'I'm bilingual, but...'

By: Jeremy Silverman

"I'm both American and I’m Ethiopian, and I can embrace both by speaking both languages."

Although Heran Mamo grew up in Portland she said she was raised in a traditional Ethiopian household.

"So my first language was Amharic, which is the official language of the country. And they kind of wanted to teach me bilingually, but that didn't work. I was not picking up English, so they were like, 'screw it, we’ll teach it to her later’ and so I learned at age five, before I went to preschool."

As she grew up, English slowly took over as her primary language, replacing her Amharic fluency. However, as she matures, Mamo is reclaiming her Ethiopian roots by re-introducing herself to the language she once spoke fluently.

"There was a big Ethiopian community in Portland, which is what I grew up around, but my immediate neighborhood was American people," Mamo said.

To Mamo, losing her Amharic in middle school was a result of an emphasis on speaking English. Her lack of Amharic fluency began to have implications on how she interacted with certain members of her family.

"I think a lot of immigrant communities, like if you don’t know your native language, speaking to grandparents and older people is like extremely difficult,” Mamo said. “It can basically be like an extinct experience."

Hear her story

As she moved into high school, Mamo decided it was time to bring Amharic back into her life.

"In high school, it was really cool to be different in terms of being really proud of where you came from or where your parents came from and really being embedded in that culture," Mamo said." I felt like that was when I had an impetus to kinda like relearn it again."

Mamo said speaking Amharic is more than just knowing the words. Amharic connects her to her Ethiopian heritage when she feels she sounds authentic. Throughout her journey back to being bilingual, practicing with family was important to get back not just the words, but her accent as well.

And now, it's paying off.

"My parents are getting a lot of praise cause they're like “Heran speaks very well, she has the pronunciation right, she has the accent,'" Mamo said. "'This is really good for an Ethiopian-American kid.'"

By: Miranda Virgen

"There’s a phrase, that a lot of young people who came to America as young immigrants, identify with 'you're from neither here or from there.'

Sarah Zuluaga-Sierra was born in Colombia. When she was 14 months old, her family immigrated to the United States creating a new life for their family and surrounding themselves in a new culture.

Living in a new country, her parents enrolled her in a daycare where she quickly learned English. Zuluaga-Sierra also grew up speaking Spanish at home because her parents would only communicate in their native tongue. It was their way of encouraging her to continue to speak and use the language.

Hear her story

As a child, she began to struggle with her Latina and Hispanic identity. After she realized that her parents were able to speak English she would only speak to them in English. Her friends in America and Colombia made comments that made Zuluaga-Sierra feel removed from her two worlds.

"I remember being in fourth or fifth grade in North Carolina, and starting to develop this Southern accent," Zuluaga-Sierra said. "[I had] a friend – one of my best friends actually at the time – told me, 'Sarah, you're not allowed to get a Southern accent. You're from Colombia!'"

Zuluaga-Sierra would travel back to Colombia where people would make comments that made her feel out of place.

"But then, of course, anytime I visit at home, I was the 'gringa', I was the American," Zuluaga-Sierra said."You grow up feeling kind of displaced."

Zuluaga-Sierra said that recently, as she was becoming a young woman, she realized that she had changed.

"As I got older, I kind of started to realize the significance of what I had lost," Zuluaga-Sierra said.

Now, she embraces who she is and has practiced speaking Spanish more. The struggles she has faced in her life have helped her realize the person who she was trying to be and the person she truly identifies with.

"A big part of me was trying to reject my Latina and Hispanic identity," Zuluaga-Sierra said. "In trying to assimilate, and realizing that I don't necessarily need to do that, and I can claim my culture as my own."

By: Kylie Harrington

“Throughout my childhood I was speaking Spanish, but the problem was I went to English-speaking school so … I did end up kind of losing it.”

Growing up in the San Fernando Valley, Aaron Eckstein grew up speaking Spanish at home. But because he spent more time with English-speaking peers in elementary and middle school, he lost his familiarity with the language.

“When I was with my friends at school or in the classroom I was always speaking English, so it was really easy to practice, but Spanish kind of deteriorated and went downhill,” Eckstein said. He felt that he was not only losing touch with the language, but with his family’s Mexican roots.

He realized how much of his Spanish language he lost when in he was in high school.

Hear his story

“I took a couple Spanish classes, took the AP Spanish test and now at USC, I’m minoring in Spanish and also over the summer...I spent seven weeks in Spain and it was an incredible experience,” Eckstein said. He said he takes pride in his Mexican heritage and is president of the Latino Business Student Association.

Even though he was in many ways relearning the language, Eckstein did not start from zero. "For most native speakers, whenever they kind of forget a language, it's still very easy to understand. Whenever someone is speaking Spanish I can still understand it practically, but speaking it is a lot harder," Eckstein said.

For Eckstein, speaking Spanish is more than a language. It is part of his identity. "When people kind of look at me, they would never think that I am half-Mexican," Eckstein said. "It’s just so cool to kind of say 'yeah, I mean I do speak Spanish, I'm half-Mexican, my family is from Mexico City.' It’s almost a shock to people."

