Jim Michnowicz regularly goes to La Fiesta del Pueblo, Raleigh\u2019s annual Latinx celebration, to connect with the Latino community. \u201cWe go over language myths. We play language games,\u201d says Michnowicz, a professor and director of graduate programs in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures. \u201cAnd we also talk to people about our research.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That means talking about an ongoing study concerning Spanish in North Carolina that Michnowicz and his Hispanic studies seminar students have conducted for the last decade. They\u2019ve found a direct rebuttal to the myth that English is dying out, a thought commonly associated with fears about immigration. \u201cEnglish will be the dominant language in North Carolina 250 years from now. That\u2019s not an issue,\u201d Michnowicz says. \u201cThe real issue is that Spanish is being lost.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Undergraduate students collect surveys detailing Spanish speakers\u2019 attitudes and what language they use in different settings, like at work and with family and friends, while graduate students examine more technical issues. The findings reveal Spanish speakers in North Carolina are leaving the language and moving to English quicker than Hispanic people did in California, the southwestern United States, Chicago and New York in the 1940s, \u201950s and \u201960s. Michnowicz says if immigration ended today, \u201cby 2050, there wouldn\u2019t be Spanish spoken in North Carolina.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Michnowicz believes preserving Spanish is important for Hispanic families to communicate with each other across multiple generations, as well as for the concrete benefits of a bilingual society. \u201cBeing bilingual staves off dementia,\u201d Michnowicz says. \u201cBeing bilingual increases your SAT scores. Being bilingual gets you paid more.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Key to preserving Spanish, Michnowicz says, is to challenge the belief held in the Hispanic community that the Spanish the younger generation speaks \u201cisn\u2019t real Spanish just because it has English influence in it.\u201d Take the word, \u201calfombra,\u201d the formal Spanish word for \u201crug.\u201d In the U.S., some speakers use the word \u201ccarpeta,\u201d combining English and Spanish. But, he says, by using even that blend, a second- or third-generation Spanish speaker still chooses what for them is a Spanish word. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf that\u2019s criticized too much at a community level,\u201d he says, \u201cthey just say \u2018forget it\u2019 and switch to English.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false,"raw":"\n\n\n\n\n
Jim Michnowicz regularly goes to La Fiesta del Pueblo, Raleigh\u2019s annual Latinx celebration, to connect with the Latino community. \u201cWe go over language myths. We play language games,\u201d says Michnowicz, a professor and director of graduate programs in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures. \u201cAnd we also talk to people about our research.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That means talking about an ongoing study concerning Spanish in North Carolina that Michnowicz and his Hispanic studies seminar students have conducted for the last decade. They\u2019ve found a direct rebuttal to the myth that English is dying out, a thought commonly associated with fears about immigration. \u201cEnglish will be the dominant language in North Carolina 250 years from now. That\u2019s not an issue,\u201d Michnowicz says. \u201cThe real issue is that Spanish is being lost.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Undergraduate students collect surveys detailing Spanish speakers\u2019 attitudes and what language they use in different settings, like at work and with family and friends, while graduate students examine more technical issues. The findings reveal Spanish speakers in North Carolina are leaving the language and moving to English quicker than Hispanic people did in California, the southwestern United States, Chicago and New York in the 1940s, \u201950s and \u201960s. Michnowicz says if immigration ended today, \u201cby 2050, there wouldn\u2019t be Spanish spoken in North Carolina.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Michnowicz believes preserving Spanish is important for Hispanic families to communicate with each other across multiple generations, as well as for the concrete benefits of a bilingual society. \u201cBeing bilingual staves off dementia,\u201d Michnowicz says. \u201cBeing bilingual increases your SAT scores. Being bilingual gets you paid more.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Key to preserving Spanish, Michnowicz says, is to challenge the belief held in the Hispanic community that the Spanish the younger generation speaks \u201cisn\u2019t real Spanish just because it has English influence in it.\u201d Take the word, \u201calfombra,\u201d the formal Spanish word for \u201crug.\u201d In the U.S., some speakers use the word \u201ccarpeta,\u201d combining English and Spanish. But, he says, by using even that blend, a second- or third-generation Spanish speaker still chooses what for them is a Spanish word. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf that\u2019s criticized too much at a community level,\u201d he says, \u201cthey just say \u2018forget it\u2019 and switch to English.\u201d<\/p>\n"},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An ongoing study reveals Spanish is in danger of disappearing in North Carolina.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":1935,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"views\/single-immersive.blade.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"source":"","ncst_custom_author":"","ncst_show_custom_author":false,"ncst_dynamicHeaderBlockName":"ncst\/default-immersive-post-header","ncst_dynamicHeaderData":"{\"showAuthor\":true,\"showDate\":true,\"showFeaturedVideo\":false,\"backgroundColor\":\"gray_800\",\"subtitle\":\"An ongoing study reveals Spanish is in danger of disappearing in North Carolina.\",\"displayCategoryID\":5,\"caption\":\"Illustration by James Steinberg\"}","ncst_content_audit_freq":"","ncst_content_audit_date":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[344,598,668],"_ncst_magazine_issue":[],"class_list":["post-1933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories","tag-department-of-foreign-languages-and-literatures","tag-jim-michnowicz","tag-la-fiesta-del-pueblo"],"displayCategory":{"term_id":5,"name":"Best Bets","slug":"best-bets","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":5,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":52,"filter":"raw"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1933"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1933"},{"taxonomy":"_ncst_magazine_issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_ncst_magazine_issue?post=1933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}