Spanish

When you see my name on a name tag or written somewhere, I get that you’ll likely use the English pronunciation. You can’t know how I say my name until I tell you.

Coming to Berkeley, I was scared of losing something as essential to my identity as my heritage. And to be quite frank, at times I feel like I have lost parts of it. Yet, I also know that the love I have for my raíces has never been stronger. 

Spanglish was spoken inside my home as a kid. I never minded the gaps where my English filled the spaces in my mother’s native tongue. By the time I reached the peak of growing pains, suddenly the gaps in my speech mattered.

In recent years, Latinx and Chicanx students have made up a greater percentage of UC Berkeley’s transfer admit classes than its freshman admit classes — in the 2022-2023 cycle, nearly 30% of all admitted Latinx and Chicanx students were transfers.

Some members of the UC Berkeley community recently took to Twitter to express their discontentment with campus’s “English Pronunciation Workshop,” offered once a semester through the International Office.

Whitexicans are thought of as a big joke in Mexico, from their accents to the way they dress (usually wearing a “Mexico is the s—” bomber jacket).

I know from school and dictionaries that language has defined meanings, but I learned from my experience of speaking Spanish how words also have tastes, smells, sounds and sights.

The language of our family or our culture can help ground us, but what happens when a person doesn’t know the language of their culture?

My life certainly hasn’t been too exciting as of late, so I’m here to share some random facts I’ve learned this week as a result of some questions that popped into my head.

In her latest release, Kali Uchis uses her dreamy melodies and heartful voice to create music using both Spanish and English lyrics.