When you stand between two worlds, you can feel neither here nor there. Growing up in a Mexican American household in Texas often made me feel that way, especially when it came to language.
Some members of my extended family spoke only Spanish. Other members of my extended family spoke only English. And in my home, we spoke neither language perfectly and both languages often. We spoke Spanglish.
“Go get the brush off the cómoda,” my mom might say to direct us to the dresser.
“Use that big cabeza of yours,” my dad might say when we did something without thinking.
My sisters and I grew up being called “mija” and my brother “mijo,” shortened versions of mi hija and mi hijo, my daughter and my son, but we called our parents “mom” and “dad.”
When we fell, we didn’t land on our behinds; we landed on our “nalgas.” And those rolls of fat on a person’s side that are known as love handles were “lonjas” to us — as in “If you pinch my lonjas again, I’ll kick your nalgas.”
Spanglish is often described in the context of bilingualism. A dual ability. Two gifts. But that’s not what it was for my siblings and me. We didn’t speak two languages. We spoke one language that was a patchwork of two. There’s a difference.
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As a kid, that lack of fluency sometimes frustrated me and often caused me to think in terms of what I couldn’t do.
I couldn’t tell you what the English word for cómoda was, and words that were easily distinguishable to other people often got tangled in my mind. I still want to call the edge of a sidewalk a “curve” instead of a “curb.”
Another thing I couldn’t do: I couldn’t communicate with my grandfather who spent much of his life working as a laborer and a gardener.
He had crossed the border from Mexico alone at the age of 9, and I’m sure he brought with him fascinating stories. I never heard any of them. Instead, when I would walk up the green-painted steps in front of my grandparents’ house on the southside of San Antonio and find him sitting in his usual spot, inside a front room on a sofa held together with tape, I would kiss him on the cheek and walk away. That changed only after he asked my mom to let me stay with him for a week during a summer break when I was 10. We spent those days watching Spanish television shows and eating food he cooked. I remember us laughing a lot. I don’t remember a single sentence he said to me.
I understand why my parents didn’t teach us Spanish. They were part of a generation that was belittled, chastised and even physically punished in schools for speaking the language. When my father was in middle school, a teacher once heard him say “Qué pasó” to a group of friends. He wasn’t in class when those two words slipped out of his mouth, but it didn’t matter. He was hit anyway with a wooden paddle. Speaking Spanish had literally brought my dad pain, so it’s not surprising that when he and my mom had children, they decided to spare us from that. Many Mexican Americans from that generation made the same decision.
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Right now, we are in National Hispanic Heritage Month. That means you will hear a lot about the contributions of Latinos. You will see schools honor Hispanic heroes and corporations celebrate employees with last names like Acosta, Garcia and Reyes. When done poorly, those tributes can be eyerolling. When done right, they can offer a way for us to reflect on what it means to be Latino in this country and appreciate the diversity of our experiences.
When you are Latino, people often want to know if you speak Spanish or not. Sometimes the answer is easy. But for some of us, it is messy. It is “sí and no.” It is “I didn’t grow up speaking it, but I learned it in school.” It is “no, pero I speak Spanglish.” On Wednesday, the Pew Research Center released a report that looked at language among the Hispanic population in the country. Among the findings were that more than half of U.S. Latinos — 63 percent — say they use Spanglish at least sometimes, and 40 percent say they speak it often.
When I left for college, I decided to learn Spanish. I took classes, and I spent more than six months studying in Chile and traveling throughout South America. Later, I also spent weeks living in Guatemala and taking language classes.
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You might think that speaking Spanglish as my first language would give me an advantage over the other students who participated in those overseas programs. It did not. It led me instead to realize, often in hilarious ways, that many of the words I grew up hearing didn’t actually exist in any Spanish dictionary. Pronouncing cake as keh-keh it turns out will not get you dessert in Santiago. It will get you a sideways glance.
Another time, when a young boy showed me his school photo, I used a word I grew up knowing to mean “cute.” His shocked expression let me know that I had used a real Spanish word but it did not carry that meaning for him. Thankfully, I knew enough Spanish by then to apologize and explain the mistake.
For a long while, I viewed the Spanglish of my childhood as not enough. Not enough English. Not enough Spanish. And, in that way, I viewed myself as not enough. I felt insecure about the way I pronounced certain English words in front of native English speakers and embarrassed that I had to pause to conjugate Spanish verbs in my head in front of native Spanish speakers.
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It took me until adulthood before I learned to appreciate Spanglish as a unique American language that reflected my unique Mexican American upbringing.
The language I grew up hearing was flexible and fluid. It was playful and rhythmic. It made no sense and perfect sense. I had a Tía Pepa and a Tía Ana and a Tía Cherola. I also had an Aunt Linda and an Aunt Susie and an Aunt Lolly.
Spanglish, it turns out, didn’t keep me from existing here or there. It took me far enough into two worlds daily to appreciate both.
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