Because I am double majoring in Anthropology and Spanish, I recently decided to register for some upper level Spanish classes. I thought they wouldn’t be difficult because I spoke the language and knew how to read and write it, but they ended up being very difficult. Sometimes I felt like my Spanish wasn’t good enough or that my accent didn’t sound like the accent my other peers used. I thought about dropping some of my classes because I thought that my Spanish wasn’t good enough or that I would be made fun of. Knowledge of my heritage language has created positive experiences outside of school. For me, it’s as simple as helping someone who doesn’t speak English with directions or translating something from English to Spanish. I like to be able to help my community and also be able to communicate with my family and friends.

It has helped me being able to have a different perspective in my classes. Having my heritage language has helped me in situations where I am listening to something in my heritage language and I can use my knowledge to explain it to others. As a result, this has helped me develop better relationships with those in the class. I am also able to bounce off ideas with those better once we both understand it. It has helped me develop relationship with more people than I could have imagined. Often times if I know someone that speaks the language, it is a conversation starter and allows us something to bond over.

There have been many instances that my HL has helped my English, specifically when it comes to writing. My writing courses in Spanish always helped more than writing courses in English. There were times that in classes like cooking, sewing, more hobby-like, that it was difficult to express or know words in English because I had only ever done things of that sort at home speaking my HL. My heritage language has always made me feel more connected to the Hispanic community, and family in Mexico, as well as people in Mexico when I travel there.

Outside of school my heritage language was very useful because my family speaks Spanish so I was able to continue communicating with them and expand my two languages. My family also attended church in Spanish which helped me to understand what was going on and because I went to Sunday school for some time, Spanish also helped because it was only in Spanish. Growing up my parents would also need help translating some things in English, so being able to speak both languages helped sometimes when I was able to correctly translate or describe things for my parents.