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Lucia Palacios

Fitzgerald 1A

English 11/12

10/11/23

Linguistic Struggles in America

I've been told by family and friends that I don't ‘look’ Mexican, or I don't have the typical

features someone from my same ethnic background would have. I don't think there's a specific

way to look if you're Mexican-American like me but according to others I don't fit the standard.

Furthermore, I've never been discriminated against because I look like a typical American, that

was up until July of 2022. That summer my mom, my sister and I went on a trip to Indiana to

visit my mom’s side of the family, people in Indiana are incredibly racist but I just never thought

we would have been targeted in that way. We had gone to Walmart for the necessities and went to

check out, I think the cashier was having a bad day but she spilled something in her area and

started to get frustrated. The cashier said we were going to be the last ones to be checked out and

for everyone else behind us to go to another check out station, her manager then came over to

help her clean up. Meanwhile, my mom, my sister and I were talking in Spanish when we heard

the cashier start complaining to her manage about how “these fucking people who only speak

Spanish don't understand what Im saying… I'm telling them to get out of the line.” Me and my

sister fully understood what she was saying but we were confused because she said we were

going to be the last to be checked out. We ignored her and ended up just staying there and then

paid for out items, when we got outside we told my mom what the lady was saying and my mom

was really mad and started going on about how “Pos no es mi culpa que esté de malas, si no
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quiere estar aquí que se largue,” It's not my fault she's in a bad mood, if she doesn't want to be

here than she should leave.

My mom understands the basics of English but her spoken English can be described as

‘broken’, and because of that people don't take her seriously. Whether it be her ordering

something at a restaurant or generally just talking to someone or asking them a question, there

have been some people who make faces at my mom because they don't understand her and they

don't bother to try to understand her either. Because of my mothers limited English, I always

speak for her and write or translate readings for her so she can understand them. Something Amy

Tan said in her article Mother Tongue, really made me feel understood, she said, “I had to get on

the phone and say in an adolescent voice that was not very convincing, ‘This is Mrs. Tan’” (Tan

9). My mother never makes appointments for herself unless the person on the other side

understands Spanish, meaning it's up to me and my sister to translate for her. My sister used to

do all of these things, now that she's moved out of the house my mom comes to me to write

emails for her, translate information and speak on the phone on her behalf.

I grew up speaking Spanish and only learned English while at school. My parents never

wanted me and my sister to lose our Spanish because when it comes to job opportunities there's a

bigger variety when you’re bilingual. On that account, my parents never spoke English to us so

they never practiced the language which can be part of the reason why they don't understand or

speak it very well. I am proud to have learned the English language and I relate to writer Jimmy

Santiago Baca’s reasoning of achievement when he said, “I wrote to avenge the betrayals of a

lifetime, to purge the bitterness of injustice,” (Baca 11). Although I didn't write like Baca did, I

feel as if learning English was to avenge the lack of education my parents received. This lack of

education is not just for learning a different language, but also because of their limited learning
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opportunities growing up in Mexico. Having the education I do is truly an accomplishment for

me since I view it as an attainment of opportunities on behalf of my parents.

Like I previously stated, I grew up speaking Spanish, and my way of speaking Spanish

might be different than others. To me, using lots of curse words and using different words to

describe something or someone is the norm in my family. Obviously, I limit my cursing when

speaking to my aunts, uncles, grandparent, and to other people out in public. However, around

my cousins and my sister I speak what most people call Spanglish, a mix of Spanish and English.

This is the ‘normal’ way of speaking in my family and I can't think of one conversation where a

curse word was not said. In a Ted Talk I recently watched, the presenter Lera Boroditsky stated

that, “Some languages have different sounds, they have different vocabularies, and they also

have different structures… That begs the question: Does the language we speak shape the way

we think?” (Boroditsky). This quote opened my eyes and made me self aware of how I think.

Sometimes I think in both languages and to me it sounds the same and I don't notice a difference.

I never noticed how if I translated my English thoughts to Spanish or vice versa, most of the time

it doesn't make sense and it's not a coherent sentence. This connects back to how I speak when

I'm around my family versus how I speak when I'm around, for example teachers, I never noticed

a difference until I watched that Ted Talk. The same goes for how other Spanish speaking

families communicate using the same language but in a form differently then how my family and

I speak it.

Something I recently learned and that will always stick with me from now on, is that I am

not the only one with these types of experiences. I only learned this after reading stories from the

authors I previously mentioned, and then hearing my classmates agree and share their own

experiences. After hearing multiple other stories from my classmates about their linguistic
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experiences, I recognized that people will never change and they will continue to discriminate

against others who aren't like them. Now, there isn't much you can do but you can always be

proud of your linguistic background and never abandon any goals you have regarding that

background much like I am and will continue to do.

Works Cited

Taylor, Jess. I offer trigger warnings. I worry they do more harm than good. Chalkbeat, 2023

Santiago Baca, Jimmy. Working in the Dark: Reflections of a Poet of the Barrio. Red Crane

Books, 1992

Boroditsky, Lera. How language shapes the way we think. TEDWomen, 2017