Can Spanish survive in the USA?

• Fewer than half of third-generation Latinos speak Spanish proficiently
• Some parents don%27t pass on Spanish to their children to ease their cultural assimilation
• %27Interlinguistic%27 marriages also play a role in the decline of Spanish usage among Latinos

Some experiences stay with a person forever.

For Susana Rivera-Mills, it was moving in 1982 from El Salvador to San Francisco at the vulnerable age of 12—and not knowing how to speak a word of English. The education system was different then, and Rivera-Mills was actually classified as a special-needs student. She was held back a year in school. Decades later, the bilingual and successful college professor still has traumatic memories of being rejected by her peers on a daily basis. The emotional hurdle, she says, was more difficult to overcome than surviving the civil war that she and her family fled. Scars from the experience later surfaced when she became a mother and had to make the difficult decision of whether to pass on her native tongue to her only son.

During the first five years of her son's life, Rivera-Mills says she spoke to him solely in Spanish, while her husband spoke to him in English. That practice ended when her son started school and became self-conscious of being different from other kids.

"My mother instinct said, 'I don't want my son to be rejected and made to feel like an outcast,'" Rivera-Mills explains. But I did "want him to grow up feeling strong and confident in one language." And so English became the dominant language at her home, and her now 10-year-old son went from being bilingual to monolingual.

Rivera-Mills has high hopes that her son will speak Spanish fluently again; future immersion trips to Mexico and El Salvador may help. But anecdotes and research have shown that to be unlikely.

While an overwhelming majority of Latinos agree that passing on the Spanish language to future generations is critical, studies show that few people are actually doing that. According to a 2012 Pew Hispanic Center study on language use among Latinos, only 47 percent of third-generation Latinos can speak Spanish proficiently. Even fewer can read in their home language.

The reasons are varied, but they include the need to avoid discrimination (as felt by Rivera-Mills), the desire for economic advancement, and the belief that to be truly American, English must replace Spanish. These influences make raising bilingual kids difficult, even for parents who seem fully equipped to do so.

That includes parents like Rivera-Mills, a professor of Spanish at Oregon State University who holds a master's degree in Spanish linguistics and a doctorate in romance languages. She is considered an expert on Spanish language usage and its effect on society.

"Even for those of us who are educated, professional (and) who understand the dynamics and the politics, the parental instinct to protect your child, to want your child to succeed as much as possible with the least barriers as possible, takes over," Rivera-Mills says.

That must have been the same feeling Yvonne Condes' parents had when they were raising her in Tucson, Ariz., in the 1980s. Although Condes' Mexican father and her Mexican-American mother are bilingual and spoke only Spanish to each other at home, they chose to raise their four children as monolingual English speakers.

"My mom had a hard time in elementary school because she didn't speak English and she didn't want that to happen to us," says Condes, the mother of two boys.

Condes says her mother tried to protect her children by doing what she thought would make their lives easier, even though assimilating meant robbing them of part of their identity. As a result, Condes says she has "a huge complex:" She's Latina but she doesn't speak Spanish. She feels like she doesn't really fit in with any group, other than her own family.

"I don't blame my parents. It was a different time, but it would've been great," says the blogger and cofounder of the parenting site MomsLA.com. "I don't criticize parents for not speaking Spanish to their kids because I think it's hard to be a parent either way, but I wish I had that gift to give (my children)."

Although she can't teach them Spanish, Condes says she tries to pass her Latino culture on to her two boys, ages 9 and 7, by cooking traditional Mexican dishes and participating in events that promote their heritage like Mariachi festivals and even immigration reform protests.

She also has enrolled them in Spanish lessons a couple of times a week after school. While she knows that's not enough to make them fluent, she hopes the exposure will pique their interest and that they'll want to learn their grandparents' language later on in life.

"I don't want (Spanish) to die with them. I don't want them to grow up and not know what it means to be Latino or not know what it means to be Mexican American," laments Condes. "I don't know who they're going to marry, so I would love for them to learn Spanish and as much about our culture as I can teach them."

Condes' anxiety is justified, according to Rivera-Mills. "Interlinguistic" marriages, as she likes to call them, have played a significant role in the steady decline of Spanish usage among Latinos.

"The home, by far, continues to be the last and strongest enclave for language to be transmitted from one generation to the other," says Rivera-Mills. "And when the home is eroded, then that transmission becomes weaker and weaker."

Liliana Awori agrees. Awori's bilingual Honduran mother opted not to teach her Spanish. So when Awori married an immigrant from Kenya and later became a mom, she figured the only way to prevent the disappearance of her heritage language would be through bilingual education for her children.

She enrolled the eldest of her three daughters in a dual-language immersion program at an elementary school in Pasadena, Calif. The daughter is taught mostly in Spanish, and Awori couldn't be happier—or more proud—of the results after only one year.

Her other daughters—a first-grader and a kindergarten student—will also attend the school. Awori is thrilled that she can give her children something she didn't have but desperately wanted.

"A lot of our heritage is based on language, which includes music and literature. And I can't participate in that. I feel sad and left out a little," says the architect who is currently a stay-at-home mom. "So I'm very excited for where (my daughter) is, for what she's doing."

Living in the bilingual community of Miami, Yvette Triana thought it would be easier to raise her children to speak Spanish and English. But the broadcast journalist has found it to be more difficult than she expected. "It's harder than people think," says Triana.

She grew up in a bilingual household and spent many of her childhood summers immersed in Spanish in her mother's homeland of Peru. "I do have the language, but English is my first language. And when you're speaking to your family, you want to speak in the language that you're most comfortable," she says.

Even so, she continues to make an effort to teach her kids Spanish because she sees the language as a gift.

It's a gift that will keep giving, thanks to the constant influx of native-speaking immigrants, says Rivera-Mills. But it will continue to be a challenge to maintain the language through generations, she says.

"Unless the ideology of this country changes from being monolingual and somewhat ethnocentric to one that truly promotes multilingualism and multiculturalism, I don't see us getting to a point where we're going to say, 'Spanish will be maintained,'" she says.

This article is excerpted from USA TODAY Hispanic Living. This special edition magazine contains articles on lifestyle, family, politics and other matters important to U.S. Latinos. Buy it wherever magazines are sold or at hispanicliving.usatoday.com.