Hispanic parents are frustrated because children won’t learn Spanish – South Florida

“Jonathan Alper feels like a stranger among Spanish speakers. But immigrants see his Colombian-born mother’s features in him and peg him as one of their own, often asking him for directions or trying to strike up a conversation in Spanish, a language he doesn’t speak.

“They’ll walk up to me and start speaking Spanish, and I’m like, ‘Oh crap. Where’s the exit?’” said Alper, 25, a deputy clerk at the Broward County Courthouse who lives in Pembroke Pines.

About half of all children of Hispanic immigrants speak at least some Spanish, research shows. But many South Florida Hispanic parents say they struggle to preserve the language at home, even in a region where Spanish beams from airwaves and beckons from storefront signs.”

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