input, the brain sees no reason to keep those connections, and allows them to burn out.
I know that there are many solid neurological connections holding onto the language for her. But she’s not out of the weeds. I meet people all the time who tell me they “used to be fluent in Spanish.” It was common in the 1980’s when I was growing up for Hispanic parents to stop speaking Spanish with their kids. Between the English Only movement and misinformed fears that bilingualism confused and delayed children, many Spanish-speaking families did what they could to put English first. If I stopped speaking to my daughter in Spanish and took her out of her language immersion preschool, all her Spanish could melt away. This is a reality I’ve always kept at the forefront. I’ve never assumed her Spanish was “safe.”
And while I have doggedly put Spanish first when making decisions around raising my child, I cannot compare how I would feel if my daughter lost her Spanish to how another mother might feel, one who is Hispanic, who is passing on her native language, or the native language of her grandmother or great-grandmother.
Community Gardening
“You are not special. You are the reason my grandmother feared her children would speak with accents. So afraid, she buried her first language in the space between blood and bone because your grandparents wouldn’t let her make a home outside her body.”
- Ariana Brown, Dear White Girls in My Spanish Class
Because we live in Texas, engaging with the Spanish language is not so hard to do. Being able to check out books in Spanish at our public library is a gift, as is having our choice of Spanish immersion and dual language schools. If I were trying to do this in rural Minnesota, I’d really be on my own. But here, we can buy elote at a stand outside our neighborhood grocery, El Rancho. Last time we went, the vendor asked if my daughter wanted cheese in her cup, and when she heard us speaking Spanish to each other, her face lit up and she switched to Spanish with us. It surprises people to see my daughter speak fluent Spanish. And most people are delighted by it. I’ve had native speakers tell me they feel honored that I’m teaching my daughter their language, and we bond over what a beautiful language it is. But I’ve also gotten concerned looks from native speakers—one mother, a new immigrant to Texas, couldn’t understand why I would want my daughter to speak Spanish. Here she was, limited in the kind of work she could do, limited in her ability to maneuver school, legal, and government bureaucracy, limited in so many ways because of her Spanish. English was her priority, shouldn’t it be mine?
Questions of culture, socioeconomic status, privilege, and race are inescapable when we talk about language.
Throughout history those in power have used language to oppress entire peoples and cultures. I cannot help but think about cultural dynamics in the context of my language experiment with my daughter. I am not passing on Pine Language on to her; I’m passing on a real language which comes with the weight of real history and culture. If I were a white mother living in Texas raising my daughter in non-native French, that would raise different cultural questions, but none quite as sensitive as those around a white mother in Texas raising her daughter in non-native Spanish. First, she would have lost her French a long time ago because no one here speaks it. But more to the point, my daughter doesn’t have to exist under the burden of generations of linguistic oppression, of racism, that her Hispanic peers do.
When I speak Spanish to her in public, I risk some strange looks from moms at the playground. But native and heritage speakers of the language risk racist comments from people who might tell them that in this country “we speak English,” people emboldened by the racist rhetoric and policies currently coming out of the White House. I care what the process of raising a bilingual child looks like for other children in Texas, not just my own, and through a project I work with, El Niño y El Cuento, I get to talk with parents, children, educators and thinkers on the subject of bilingualism. This Spanish language writing contest for kids has taken me to bilingual conferences, into dual language classrooms, and has connected me with organizations that promote childhood bilingualism and multiculturalism. In these spaces I have a sounding board outside of myself and my baby. Gone are the days when I stayed home and nursed my infant daughter while learning Spanish from telenovelas.
In an interview on the Entre Dos podcast, Dr. Melissa Barlat echoes a sentiment I’ve heard in the bilingual community in Austin:
In U.S. society, we have this very serious language ideology problem. And the language ideology problem is: if you are white and affluent, it’s positive and productive for you to use and learn another language, ‘Yay, you! Aplauso!.’ But if you are brown and poor, learning and using another language is cultural baggage. And the fact is from a health standpoint, that language ideology is harmful to families who are culturally and linguistically diverse because it mediates how they talk to their children. Which therefore impacts that child’s school readiness once he or she starts kindergarten and therefore impacts that child’s literacy gains.
This double standard where society rewards a white person for being multilingual is something that my daughter and I both benefit from. She gets frequent positive feedback for the surprise she’s able to deliver with her fluency in the language. Adults often tell her how smart she is for knowing so much Spanish. For my part, I have found that while I generally dread public speaking, I’m better at it in Spanish because no one expects me to be able to say much.
Alice speaking at the Mexican consulate for a reading organized by El Niño y El Cuento.
When I present in front of a full house at the Mexican Consulate where El Niño y El Cuento holds student readings, I can deliver my message confidently, even make people laugh, even stop to breathe, smile, and take in the moment. My Spanish impresses audience members, puts them at ease, and allows them to hear what I’m saying. Society’s expectations of us matter, and if we are looking to change the message our bilingual children receive, public education is a good place to start. Education is where society’s preconceptions and fears around other languages get concentrated into clear messaging and then disbursed to young minds. And while we’ve come a long way, we still have a long way to go.
