Victoria Diaz

Freshman Composition  

Anna Alexis  

19th September 2022  

 
There have been many moments in my life where I used Language and Literacy. So many moments where I’m either struggling or doing good with Language and Literacy. There is always one moment that really sticks out to you as a person because that’s when you realize how Language and Literacy has either helped you or impacted you. Growing up I was very in touch with my culture and the language that we speak. I would speak Spanish with my family, and I would understand what would go on in conversations, I felt very in tune with the language. In middle school I had a Spanish class and of course I loved the class, and I was always doing good, getting good grades on quizzes and trying to write more in Spanish. As I got older, I realized I stopped speaking Spanish a lot more and I still understood the language just not as much.  

When it comes to writing in the language, I don’t do it as often, I didn’t really see this as a big issue, but it did bother me. It felt like I sort of lost a part of me because that is part of my culture, and your culture is something that makes up who you are. Even my family would say things about it. My Mother especially, she would say things like “You barely speak Spanish now” or “You used to speak Spanish a lot I don’t know what happened”. That’s when I felt insecure about it because she was right, all I could think to myself is what went wrong.  

So here I am everyday trying to figure out why I don’t speak Spanish as much or why I don’t write in Spanish as much. I realized there could be many reasons why. I felt this way for a long time until I realized that it wasn’t that I lost a part of me or my culture. I went to a charter school in the Bronx and within that environment I was just used to speaking English all the time because that’s what I was mainly surrounded by. Now I also realized my school took out the Spanish class which could be another reason as to why I don’t speak it as often. Taking an important language class was unnecessary, especially since I feel that it is an important language to others. I felt very negative about it at first because I kept thinking to myself that I could never get in touch with my own culture again but of course that wasn’t the case. It was just the environment I grew up in and also because of my household. My Mother was never one to teach us the language, she always figured that we knew how to speak Spanish because we are Puerto Rican, we sort of had to learn on our own. There would be times where she would complain because I barely spoke Spanish and I would let it be known that she never actually sat down and taught me. I had to stop blaming myself and just blame the fact that the environment I was in was always speaking English.  

Everyone sees English as an important Language to learn and don’t get me wrong it is, but I feel like Spanish is just as important. People who are part of Hispanic community could really benefit from knowing both English and Spanish. I think about things like having a job, what if you need to help someone who only speaks Spanish you would need to know the language just in case. 

Society now doesn’t really speak on knowing the language but what I have noticed is that there have been a couple trends where people have mentioned that Puerto Rican kids don’t know Spanish. I’ve started to believe it because every time I come across someone who is Puerto Rican, they usually tell me they don’t know much Spanish. There actually has been a label for it, I’m not sure if it’s only for Puerto Ricans but it is mostly targeted to kids who hardly know any Spanish and they call them “No Sabo” kids. This would mainly be the negative effect of this situation because here society is labeling kids that don’t really know much Spanish and making fun of them for it when, we have no idea what kind of environment they grew up in. There are many families that don’t teach their children  

how to speak Spanish. They usually expect them to learn on their own but how can they learn on their own if they don’t know where to start. I had to learn that as a Society we will probably never try to understand how hard it can be for others or put ourselves in their shoes. Those who struggled with not knowing how to speak Spanish should know that it wasn’t because of them it was because of their environment. As little kids we are influenced by any languages that are spoken around us and that is why we speak the way we speak or act the way that we act. We see others do it and we start doing it because that is what we grow up around.