[Spanish speakers, you can skip this paragraph! I don’t speak Spanish myself so I had to look up what the meaning of “no sabo” was. It turns out that “no sabo” is the incorrect way to say “I don’t know,” which properly should be, “no se.” If you conjugate the verb for “to know” or “saber” you might end up with “no sabo,” except that saber is an irregular verb. Thus the correct phrase is “no se” and not “no sabo. If you say “no sabo,” then you are speaking like a toddler, thus the (cruel) joke.]
I quoted the writer Jacqueline Delgadillo, saying,
I think that there is just so much shame around being a no sabo kid that to redefine it just means accepting where you're at and accepting, you know, how fluent you are in Spanish and letting go of that shame and not letting someone else decide for you how Latina you are or how much you can claim your culture.
This fall, the Pew Research Center published a survey on perceptions of Spanish by Hispanics in the U.S., and the dismaying final report shows that not being able to speak Spanish is the source of a significant amount of shame and teasing among Latinos.
Here are the key findings from the report:
While most U.S. Latinos speak Spanish, not all do. 24% of all Latino adults say they can only carry on a conversation in Spanish a little or not at all. Among third- or higher-generation Latinos, a much higher share are not Spanish speakers: Close to two-thirds (65%) of third- or higher-generation Latinos say they cannot carry on a conversation well in Spanish.
About half of U.S. Hispanics who do not speak Spanish have been shamed because of it. 54% of Hispanics who say they speak no more than a little Spanish say another Hispanic person has made them feel bad for it.
Some Hispanics make jokes about those who do not speak Spanish. Four-in-ten Hispanic adults say they hear other Hispanics make jokes, extremely often or often, about Hispanics who do not speak Spanish or don’t speak it well.
Spanglish use is widespread among U.S. Hispanics. 63% report speaking Spanglish, a combination of Spanish and English, at least sometimes.
Personal Hispanic identity is related to views about Spanish. U.S. Hispanics who consider their Hispanic identity to be extremely or very important to how they think about themselves are more likely than other Hispanics to say it’s important for future generations to speak Spanish. They are also more likely to say it is necessary for someone to speak Spanish in order to be considered Hispanic.
I am most interested in the second and third findings, involving the shame felt by Latinos who don’t speak Spanish. Shame is the feeling I identify with most as I struggle through the study of Japanese, my mother’s native language. For a concise definition of shame, I turn to shame researcher Brene Brown in her 2013 essay, Shame vs. Guilt:
I define shame as the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging—something we’ve experienced, done, or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection.
Some of us feel shame more than others. I know people who are oblivious to teasing and mockery, and I also know people who crumble at the slightest whiff of judgment. We’re all different. But the thing about language is that it strikes at the very core of what it means to be human. We have the ability to communicate with each other, and this ability ranges from the most basic expression of needs and desires to the most sophisticated literature. Yes, I’ve heard about the monkeys on typewriters who might eventually produce Shakespeare, but we don’t really believe that, do we? Our communication efforts are not random groupings of words that we’ve seen or heard. Humans are all about reaching out to each other and sharing, and we do this in our earliest days with language. Babies are trying to speak long before they even know how to speak. We long to interact with those around us.
When the people around you are using some other language, it’s only natural to feel that you should be able to use that language also. And being mocked, teased, or ignored has exactly the result that Brene Brown describes: you feel unworthy of connection.
If you’re learning a language that has nothing to do with you (like my forays into Spanish, courtesy of Google Translate), you can be awkward and make mistakes without too much cost. Of course, it does get a little harder when the stakes are raised. Say you are in a classroom and you don’t want to be at the bottom of the class. Or you need to figure out where the bathroom is during your trip to Mexico and you can’t make yourself understood.
But I would argue that the stakes are highest when you feel “unworthy of connection,” when you are ridiculed for doing the best that you can do to communicate.
My mother did not want me to speak Japanese casually in public because to her ear it was stilted and awkward. She said the same thing to my dad, who obligingly never spoke Japanese in her presence, despite the fact that her English was almost non-existent. But it was okay for my mom to speak Japanese at me for her own convenience, and it was also okay for me to use Japanese in the context of the all-state speech contest that I won, since that was based on a heavily edited speech that I wrote at Japanese school. And when I went to Japan, I was largely around her extended family, all of whom thought my Japanese was great, and since they didn’t speak any English, my mother didn’t try to stop me from talking. And I sensed that without Japanese, I was somehow missing a part of myself.
