How are we going to save Spanish?
Yes, I know that a call to preserve the Spanish language might seem ludicrous at a time when more than 37 million people speak it in the U.S., up from 11 million in 1980. And yes, my question about saving Spanish may seem especially daft now, as America’s deranged politics pit hysterical Trumpian xenophobia, with its fear of being overrun by foreigners and their languages, against liberal triumphalism about growing diversity.
But — and I speak to that small, hardy tribe of Americans who still prefer to be ruled by facts and not fears — the realities of immigration, education and language acquisition put the lie to the notion that Spanish has nowhere to go but up. To the contrary, there are clear signs that the Spanish language has already begun its decline. Which is why we should start thinking now about how we are going to preserve it.
Spanish is confronting what might be called the “Three Generation Death” law of non-English languages here. German, Italian and Polish all but disappeared after three generations — a first, immigrant generation that learned some English; a second, U.S.-born bilingual generation that lost its proficiency in the non-English language over time; and a third generation that grew up speaking English only and knew the old language only by studying it.
It’s possible that Spanish in the 21st century U.S. might prove more durable, given the undeniable cultural power of the language and the geographic (and now digital) proximity of the Spanish-speaking world. But it’s far more likely that Spanish will simply become the latest and largest tombstone in the language graveyard that is America.
Census statistics and Pew Research Center analysis tell the tale. While nearly 80% of all people nationwide who identify as Hispanic (and are age 5 and older) spoke Spanish in the previous decade, that number is expected to fall to about two-thirds by 2020. While 25% of Hispanics spoke only English at home in 2010, that figure is estimated to reach 34% in 2020.
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Spanish’s decline is likely to accelerate even as the percentage of people who trace their heritage to the Spanish-language world accelerates. To a great extent, this reflects the law of the three generations. While 61% of first-generation Latino arrivals to this country are Spanish-dominant and 33% are bilingual, 69% of third-generation Latinos are English-dominant and 29% are bilingual.
Other trends also will hurt Spanish. Even before the U.S. elected a Mexican-slurring bigot threatening a border wall, immigration to the U.S. from Mexico was at or below net zero, and immigration from Latin America was in deep decline. That’s unlikely to change, given growing middle-class prosperity, lower birth rates and higher education levels across much of Latin America. In this country, the U.S.-born constitute a rapidly increasing percentage of people of Spanish-speaking heritage. Greater integration of families is another factor; more than a quarter of Latino babies have a non-Latino parent.
The Spanish-language media are already grappling with the pressures of this change. Univision helped create Fusion, an English-language network, to woo the rising generations of English-speaking Latinos. (More recently, the network has repositioned itself to focus on Millennials of all backgrounds.) But there is likely to be considerable carnage among U.S.-based Spanish-language broadcasters and newspapers, which have been losing audiences as more Latino adults consume their news in English. Also troubling for such media: Surveys suggest that the percentage of Latino adults who get their news in both languages is also declining.
At root, this is less the story of the decline of Spanish than it is the familiar tale of immigrants and their descendants integrating enthusiastically into American life. Another branch of the story involves the unrivaled and growing power of English as our planet’s dominant tongue. English proficiency is on the rise in every corner of the earth — as the language of global commerce, culture and technology. It’s also a wonderfully democratic language, without the divisive gender or class distinctions of Romance and other languages, without the tricky tones of Asian languages, and without the complex grammatical constructions that make German and Russian such slogs.
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Preserving Spanish would serve history, and not just by honoring those Americans with roots in the Spanish-speaking world. States such as California, Texas and New Mexico have histories that can’t be told without the language. California was founded as a bilingual state; our first Constitution required the printing of laws in Spanish and English.
Preserving Spanish would serve the present and the future as well. There’s big money to be made if we can increase trade with a Spanish-speaking world on the rise. And it would be a huge step up for our education system to make Spanish a core requirement. Right now, you can graduate from a California high school without taking even one course in a foreign language. And my state’s university systems require only two years of foreign language for admission. That borders on the criminally negligent, given all we know about the good that learning another language does for our brains.
Spanish needs much more, including state requirements and investment so that instruction is available to all. Your columnist is very grateful to have attended Southern California private schools that made Spanish a full academic subject, with the same number of class hours as math and science and English, from grades six to 12. We’d all be better off if that were the standard in public schools as well.
States that preserve Spanish will have a comparative advantage over the rest of the country, where the language is likely to wither. In such states, Spanish could become a special force for distinguishing us and binding us together.
And with that happy thought, I wish you Feliz Navidad y próspero Año Nuevo.
Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column forZócalo Public Square.
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