When my grandparents came to the U.S. from Mexico, they learned English and taught it to their five children. The middle child of the five was my mother. They made sure their children could speak English because they had to speak it in school and would get in trouble for speaking Spanish. Even at home, they spoke English mostly, even though it was a new language for all of them. Because my mother and all of her brothers and sisters were young, they learned fast and could speak it by the time they entered school. They all continued to speak English for the rest of their lives. Only my grandmother still speaks to her children in Spanish, even though her English is just as good.
When my brother and I were born, my mother never thought to teach us Spanish because we were living in the U.S. where English is spoken, and she kept the same idea that her parents had that Spanish was not to be spoken here. She remembers that people were criticized for speaking Spanish, and so why would she teach that language to her children?
However, now that more people from South and Central America are coming to the U.S., it is becoming more important to speak Spanish. And now that times have changed, speaking another language is not something to be ashamed of but something to be proud of. There are programs for learning it at school, and speaking Spanish is a very desirable skill on a resume. Now my younger cousins are being required to learn Spanish in school as a second language.
When people learned that my mom knows Spanish, and could have taught it to my brother and I at a young age so that we would be able to learn quickly, they're shocked as to why she didn't. When she was young, people were criticized for speaking Spanish, and now we are are being criticized for not knowing Spanish. So unfortunately, while American children are begin taught Spanish very young so that they'll get that advantage in life, I was not able to learn Spanish from my own family because of the lingering idea that in America the only language you're allowed to speak is English. There are many other young adults like me who do not know the language that the generation before them was taught to hide.