Historically, Hispanic children in Texas were made to attend segregated schools like Blackwell School in Marfa, Texas, where Mexican American children in that town attended until 1965 (ten years after Brown v. Board of Education). At Blackwell, children were physically punished for speaking Spanish and made to write phrases like “I will not speak Spanish in school or on the playground.” The Bilingual Education Act of 1968 recognized that English language learners needed additional support in school—it wasn’t enough to put them in classes with English speakers and expect them to thrive. But funneling English language learners through the model we came up with (English as a Second Language) has presented problems, one of which, segregation, we were already very familiar with. Traditionally, ESL classes are separated, the teachers don’t necessarily speak the child’s native language, and the goal is English learning, rather than study of all subjects. This model can result in stagnation of academic development in a child’s native language, alienation from their English-speaking peers, and even shame of their native language. Children who attend classes where their native language is being left at the door get the message that the language they speak at home isn’t valued.
“Speak Spanish” written on the chalkboard in class at Marfa's Blackwell school. Photo Source: KLRU/PBS Learning Media
Aileen Passariello-McAleer, founder of Austin-based MamaLingua, sees an important part of her work as lifting up newly immigrated families, instilling in them a sense of pride that their children can be bilingual, before American society teaches them otherwise. Naturally, many of these families want their children in ESL classrooms where learning English is the primary focus, because they see English as the key to unlocking the promises of this country, promises that may not materialize for the parents, but offer so much hope for their children. Aileen encourages them to also consider the benefits of a truly bilingual education, where both English and Spanish are fostered.
In 2010, Austin Independent School District (AISD) implemented dual language programs. In these programs, English language learners are taught in both English and their native language. The goal of dual language education is to teach children to be bilingual, biliterate and bicultural. In addition to learning English, these kids will be able to read, write, and think critically in their native language, not just speak it. But these “one-way” dual language classes still take place in separate classrooms. Enter “two-way” dual language, where the students are made up of half English language learners and half English speakers. Not only do students benefit socially from an integrated classroom, but they also benefit linguistically—they hear, help, and interact with each other in both languages.
AISD has undergone a branding campaign for its Multilingual Department. In the district’s “Parent Cloud,” the icon for the dual language program application is of a kid dressed as a superhero, flying through the sky, cape fluttering behind her. The theme of last year’s Adelante conference put on by the Austin Area Association for Bilingual Education, was how bilingualism is a “superpoder.” It may seem hokey to brand bilingualism as a superpower, but it may also be the first time some AISD kids are given the message on a large scale that they are special for speaking two languages. And as more and more families advocate for dual language programs at their schools, bilingual students will see that everyone seems to want what they have, and they may start to believe the message that what they have is special.
The image of a superhero represents AISD's Multilingual Department.
As I click on the superhero icon in the Parent Cloud and submit the dual language application for my own daughter, I scroll down to the bottom of the form and click the following check boxes:
❏ Can speak and understand Spanish
❏ Lives in a bilingual home
❏ Attends a Spanish immersion daycare
❏ Has a Spanish-speaking parent
We’ve come so far on this language journey, and in theory, once you are literate in a language, it’s harder to forget—so bring on kindergarten. In the fall my daughter will go to the very same AISD elementary school I went to when I was her age, a school where 65% of the students are English language learners. There are going to be plenty of kids speaking Spanish on the playground during recess like there were when I went there, but they will also be her classmates. She will already know their names and she’ll be able to be all-in when she plays with them, thanks to dual language programming.
Blooms in Balance
I never used to allow myself to read to my daughter in English. Even the picture books we had that were in English, I translated on the spot. As she started getting into chapter books we read the Jack and Annie series, The Lion, the Witch and Wardrobe, and Charlotte’s Web all in Spanish. Last month I ordered Stuart Little from a seller in Spain, but there must have been a mistake because the version that arrived was in English. I allowed myself to indulge. She never seems to care either way whether I read to her in English or Spanish, but for me, it was such a pleasure to read Stuart Little in my native language, as it had been read to me, as it had been originally written. He’s such a funny little mouse, says such funny things: “Oh, fish feathers!”
Having finished Stuart Little, I went to my bookshelves in search of a book with a blue spine, familiar and worn. There it was, Someday Angeline, by Louis Sachar—my favorite book from childhood about a little girl who knew things from before she was born. I’d even made my husband read it before we got married so he could understand me better. My daughter and I are halfway through it, and even though I have to explain a lot of the word play, like why it’s funny that Angeline refers to her teacher whose name is “Miss Turbone” as “Mr. Bone,” she loves it, she gets it. But it’s not the bad jokes that have made me carry the book from apartment to apartment over the years. It was the first philosophical book I read. It made me see that we are all connected in quiet, unseen ways, and people who understand that are what Angeline calls “in balance with the whole.”
At night before bed, I tell her stories that I make up on the spot. I’ve never told her a bedtime story in English, and I don’t feel like I need to—these are sweet moments that we share in Spanish. But it feels right to allow myself a little more English with her at home. Maybe what Dr. Zurer Pearson said about having two first languages can be true for me too. Not that I have two first languages, but that with my daughter, I can have two love languages. There are some things I want to tell her in English, and some things I want to tell her in Spanish. We’ve gotten to a place where both languages feel right—warm, close, and easy.
Alice and her daughter reading Someday Angeline.
Bio: Alice Gray has written in her blog www.bilingualbaby.blog about early childhood language acquisition from the moment her daughter uttered her first words. You can listen to clips of her daughter speaking Spanish, read a more intimate depiction of her and her husband’s break down over how to function as a bilingual family, and see what creative ways she’s come up with to keep Spanish alive even as English creeps in. Alice is a writer and editor in Austin, Texas. She serves on the board of El Niño y El Cuento, a writing contest for children in Spanish, and works in operations at a Spanish and French immersion preschool.