Espanglish

'Espanglish' has now been accepted into the Spain's Dictionary of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language. 

Spanglish or espanglish is a commonly used term for mixing both English and Spanish together.  It happens A LOT here in Puerto Rico.

We speak a lot of Spanglish at home.  The kids know a lot of random vocabulary words and use them daily in place of their English counter parts.

Leche has always been leche, rarely milk.
Pan is always pan, not bread.
We sit in the sala, not living room.
The older three kids can count past 100 in Spanish, have been since they were very young.  They know colors, shapes, etc. 

These things have been a part of the language that we use without even thinking.  Our goal is to get whole sentences and phrases to become an every day part of their language!

Goofy Girl, 7, is very quick to use her Spanish knowledge with Abuela, especially when it comes to getting food/snacks! And Abuela is so happy to hear her asking in español, she will give it to her happily!!

Our biggest 'problem' we've found is that there are so many people here who speak both languages fairly fluently, that they don't "need" to use Spanish.  There are people who live here in Puerto Rico knowing a handful of Spanish and manage to survive. 

Over the summer, the kids went to a few different VBSs.  Two were at English speaking churches that we do activities with.  One however, was at a Spanish speaking church, one that a friend went to and recommended.

I was really excited for the kids to be forced to use their español skills...only to find out that the counselors and leaders spoke to them in English! The program itself was in Spanish and the songs were all in Spanish, but they didn't use it nearly enough!

I'm glad that they have friends that they can speak with, pero, quiero por ellos practican mas español y menos inglés!