September 16, 2022 at 12:06 pm EDT Seventh-grade Spanish class was the first time Alex Del Dago sat down with the intention of learning his father’s native language.
Although simplistic, this class served as the gateway for meaningful communication with his grandma, whom he calls abuela, who only speaks Spanish.
According to the Pew Research Center,"Hispanic identity fades across generations," with less and less people with Hispanic heritage identifying as being Hispanic. Similarly, the more generations a family has been in the United States, the less likely they are to teach their children Spanish. But some Gen-Z Latino-Americans are reclaiming their culture via languageDel Dago studied Spanish through courses at school.
This isn’t unusual either. With each generation, the number of Hispanic heritage parents who speak to their children in Spanish decreases. Seventy-one percent of U.S.- born second-generation Latino parents speak to their children in Spanish and fewer than half of all third- or higher-generation Latino parents do, according to the Pew Research Center.One of the main proponents of allowing children or creating more dual language programs is Dr.