Reply To: Evolving from Spanglish to Spanish

  • blitzer

    Member
    July 16, 2022 at 8:39 pm

    Both my parents are from Chihuahua and when I was little, we were living with my moms sister here in California and they only spoke spanish in their house. My mom told me that one day when I was about 3 my dad came home and said I needed to learn english and we were moving. He had rented a house in a mostly white neighborhood and it made my mom mad as he made her move away from her family. My dad would only let me watch TV in english and I only played with the white kids on our street. My mom was mad that I wasn’t allowed to go over to my aunts house because my cousins didn’t speak much english and he was determined that his kid was going to speak english. I guess it must have worked. By the time I started kindergarden I was speaking english pretty good. I don’t remember having trouble understanding the teacher or the other kids. My dad was learning english too to get a better job but my mom never wanted to learn and only watched her telenovelas on the spanish channel. So at home I remember mostly talking in english with my dad and spanish with my mom. That made her mad too (see a pattern?) So my memories of learning english was my mom always mad and my mom and dad fighting. I think that probably messed me up somehow and why I avoided making contact with the Latino community for a long time. Although I can understand and speak spanish still, it’s difficult to read or write for me. And ever since I discovered Baja a few years ago, I want to go back and improve my spanish. Not sure where to start?

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