“When I was growing up, my parents spoke to each other in Spanish, but they didn’t speak to us in Spanish because they were told not to. In school we weren’t allowed to speak it.”
and also???
“… But America is the only country that promotes monolingualism. Here it’s English, English, English. Every other country makes their children learn a second language very early on. So as my political and social activism grew, I was like, ‘I really need to learn Spanish.’ So I did.“
idk how many people i’ve known growing up in texas whose parents speak fluent spanish but they don’t speak a lick solely because their parents were afraid or told not to teach their children. it’s unspeakably common and doesn’t in any way shape or form diminish someone’s claim to or pride in their heritage.
fuck that guy. you go eva.
lack of intergenerational language exchange is one of the leading causes of language death for endangered and indigenous languages because of this culture of shame attached to “lesser” coded languages so frankly if yr mocking people for not speaking their mother tongue without taking the colonial reasons for this into account, you’re an ignorant prick and you can go fuck yourself like
Te Reo Maori (the mother tongue of New Zealand) was almost exterminated in the 1950′s-60′s because white people tried to eradicate it. Only a very small and very determined group of Maori activists were able to keep it alive.
This was so recent my dad remembered it happening.
Now the language is mandatory to learn at Primary School level. Language extermination is awful and a lot of countries suffer/have suffered from it.
Gay Ryan 