Differences Among Spanish Speaker's Neighbors

She articulates the concept of one’s cultural identity as comprising more than one culture in a single crossbred word. While directly addressing her audience, Sotomayor also creates a profound emotional connection between herself and her audience. She differentiates some of the unique tastes she has acquired throughout her life, before speculating, “I bet the Mexican Americans in this room are thinking that Puerto Ricans have unusual food tastes.” Sotomayor calls upon members of the audience directly in hopes of making her message about existing outside of either a culturally homogenous or heterogeneous society more relevant and insightful to listeners. After pointing out that Puerto Ricans have unusual food tastes, she then emphasizes that “Some of us, like me, do” to use her food palette as the subject to show that just because she is Latina and like those foods, does not mean that all Latinas like these foods, too.

“Translation Nation” In the book, Translation Nation, Hector Tobar shows us the hard experiences that Latino immigrants face in the U.S. while pursuing the American Dream. Tobar traveled through some cities in this country visiting individuals and communities to gather those experiences. Through the stories of many people, including himself as son of Guatemalan immigrants, he allows us to see situations as for example, racisms, bad job conditions, and poverty among this ethnic group. The difficulties that Latino Immigrant face, as for example, the case of a group of neighbors in Maywood, California who were mocked because their accent when speaking English reminds me of similar situations that I have also face as an immigrant from México.

She also later states that there are several different Latino cultures from her family of Puerto Rican Americans to Latinos from the colonization of land by Spain. Although to some may seem Latino only identifies a small group of people the ethnic term is very broad encapturing many cultures from around the world. Sonia, a Latina woman, “only learned about tacos in college” from her Mexican-American roommate, further justifying Sotomayor’s

Culture is an essential part of a community’s identity, because it links individuals to a collective bond. The Americas have always contained a vast variety of cultural communities, especially in the United States. The US is known for being one of the most diverse nations in the world, housing hundreds of different cultures. Mexican-Americans display a strong sense of a cultural background, which falls as a subset of the bigger Latino culture that links all Latinos. Oral history is a major aspect on the Mexican culture, which contributes to the truth of how history in the United States actually happened.

During the 1980s, six million immigrants from Latin America and Asia immigrated to California. This, in effect, had a great impact upon the development of cities, such as my hometown, Rowland Heights, which has a predominantly Asian American and Latino community. For instance, if you drive down Colima Road, you are greeted by a row of ethnic stores and restaurants that proudly display their names in their own language. Three years ago, I read an article about Monterey Park revising an ordinance that would make the use of Latin characters on signs mandatory, which caused anger in the community due to its similarity to an issue from the 1980s. I remembered this story when I noticed that many signs in Rowland Heights showcased foreign languages.

Samuel Huntington’s article The Hispanic Challenge argues that Hispanics, specifically Mexicans, are not true American citizens. According to Huntington, Americans are people who believe in the American creed. However, he believes this creed is being threatened. For some time now, large influxes of Hispanic immigrants have been coming to the US and have brought their own culture with them. The writer of Speaking in Tongues, Gloria Anzaldua, believes that Hispanics have the right to hold onto their culture in America.

Very few, if any, immigrants have the chance to learn English before traveling to the U.S. Because of this barrier, it is nearly impossible for organizations such as the Border Patrol to warn, aid, and communicate with them as they travel to the U.S. Although there are helpful signs along the border, they are written in English and are therefore indecipherable. Furthermore, the language border hinders an immigrant’s ability to survive in American society once they arrive. English is the written and spoken language in almost every city, thwarting immigrants’ opportunity to find jobs and interact with others. As they struggle to communicate, they become ostracized and do not fit in.

While Latin America refers to both North and South America as "America", those who live in the United States often refer to only their country as "America". This only contributes to further controversy. Lastly, Holloway expands upon how indigenous heritage is ignored when using the title "Latin America" as distinct groups with their own history and culture still exist. Their heritage is still strong in some regions and it is apparent that a revival of tradition is taking

Rodriguez would speak English in school because to him it was a “public language”, while Spanish was a “private language” (72). Rodriguez

societies in the world. These sub-cultures include Whites, African Americans, Asians, Irish, Latino, and European among others. Chicano refers to the identity of Mexican-American descendant in the United State. The term is also used to refer to the Mexicans or Latinos in general. Chicanos are descendants of different races such as Central American Indians, Spanish, Africans, Native Americans, and Europeans.

Yet, other countries do not coin “special names to refer to these local speech-ways.” Their second view regarding ‘Spanglish’ is that it is not a hybrid language because just by hearing the term it can be interpreted that it belongs to a hybrid language. The authors of this paper finds that there is no objective justification for the term and that by using this term Latinos in the US are giving people the right to discriminate against them. In the response paper that Otheguy and Stern wrote in 2013, they argued that the term Spanglish does more harm than good. Otheguy and Stern state that there are many Latinos that reject the term and that object to its perceived derogatory tone.

He shows this through his many experiences with bilingual court and education. At the end of his essay, Espada concludes with a basic summary of what he has learned. Espada claims “The repression of Spanish is part of a larger attempt to silence Latinos, and, like the crazy uncle at the family dinner table yelling about independence or socialism, we must refuse to be silenced.” Through the summary the reader understands despite English being the prevalent language the in the U.S. today the Spanish culture is still being preserved through bilingualism. On the other hand Rodriguez argues that in order to gain a public identity, one must be willing to sacrifice some part of their own cultural identity.

As a result of their emigration, America was now viewed as “multiethnic and multiracial” and “defined in terms of culture and creed” (Huntington 1). On the contrary, when people traveled across the border from Mexico, their culture was not so widely accepted. Mexican traditions and values were seen as a “serious challenge to America’s traditional identity” (Huntington 2). The “original settlers” of America were incredibly open to people travelling from Europe, but when people came from Latin America, they were

Building on the sound system of Spanish: Insights from the alphabetic spellings of English- language learners by Lori A. Helman examines how the sound system of Spanish may influence the pronunciations and, in turn, the beginning writing behaviors of English language learners who come from different backgrounds. It talks about the ways that Spanish speakers may have difficult time with certain ways of writing and reading the English. Each part of the English language has it certain difference ways for Spanish speakers for example, when a word in English starts with a S but the Spanish speaker will write a e in the front since they would pronounce a E when trying to pronounce. One example of this is the word smile they Spanish speaker would

Introduction Spanish is the third most spoken language in the world after English and Mandarin; 400 million people worldwide speak it as their native tongue and over 500 million speak it as a second language (“Spanish Language,” 2010). Language Family of Spanish The Romance Languages Spanish belongs to a family of languages called the “Romance” languages. The Romance languages, often called the “Latin Languages” are a family of languages that emerged in 6-9 AD. The most widely spoken Roman languages are Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian.