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Not surprising. There's an innate hatred for legal and illegal immigration in many American's, and it's not always about breaking the law. It's also about knowing that the people who come to our country have no respect for our culture, nor any plans to actually assimmilate. The fact that it makes her feel like a "gringa" is enough motive for me to want deport her ass in 0.1
So you'd be okay with deporting a legal citizen, simply because she personally offends you? That's not a very American attitude, now is it? She has the right to feel however and say whatever she wants, as is usually the case with a free country such as ours. Don't like it? Oh well.
I find it very difficult to believe she cannot understand the language of the parents who raised her. It's just not possible, IMO.
I grew up with majority Japanese speaking parents. I knew the language fluently until 5th grade, where I began to lose the grammar as well as forgetting what certain words meant.
Today, I speak to my parents in broken Japanese and resort to using Engrish more often than the Japanese word for it. They understand me well enough, but I couldn't be hired as translator.
It happens. Even when family members can speak it fluently, other factors can cause a person to forget a language.
I don't think "gringa" is a bad word. Maybe some people use it negatively, but that doesn't mean that this girl meant it negatively. And it may be her shorthand for feeling a distance between herself and her parents. When she watches American television or listens to American music, or prefers shopping at the mall to spending time with her mother, it may place not only a cultural but also an emotional distance between herself and her parents, that makes her feel sad and guilty. "Gringa" is not "lesser", it's "different". And at fourteen, there's a lot of ambivalence emotionally as a young woman begins to assert her independence from her parents, while not really being ready for that independence. The fact that she and her parents aren't speaking the same language, literally and figuratively, makes her transition to adulthood even more complicated.
Does "gringa" apply to all English speaking people?
The problem I feel, is with the parents, how do they except their children to be a part of America ,if they are refusing to do the most common thing in America, speak English.
Doesn't offend me at all, and I'm as white as they come! In Spanish it simply means a non-Hispanic white person, and they don't generally see it as derogatory... unless my Spanish-speaking co-workers are secretly racist, which I highly doubt since most are American born & grew up surrounded by diversity.
So, does this mean only white people speak English??
She must be aware that America as other skin color than white, don't you think??
For some odd reason, North Americans see the term as negative. However, after having spent decades living in Latin America, I don't think I ever heard anyone use that term to mean something derogatory. It just denotes that the person is from somewhere else (usually North America or Europe).
As a lifelong bilingual speaker, I will explain. It's very easy to lose skill in a language when another language becomes dominant. For children who learned a different language initially and then learned English in school, English can and often does tend to become the dominant language. With time, ability to speak correctly in the native language can deteriorate to the point where one is not comfortable speaking in that language. Often times these speakers can even hear the mistakes they are making while they speak, but are not quite sure how to correct them. This is probably why she would respond to her parents in English. This is extremely common among immigrant families and their children. I know HUNDREDS of people who communicate with their families in this way (parents speaking in native language and children responding in English).
Also, it oftentimes is hard for bilingual people to discuss higher level topics and abstract concepts if they've learned their first language as a child. This can and does hamper communication. For example, I acquired both English and my parents' native language at around the same time. However, after starting school English became my dominant language. So my English progressed, while my skill level in my parents' language remained more or less static. Now, as an adult, I can carry on basic conversations with them about daily life perfectly fine in their language, but it's very difficult to discuss anything beyond that such as politics or philosophy. In most cases, I have to mix both languages or I have to switch to English to respond.
I do hear that a lot. I'm talking about the kids whose Parents speak no English or so little they can't communicate. I keep hearing about how this "ripping apart families" drama will doom the kid since they don't speak Spanish yet their Parents speak barely any English. It's impossible to raise a family of two languages unless they are both bilingual. The lack of assimilation does nothing positive for anyone.
Keep in mind that many didn't "come" to American by free will.
Also many were here before the european criminals came here.
Many others resent the USA for it's many wrongful doings around the world.. ie, Nagasaki, Hiroshima.. Iraq, "staging" of Pearl Harbor attacks, 9/11 etc..
European criminals? You need to include Spanish speaking people in that list also.
While we're at it: the native American Indians were ruthless with each other too. Mexico's Aztecs did things that made the Spaniards sick.
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