The Advice My Mother Ignored

I know sometimes people say, “Well, how come your family started or kept on speaking Spanish at home? What was it that motivated them?” And my answer is they had no choice. That was their language, just like anybody who travels anywhere or who migrates anywhere, you keep using the language that you know best. And so thank God for that because that meant that Lydia and I, my sister and I, spoke Spanish at home. We didn't speak English. We didn't learn English until we started school. I remember the story of Lydia's I think fifth grade teacher who said to my mother, "Mrs. Cortés, you must speak English at home." And she said, “Mm-hmm,” and didn't pay any attention to them, thank goodness. And she could actually speak English pretty well.

It’s like when something is ingrained in you, it's who you are and it doesn't mean that you can't speak another language, it just means that it's more meaningful to you. It's more natural. Now it's natural for me to, like it was when my husband was living, for us to speak Spanish. It's natural for me when I see babies that my Spanish comes out rather than my English, even if they're not Spanish-speaking or from a Spanish-speaking family, there are certain things associated with language. So for example, I don't think that words mean the same, like “Mamá” does not mean the same as “Mom.” It doesn't for me, it has a different feel, a different connotation.

So, even though I, like many other immigrant children, including Puerto Rican children, were made to feel ashamed of speaking another language at home, made to feel embarrassed, and that happens to so many kids, I did not want to speak Spanish, but what choice did I have when that's what our parents spoke to us always.

So even as we became teenagers, Lydia and I would respond in English to our parents, but they would also always speak to us in Spanish, especially my father who, as I've written in a piece that I wrote, who read the Daily News every day but could not pronounce it.

So I'm really glad that my mother paid no attention to those suggestions, that pressure to speak only English at home. Home is where you should be able to speak your language. And she didn't know all the “researchy” kinds of reasons for doing that. When you speak your language at home, you have a solid foundation that you can build on to learn English and any other language because you understand without, as a five-year-old, you couldn't explain it, but you understand sort of the structure of language. And if you are forced to not speak it, I think the consequences can be dire, not only in terms of your psychological wellbeing, but also in terms of your future education and so on.