Thread: Spanish in American Schools

We have as friends a local Columbian family. They are here legally. Their children have taken Spanish as their required language credits in school (ok, so that's sort of cheating but not my topic here). They have told me that the Spanish being taught in American schools is all wrong and that if they try to correct the teachers, they get in trouble. When I asked them to clarify what they meant by "wrong," they told me some of it is just plain inaccurate grammatically but beyond that, they said it is "dirty Spanish, trashy Spanish." When I asked what that was, they said they didn't mean to sound racist but that the Spanish being taught was Mexican ghetto Spanish and most SPANISH speaking people (they meant anyone not Mexican), consider that "trash Spanish; not proper Spanish." Interesting, eh?

Ya. Wouldn't surprise me.

I've heard just about any language taught is pretty different than the actual way it's spoken. Never got to test it out myself. I've heard it's easier to jump right in with the people vs learning from a book.

I had a neighbor from Germany who took it in class as an easy credit since she immigrated from there, and she said what they taught us really wasn't right either.

There are probably a lot of dialects to it.

My mothers grandfather was from Nova Scotia, and he spoke 16th century French. It, to my understanding, is a lot different from modern European French today, many in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick still speak it, and I think in Quebec too.

So it must be that Spanish first came to Mexico with the conquistadors and evolved and had some of the native language mixed in with it, and then it modernized.

A friend of mine told me the same thing, that it is not true spanish.

I totally believe it. We aren't following the dialect of the country
Spain anymore but the ghetto slang of viva la mexico.