In U.S., Spanish is a Sacred and Shared Heritage

My spirits rise when I listen to the harmonious sounds of the Spanish language -- words of love and affection, noises of family living, tones of prayer, sounds of inclusion. The language we learn as children is the language we associate with our early experiences, both the good and the negative. As adults, we relive childhood episodes in the language in which they occurred -- games, rhymes, music, dances, family expressions. They're forever imprinted in our subconscious.

Sometimes I wake up at dawn and think I'm hearing music from a Mexican radio station and sensing the movements of my mother in the kitchen. I can almost smell the aromas of coffee brewing and flour tortillas cooking on the comal. Many times returning home from school, I'd find my mother ironing her neat stacks of linens and clothes around the living room while she sang along with records of Los Tres Diamantes or Lola Beltrán.

I was raised in California's San Joaquin Valley watching Mexican movies and listening to Pedro Infante, Jorge Negrete, Los Panchos, Cuco Sánchez, Lucha Villa, among many others. Now, if I'm cleaning the kitchen, folding laundry or ironing, I love mariachi music or sad Mexican love ballads to accompany me. From my childhood, I associate Mexican music and spirited corridos with fast-paced physical movements such as dancing or working.

Spanish was my first language, although I can hardly remember not speaking English. My two older sisters must have taught me. But Spanish was always spoken in our home, by our U.S.-born, bilingual parents. Even today, my mother speaks only in Spanish to us. As I walk down a street and hear workingmen's voices speaking in Spanish, I slow down. I like to listen to the intonation of the language, sometimes staccato, sometimes rhythmic, always familiar.

There are 27 million Hispanics in the United States and, according to census surveys, 78 percent report that they speak Spanish regularly. Spanish has been spoken continuously in New Mexico since 1600. The Mexican people of New Mexico did not immigrate there, but instead were engulfed by a new government and a new language in 1845. "We didn't cross the border; the border crossed us,'' they say today.

Among linguists and anthropologists it is understood that language use is basic to the expression and creation of a social identity. Children acquire a world view as they acquire a language.

As we learn our language, we're also learning our status and role in the world where we live. Our shared cultural identity and social differences are reproduced through our language. How and what we speak is not just what is echoed through our lips, but a complicated internal linguistic system that reflects our social reality, and, for those of us who speak more than one language, our multiple perspectives. To stop speaking a language completely is like losing a part of ourselves forever.

I speak English and Spanish and I don't want to lose either. I don't know any Latinos who deny the importance -- for themselves and their children -- of learning English. It is, after all, the prestige language of the United States. For educational, political and economic reasons, it must be mastered. But not at the expense of losing Spanish.

Dr. Josué Gonzáles, a professor at Columbia University in New York City, suggests that Spanish is becoming our "second national language.'' He maintains that with two major networks of Spanish-language television, increasing numbers of Spanish newspapers and magazines and a shrinking hemisphere, the Spanish language is assuming heightened importance in U.S. society.

He proposes that in education Spanish should receive a priority position comparable to that of science, mathematics and other core subjects.

Here in California, we were speaking Spanish for 300 years before we even became a state. While efforts have been exerted in the past and again now to limit its use, there is no question that popular U.S. culture is acquiring more of a Spanish accent.

Our national heritage has always been multilingual, and it likely will continue to be so.

Rafaela Castro is a librarian at Shields Library at University of California, Davis.

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Last change: Oct. 8, 1995

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