So despite her criticisms I kept plugging away, but was eventually frustrated by a lack of Japanese instruction for someone in my position: not fluent but sounding as if I could be. In university and graduate school, Japanese classes were based heavily on memorizing grammar, so the students in my classes approached the language from directions that I found mystifying, since I had zero understanding of Japanese grammar. There were also very few students who were good enough at the language for me to really engage with. Basically, we were all struggling, but from different angles. I felt that my own Japanese fell into a rut and simply would not improve.
Over the years I became more and more self-conscious about my language skills, until I reached a point where I simply wouldn’t speak it anymore. My uncle and aunt came to visit my mother back in the early 2000s and when they came over for lunch, I barely said a word. My uncle was astonished, because I was replying to his questions in reluctant monosyllables, and he remembered visits to Japan where I had spoken much more fluently. But I couldn’t bring myself to speak. I was too afraid of making mistakes.
After that debacle, even my mother was perplexed. Seemingly, she’d forgotten all the years during childhood when she begged me not to speak Japanese in public. She even said several times that my Japanese used to be so smooth, so fluent—what happened? But shaming goes deep inside, even when you fight it the way that I did. Over time, as you struggle with the language, you begin to see the mistakes as the norm, the fluency as the exception. You begin to see yourself as a series of mistakes. And as Brene says, “unworthy of connection.”
Language is at our core. It’s what we are trying to develop even when we are infants. For someone like me, and maybe for many Hispanics, a language other than English might be what you used to hear most of the day. I believe that this isn’t something that you can erase just because you end up in English language school, with English-speaking friends, and in an English-speaking job. I think it’s in there somewhere. And if, as the Pew poll suggests, shame is involved from those you regard as your community, I think it can be devastating.
I don’t know what the solution is, or whether this is even a problem with a solution. I’m at a point in my life where I have time to devote to Japanese study, and I lucked out wildly in the choice of a tutor as well as tech tools that have helped me to overcome some of my previous issues. I can watch Japanese programming on YouTube and I can listen to audiobooks in Japanese. I still feel stressed and awkward when I have to use my Japanese, but there are lots of new ways to try to fight the voice in my head that keeps telling me to keep quiet.
You might also be one of those lucky people who can overcome your discomfort with sheer attitude!
But we are not a problem. We are not “unworthy of connection.” Everyone’s family story is different, and if anything, I’ve learned that there is a wide community of next-generation kids like me who have struggled because we are doing something really difficult. It feels hard because it is hard.
Our worst enemy in our battle might appear to be the people who look like us, which is counterintuitive. But our worst enemy is our judgment toward ourselves. It keeps us silent and stuck. We’re not defective. We’re actually “more than.” However, we don’t need to convince the people who shame us. We need to convince ourselves.
Thank you for sharing your story, Maya. I hadn’t realized what cultural challenges the language divide poses for next-generation children of immigrant families. I’ve never expected my French or Spanish to be perfect because I just learned them for fun and for travel. I can’t imagine having so much pressure from family and members of your native culture to speak perfectly in order to belong. To have that pressure on one side, and then also the pressure to assimilate into the culture you’re born into on the other side, must be stressful and confusing. I’m grateful for your perspective on this.
It was great to read this!! I have missed hearing your voice. Two thoughts came to mind... one is the world can be hard on women. My Kaz goes through the world without anyone shaming him for his real laziness in learning Japanese. It is his native language and half his heritage for goodness sake. But no one pushes him--they do shame me. I usually snap at people who do this. He is at University now (Manoa) and still not taking Japanese classes (his reason is working and Japanese is everyday). He is going back to violin but resists language and also I do push him to take a space exploration and more physics classes but he says he likes business. Anyway... yes. Women have it rough sometimes because people are more apt to shame them on things. The other thing that your essay brought to mind was a friend of mine once said that the only people who ever said stuff like this about his language skills were not proficient at other languages...not at all, he said. When they say things like "what a shame you can't..." they themselves often can't either. My friend speaks Japanese fluently, plus Russian Ukrainian and French.
It was KECK's 30 year anniversary and I was in Waimea at a celebration dinner, sitting next to a man of second generation Japanese decent who also does not speak the language. His father (former president of UH) spoke it and one of two of his kids gets by.... but it is a Herculean challenge in the US to learn to speak and read Japanese. Even in Hawaii!!! End of story!! I just finished a story collection, btw, set in Honolulu author is kanaka-Japanese Megan Kamalei Kakimoto. I am going to write a review for Kyoto Journal--will send it when I am done. xoxo