Codeswitching

After reading the article by Mrs. Zentella I took a few minutes listening to the conversations in my house. As I mentioned in class my wife is Puerto Rican. As a child she spent about four years here in Utah where she struggled to learn English. She then returned to Puerto Rico and lived there until she was 18. Due to the language switching growing up and the trauma that it caused her in school she had not wanted to teach our children Spanish until our fourth child was born. Now although we are trying to teach all of our children Spanish, we speak it more with the youngest. As I was listening to my wife speak to my daughter, our second oldest, she said, "Listen to this girl being such a llorona." Which equates to cry baby in English. After hearing this I realized that my wife uses the Spanish terms with our children because they do not understand them as much and it softens the blow a little. The switching between the languages carries with it a power that although usually unrecognizable helps to convey emotion. Like in the article when the two children were arguing about the bike and, who hit who first the little girl only spoke to the boy in Spanish when she was trying to make sure the adult knew what she was saying when she said, "Porque Tu me diste!" The use of Spanglish, at least in my household seems to give an added dimension of power and emotion that I am not sure is accessible by monolingual people.