PhDr. Mgr. Karolína Strnadová
Due to the migration from Latin America to the US in recent decades, the Spanish-speaking community is growing very fast in several US states, and therefore, the use of Spanish is increasing considerably in the US territory. Spanish earns its position in many areas of North American life: interpersonal communication on the street or in the work, commercial inscriptions and road signs, media, advertisements, etc. However, the position of Spanish within the Spanish-speaking community that resides in the US has changed. On the one hand, Spanish speakers who do not speak English continue to arrive and Spanish is their only or main language of communication. On the other hand, the new Spanish-speaking generations that were born in the US do not always speak Spanish at the level of their parents and/or prefer to use it over English. Where to look for the explanation for such a trend?
The contribution will tend to offer a synthesis of several points that come into play when explaining the linguistic and social context of the United States: effects of the coexistence of diverse cultures and languages; linguistic centralization from the diachronic point of view; monolingualism versus bilingualism in the educational system; linguistic rights, social justice and the inclusion of the Spanish-speaking community; community translation and interpretation; code-switching and the Spanish of the new generations. The paper is based on various studies and academic works on the subject, official, legal and historical documents and the personal experience of the author.
Keywords: Spanish, USA, Spanish speakers, education, rights to language, linguistic centralization