Breaking Español

For Thanksgiving this year we spent it with our neighbors who are partly from Mexico. We enjoyed the time together learning about the traditional dishes they brought and talking about our upcoming trip to Oaxaca.

Another tradition we picked up from our Mexican neighbors was playing the board game Lotería. It’s a board game similar to bingo but much more fun. One of the challenges we had was how you’re supposed to make a rhyme for the card itself, so instead we tried to make jokes out of it and enjoyed ourselves. Of course alcohol helped ?

During our week we also visited a nearby public park where all the nannies from the neighborhood go. At the park they all know each other, speak Spanish almost exclusively, and absolutely love the kids they care for.

This week I (ben) do a solo episode talking about learning a language with your spouse. It’s not all sunshine and roses so here I’ll go into some of the ups and down that we’ve went through and how we’re making it work. Enjoy!

A big benefit in learning a language with your spouse is challenging to each other. In our journey we challenge each other daily to speak better and more often. We try to constantly share what we’ve learned and improve each other. This also is about supporting each other, a key component for success when trying to learn a language with your spouse.

All that said, it’s not to say that you won’t have uncomfortable moments. If you end up taking weekly classes like we did there will be times where it feels like a drag. If you’re spouse is giving off these signs it’s on you to pick them up.

Lastly, make sure you’re having fun. We like to compete with each other in online apps like duolingo and to set aside times where we only speak in Spanish. Maybe next date night choose to only speak in the language you’re learning?

Let us know how it goes on our facebook page!

¡Gracias por Leer!

This week we go into some uplifting phrases we found as well as an app we love for learning commands to tell your kids. As we go through we decided to make a game out of it where Ben quizzes Jennie on what the phrases mean. ¡Disfrutas!

This week we look into what impact president-elect Trump could have on the Latino community in the United States. A lot of us are still shaking our head as to how this happened and what this will mean, but we did some research and break down what specific actions an anti-immigrant president means to millions of Americans.

Trump could end DACA which is protects children who were brought here illegaly as children and grew up here from being deported. Trump could roll this back and then those folks, 1.3M of them, would be eligible for deportation.

In addition to cancelling this legal protection, Trump could renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This could hurt the Mexican economy tremendously by putting tariffs on goods sold to the United States. In contrast, this would also make regular items like fruit in the United States cost a lot more, so many people would be hurt directly by this.

It is unlikely that Trump will be able to pay for a border wall or deport 11 million illegal immigrants. Both of these actions would cost the United States economy billions of dollars and would hurt the world economy. If this actually happened he most likely would not win re-election in 2020, which of course is the goal of all presidents in their first term.

Trump cannot continue to sound like a racist bigot. As president you are not all powerful and the job of all politicians is to get re-elected. Add that together and you have a situation where any extreme policies that Trump may have promised in his campaign won’t gain enough support from congress to get approval and eventually implementation.

On a positive note from the election, Prop 58 passed which will allow more schools to have bilingual education in schools.

Okay, so we tried to go camping and well, it didn’t go perfect. However, regardless of our failed overnight camping attempt due to rain and near freezing temperatures, we still used this as a learning opportunity. After retiring from the wilderness for the season, we ended up watching a great Spanish movie that we loved. Enjoy!

This week we’re talking all about immersion. There are two main ways we think about immersion, in school and in life. So we have two stories this week about how bilingual education may be coming back if a state proposition passes as well as a tale of one woman who took her family through Mexico and South America to truly immerse themselves in Latin life and culture.

In California this year we have a state proposition, prop 58, that would repeal a former proposition that practically banned bilingual education in the state. Prop 227 passed in 1998 with 61% of the vote in response to a few protests from Latino parents that felt their childrend weren’t prepared for college since they didn’t learn English well enough in school.

Fast forward almost 30 years and it has become a civil rights issue. Now many Latinos feel their culture is being stripped away from their children since they end up not knowing much Spanish by the time they graduate. This charge is lead by the non-profit, Californian’s Together, which is leading the bilingual movement here in the state.

In addition to Spanish immersion in schools, Jennie found a great article in Los Angeles magazine titled “Learning Spanish as a Familia” The article is about the author and her family that left the US behind to immerse themselves in Latin culture and to learn Spanish. They ended up traveling a lot through South America and in a new book she wrote, they tell about their fascinating journey.

¡Gracias por Leer!

This week we catch up with our learning journey. We had a class with Lalo so we have lots of words and phrases to share. As well, we are planning a trip to Oaxaca and in doing so had to navigate making the travel arrangements in Spanish over email. This posed a challenge but we got through it and share our tips on how you can navigate these situations also.

In looking for a place in Oaxaca we discovered a few great Bed and Breakfast (BnB) to stay and ended up choosing one near the heart of town. A perfect location to experience the Oaxacan culture and people. We’re excited about this old city as it has some serious roots in pre-hispanic cooking and customs.

Also this week, Ben discovered a book series on Audible containing 9 short stories for beginners. On a recent work trip he only had time to listen to one, but rest assured you’ll hear more about them in coming weeks.

¡Gracias por Escuchar!

This week we recap some of our recent learning challenges including a video chat where Ben helped Lalo with some questions about his blog and Jennie who made a few new bilingual friends at a nearby park.

When Ben had a session helping Lalo with his website all in Spanish It went well but there were a lot of words Ben didn’t know because of the vocab related to websites.

We met some other bilingual parents at a nearby park. They both grew up speaking Spanish in their home so they obviously can speak more naturally than us but we were able to have a little convo and become friends.

Another friend we made at the same park, on the same day, was an actual Flamenco teacher! This was fun for Ben because he finally got to talk to someone that understands his favorite music.

A new Ted talk discussing reasons for language learning got us thinking why we would recommend learning a new language. The main reason we came to find was that without having some grasp of the language, you’ll never truly be able to experience another culture and what it has to offer.

Even within just a short time learning you’ll definitely notice that different feeling when you travel to a country that speaks that language natively. We’ve had many experiences like this and is still one of our main motivations.

Over the past year, we’ve learned a ton about raising a bilingual child, including what we need to do as parents to try and keep up! This week Jennie shares her lessons and resources for raising a child bilingual and how to adjust everything from how you speak to your child to the cartoons you watch.

The first step is to commit to the journey. It’s going to be a long process with lots of highs and lows along the way. We’re still nervous of the day Jack can speak better than us! We know it’s coming. One great way we’ve found to cement this commitment is to tell others what you’re doing. You’ll be surprised by how much support you get and the great stories you’ll hear from people all over.

The next key step to success in raising your child bilingual is to surround yourself with others learning or that already know the language. Again we’ve been completely surprised at how many of our friends and family know Spanish or are learning that we didn’t know about. Look for Spanish play groups for kids as well as social groups with others learning Spanish.

A good way to start your child learning is to have your day care option be in Spanish. Depending on where you live you may have to search a bit but it will be worth it if you can find a daycare that uses solo Español or a nanny that does the same. We found our nanny on care.com by simply posting a job description and listing that we’re looking for someone that speaks Spanish. Always when looking to hire someone we recommend checking into their background and calling their references.

The third step in the journey is trying to speak Spanish as much as you can with your child. We set aside hours of the day with Jack that we only speak Spanish with him and each other. In general, we try to only speak Spanish with him but we’ve found that he responds well to hearing us talk to each other in Spanish so we try to set aside time for that also.

The last recommendation we have is to use Spanish books, podcasts, and TV shows for both you and your child. No matter how well you think you know the language we’ve found that there are always little things in the kid’s books we didn’t know. Below is a full list of books, podcasts, and Spanish shows we enjoy with our son Jack.

If you found this post helpful we’d love to keep the convo going online! Share your story on Facebook, Twitter or good ole email

¡Gracias por Leer!

On this episode we talk a lot about the past few weeks of learning as well as some of the encounters we’ve had trying to speak Spanish in real life. Ben was up in Santa Barbara for some work and had a few opportunities to speak Spanish while Jennie stayed home watching Novelas and eating ice cream. Okay that last part isn’t true, but we do talk about novelas in this show as well as an upcoming law/proposition in California that would open up schools ability to run more bilingual programs.