Published: February 1, 2000

Mother Tongue

The student uses the word troca , Spanglish for truck. The standard Spanish word is camión . I correct her, but as usual I hesitate.   It should be an easy call to make. Troca is the wrong word. Correct it and move on. But it’s not that simple. I am not just correcting word choice. For my students, troc a could evoke images of family, trips, parents’ jobs, anything. It’s a word that is part of their Latino identity. Who knows? It might even be a precious word for some of them. Yet when it’s used for "correct" Spanish, it loses some of that power.

The slang that we pick up from our parents, whether Spanglish, Southern, or African American, to name but a few examples, is such an integral part of us that learning the correct language, though practical and necessary, can be painful. It means giving up a piece...