By: Jasmine Morrow Staff Writer
The College of Education, the Spanish Department and the Bilingual Teacher Program at Western asked Kim Potowski, a professor of the Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies at the University of Illinois in Chicago, to present her session: “Spanish in the U.S.: Myths and Realities,” in the Richard Woodcock Education Building. On Feb. 3, professor Potowski began the seminar by asking the group of people attending five facts or myths about the Spanish language.The trick was that they were all myths. The questions/statements included: “The United States is the fifth largest Spanish-Speaking country in the world,” “Spanish is not 
recognized in the ‘Diccionario de la Real Academia,’” “Some things that people say in U.S. Spanish is ungrammatical,” “Spanglish is a random mishmash of English and Spanish and is destroying Spanish,” “The goal of Spanish teachers should be to eliminate ‘Spanglish’ and have students pass for monolingual.”
Professor Potowski then explained why these were all myths. To begin with, the U.S. is the second largest Spanish-speaking country. It’s impossible to be agrammatical when a whole community says it the same way, this is only possible with the first rule of grammar. Second, the first Spanish word was put in the dictionary on Sept. 30, 2012. Third, Spanglish is rule governed and there is code switching, word borrowings, extensions and calques.
People usually think of U.S. Spanish as ungrammatical because it’s not preferred. The reason why people who are fluent in both Spanish and English sometimes use both languages in a single sentence is because it is a marker of their identity. Sixty percent of the population is bilingual/multilingual and 20 percent of the bilinguals are in the U.S. Studies show that two-way bilingual is the better way to learn English and Spanish, they can also be better readers and speakers. Professor Potowski concluded the presentation by saying, “Respect the language and culture of U.S. Latino Communities.”
Contact author at jmorrow16@mail.wou.edu