By: Kylie Harrington

"Being bilingual means that you embrace both sides of you, even if it’s hard sometimes."

Monica David grew up between two worlds, splitting her time between the Philippines and Portland, learning Tagalog and English simultaneously. But as she spent more time with English-speaking peers and started to focus on schoolwork, the Tagalog began to slip away.

"When I learned more complex American words and I didn't really know complex words in my other language, I felt like I had to use English. There was such an emphasis on communication, that you sound professional, more formal, that you start using the complex vocabulary words around fourth or fifth grade." David said. "Probably in the moment I didn't really care, I was just trying to get a good grade, but now thinking back on it, it kind of sucks."

Hear her story

While she understands Tagalog, she has trouble carrying out full conversations. "Any time someone speaks it, I can fully understand what they’re saying, but my responses are pretty broken," David said. "If I watched more TV, if I listened to more music (in Tagalog), my quality would probably be better," said David, who is also studying Spanish in school and French in her free time.

Her parents, both native speakers, also have made the switch. "Now that I'm older they usually just speak to me in English. I think they're more comfortable speaking English now," David said. "I have two younger siblings and they don't really understand Tagalog. They didn't really live in the Philippines ever, so they don't have that kind of exposure."

Because she hardly ever uses one of her native languages, David isn't sure if she's a perfect example of a bilingual person.

"I don't think I'm a perfect bilingual...like my thoughts are always in English, never in Tagalog," she said. "I feel like when your thoughts are in a different language, that's a pretty good sign that you’ve reached 'bilingual'."

By: Diana Postolache

Diana Ciocan moved with her family from Victoria, Romania, to Canton, Ohio when she was 10 years old. She already knew some English, as the language is taught in Romanian schools, starting as young as second grade.

"Once we realized we were moving to the States, like a year before moving my mom got me like like an actual private tutor where I had real lessons," Ciocan said. "But it was still different, because I was learning like a British English. That’s what most English classes are like in other European countries."

The accents she learned in her British-based English class did not apply to American English, which she said threw her for a loop.

"Hoodie for me was a weird word for me to learn because they are literally focusing on that one piece of the of the item, like the hood, and making the whole thing called the hoodie," she said.

Hear her story

She noticed she was starting to forget her Romanian after only living in the United States for one year. "I was looking back through some old home videos," Ciocan said. "There was one video where I was taking a video trying to send it to my friends back home and I couldn’t remember the word for tree in Romanian. So my little brother told me the word for tree and I was like how do you remember this right now and I don’t."

Ciocan said she has been able to maintain her Romanian roots because of the presence of a large Romanian community in northeastern Ohio. She speaks the language at home and regularly talks with friends and family in Romania on WhatsApp. Still, she has moments of "Romanglish."

"Whichever word comes to me faster is the word I say. But whenever I go back and forth between the two cultures. I can switch back to those languages," Ciocan said.

Something Ciocan enjoys about Romanian is all the different words used to express love, since Romanian has different words or expressions for romantic love, platonic love, familial love, for example. "In English you use love for absolutely every kind of relationship that you feel love," she said.

Being bilingual also gives her multiple avenues of expression. "I can’t really express something I want to say in one language but I can express in Romanian. I speak Spanish, too and sometimes there is a word in Spanish that catches what I’m trying to say so that’s kind of hard when I’m writing essays and say like a specific thing, and I’m like "this probably doesn’t exist in English".

By: Kylie Harrington

"I feel like I fall in the in-betweeners like, I'm not necessarily like a full American because I do have my Mexican side, but I'm not fully Mexican because I have my American side."

Adlih Calderon's parents moved to the United States from Mexico only a few years before she was born, and settled in the small city of Paris, Texas. Growing up in a Spanish-speaking household and community, she didn’t start speaking English until she entered grade school.

"I don't think I started like perfectly learning English until probably around third grade," Calderon said. As a grade schooler, she used the language to keep up in school and to relate to her English-speaking classmates.

"A lot of the Mexican kids that I knew went to the other school and I went to the school where it was mostly white," she said. Partially separated from the Mexican-American community she grew up with, English became more of a necessity.

As a result of speaking English in school and Spanish at home, Calderon can fluently speak and read in Spanish, but still has trouble writing in the language. "I'm so bad at writing it," she said with a laugh.

Hear her story

Though English is her primary language in school and professional settings, Calderon still speaks Spanish whenever she visits her family at home, but sometimes runs into issues switching between the languages.

"Whenever people want me to translate things, half the things I do know in Spanish and the other times I don’t know and I have to just like ask," Calderon said. "I speak a lot of Spanglish."

Navigating the worlds of English-speaking American culture and Spanish-speaking Mexican culture at the same time can be tricky, especially because she doesn't see herself as a perfect Spanish speaker.

"I'm caught in between the cultures, and that's a good thing and also a bad thing because most people see me as a Chicana, which is an American-born Mexican, which can be difficult sometimes because I don’t speak (Spanish) one hundred percent," Calderon said.

Overall, Calderon sees being bilingual as a clear source of enrichment and perspective in her life.

"I get to talk to different people and also experience a different culture," she said. "Most people don’t if they just speak one language."