Just heard people of Hispanic origin say on TV that they don’t learn Spanish because American schools teach “the Castilian version of Spanish.”
Of all the ridiculous excuses in existence, this is the silliest.
As Excuses Go
Opinions, art, debate
Clarissa's Blog 
That’s patently untrue. If what is meant is that a Northern Castilian dialect is taught, as opposed to a Spanish-American dialect based on Andalusian Spanish, then I’d say the vast majority of middle school and high school Spanish teachers teach Spanish-American varieties.
LikeLike
Exactly. I have no idea where they see so many teachers speaking the Castilian version in the US.
LikeLike
Maybe it’s confusion between the names espanol and castellano (the latter of which is used almost exclusively as the name of the language in some latin american countries)?
I never took Spanish in high school but the classes I took after were always in what I think of as US Spanish – a generalized least-common-denominator kind of Latin American probably closer to Mexican than anything else (but without strong markers of Mexicanness if that makes sense).
Maybe they’re just making random excuses and assuming that most viewers to not know any better?
LikeLike
“Maybe they’re just making random excuses and assuming that most viewers to not know any better?”
LikeLike
“The immense difficulty in teaching the so-called “heritage speakers” is that there is just no convincing them that Spanglish is not Mexican Spanish”
I have experience with two language classes with a lot of heritage speakers in the US.
One was modern Greek where half the class had heard the language most of their lives (there used to be substantial greek communities in florida) and they produced forms that the teacher (Greek) found hilarious or horrible. Different degrees of active fluency but none of them could spell to save their lives. The non-Greek students were better spellers.
The other was Vietnamese, which when I showed up turned out to not actually be for learning the language. All the students were pretty fluent heritage speakers who couldn’t read or write (and spoke to each other in US southern accented english) and the whole class was learning spelling. It was cool listening to the teacher spell – it turns out that vietnamese spelling sounds a lot like music.
LikeLike
Do they mean the Spanish that is spoken in Spain? Where I live that is the Spanish that is taught in schools- European Spanish. The young Spanish speakers who live here often function as interpreters for their parents. Most of these families speak languages (or dialects?) from South America and Mexico at home. I was told by a community organizer that the kids have problems with the difference in spelling and in class are told that their version is incorrect or wrong, which frustrates them. They are actively discouraged from speaking their first language by the schools.
I don’t know about excuses or what, but I do know that the kids feel negatively about their home languages and are dropping their use completely to assimilate. Sometimes I wish people here were not so phobic about other languages. I think they are beautiful in their distinct ways.
LikeLike
“Most of these families speak languages (or dialects?) from South America and Mexico at home.”
“I was told by a community organizer that the kids have problems with the difference in spelling and in class are told that their version is incorrect or wrong, which frustrates them.”
LikeLike
“Where I live that is the Spanish that is taught in schools- European Spanish.”
You mean with distinción? (for example pronouncing casa and caza differently)
with vosotros (plural familiar you, not used anywhere in Latin America)
replacement of the preterit (dije, hice etc) with the present perfect (he dicho, he hecho)?
That would be very weird. It’s more probable that the Spanish in class (least commmon denominator Latin American) differs from their home usage in various ways and the spelling rules (which aren’t as simple as they are sometimes presented as, especially for Latin American Spanish and especially for those without much experience with reading or writing) are tripping them up.
LikeLike
I strongly suspect this is all about Spanglish.
LikeLike
As someone who has worked for 38 years in opinion polling, including surveys in native language among various ethnic groups in the US . . .
The complaint about Castilian Spanish is legit. Among Hispanics in the US, there are three distinct dialects: Mexican, Caribbean and Latin American. Animosity between the three groups has kept Hispanics from achieving real political power.
Castilian is the dialect of those who conquered and tortured. That’s like hiring Russian teachers to teach in Ukrainian elementary schools. Cinco de Mayo is the celebration of banishment of the Spaniards.
What makes this manageable for US educators is that the three dialectic groups have settled in different areas of the US. Those around NYC are primarily Caribbean. Those in the Southwest are Mexican.
LikeLike
there are significant ( unlike American vs British ) differences in both tone, choice of grammatical constructions and vocabulary. You obviously get understood most of the time, but you may communicate arrogance, you may appear to have a different sexual orientation than you have , sound uneducated or simply very funny.
What is doubtful though is that any school can go as far to teach any of these subtleties for any one to feel
LikeLike
frustrated with that education.
LikeLike
You think there aren’t significant differences between American and British?
When I overhear everyday British people talking I almost never understand everything (if they’re older and seem to be upper middle class maybe yes). Most of the time it’s between 50 and 80%
British people tend to have extensive exposure to a lot of American forms but the reverse doesn’t really hold true. Most modern British people don’t really use what Americans think of as British accents.
I have a lot more experience with real spoken British English than the great majority of Americans and I find it very rough going a lot of the time.
Written forms are easier but I remember knew an American in Poland (university graduate) who was asked to give lessons based on some popular British magazines and he couldn’t because he didn’t udnerstand enough of the idioms/slang expressions therein.
LikeLike
Exactly. High school Spanish is taught on a very basic level. Rare is a teacher who actually speaks and Spanish in class. And the teaching doesn’t even get to complete sentences in the first two years at least.
I’ve observed the teaching of Spanish, and even in the best school in the region the class is all about talking in English about Spanish.
LikeLike
Anyone studying Spanish in college in the US (to be a Spanish teacher later) will have been taught a Spanish neither here nor there. Most professors tend to gravitate toward a standard Spanish, and very few high school teachers will have a strongly marked Spanish in favor of one particular region. The grammatical forms are not going to be different. Our students, for example, cannot use vosotros, even though they may have had TA and profs from Spain.
LikeLike
I don’t think it has to do with Spanglish, I think it has to do with an extreme emotional reaction to small differences, and to having to deal with standard Spanish of any kind.
LikeLike