How many languages can you speak?
I was born in South Bronx, New York to Puerto Rican parents. When I was growing up everyone around me spoke Spanish: our family, friends, people in the neighborhood, everyone. It was normal for us.
Then when I was nine years old we moved to Ohio. Well lets just say it was a big culture shock. I can honestly say I can count on one hand the number of Hispanics I went to school with growing up, not counting family. Our family fell out of the habit of speaking Spanish on an everyday basis. By the time I reached high school I could barely scrap a few words together to form an understandable sentence. This is even after three years of Spanish class. Unbelievable right?!
So to the answer the question I would say I am fluent in one and a half language. Weird I know. I speak English fluently and I can understand Spanish almost completely. But for the life of me I cannot get my mouth to speak the words that form in my head. I'm not sure what my problem is. So at the most I speak Spanglish. I start with some Spanish words and throw in a few English ones to complete my sentence! My husband is amazed at how I could sit and have a long conversations with my Abuela. She will talk to me in Spanish and I will respond in English. Hey it works.
I do feel as if I am losing a bit of my heritage/culture since I don't speak fluent Spanish and I didn't teach it to my kids. I have told my husband that I want us as a family to work on learning Spanish next year - as part of our New Years goals. I think it would be good for us as a family. So we'll see how it will all work out.
How about you? How many languages do you speak?
So to the answer the question I would say I am fluent in one and a half language. Weird I know. I speak English fluently and I can understand Spanish almost completely. But for the life of me I cannot get my mouth to speak the words that form in my head. I'm not sure what my problem is. So at the most I speak Spanglish. I start with some Spanish words and throw in a few English ones to complete my sentence! My husband is amazed at how I could sit and have a long conversations with my Abuela. She will talk to me in Spanish and I will respond in English. Hey it works.
I do feel as if I am losing a bit of my heritage/culture since I don't speak fluent Spanish and I didn't teach it to my kids. I have told my husband that I want us as a family to work on learning Spanish next year - as part of our New Years goals. I think it would be good for us as a family. So we'll see how it will all work out.
How about you? How many languages do you speak?
Sign up here if you are joining me on my 30 day blog challenge. This will be one long continuous list of everyone's blog postings for the month!
| 1. | samscrochet.blogspot.com/2011/08/september-30-d... | Samira of Sam's Crochet | |
| 2. | donnaroseartist.blogspot.com/ | donnarose | |
| 3. | lollydollops.blogspot.com | Hilari | |
| 4. | samscrochet.blogspot.com/2011/09/sept-1-me-and-... | Samira of Sam's Crochet | |
| 5. | lollydollops.blogspot.com/2011/09/30-day-blog-c... | Hilari |
(Cannot add links: Registration/trial expired)
I think that's a great idea! I used to be able to speak French fairly well, but now I'm like you...I can barely speak it at all. I can still understand most of it if the person doesn't speak really fast. I also think about taking a refresher course or something...maybe if I plan a vacation to France it will give me the motivation:)
ReplyDeleteI have the same resolution as you to speak Spanish to our children so they can pick up a few nouns at least.
ReplyDeleteWe went on holiday this year and met a couple , the guy was from Barcelona (catalan) the mum was Dutch (2nd language English) and they lived in Milan (Italian) The 3year old could speak 3 languages! I felt so inadequate.