Spanish or English for 40 million-plus U.S. Hispanics? - Newspaper Tree El Paso

Posted on: June 30th, 2008
Filed Under: [ Tomás' Picks ] [ Language Issues ] [ Commentary ]
Tags: book, Spanish-language
Knowledge is Power!

Plans for meeting the needs of American Hispanics must take into account their overwhelming reliance on the English language, although for the 15 percent of the U.S. Hispanic population that is monolingual Spanish operant, Spanish-language publishing makes sense. Reaching the 40 million-plus American Hispanic population requires balance.
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In a letter to Críiticas, an English Speaker’s Guide to the Latest Spanish Language Titles, Irma Flores Manger encourages the magazine to “include reviews of books by Latinos written in English,” citing relevant reasons. While expressing sympathy with her reasons, the editors responded that their “current focus is on the Spanish-language publishing world.” Críticas fills an important space, but if that space is focused only on the Spanish-language publishing world then that space is not the space of U.S. Hispanics. For in focusing only on Spanish language publishing Críticas believes that U.S. Hispanics are essentially a Spanish-language reading group or that non-Hispanic English speaking Americans are interested in Spanish-language materials. Both are tenuous assumptions. In a recent Census Bureau 2000 Supplementary Report on immigration in the 90’s, two-thirds of the children of Hispanic immigrants from this period “rated themselves as speaking English very well” which, by extension, makes them English-language readers as well.”*