Friend Group

Oftentimes in the city around English-speaking men, members of our community rely on Spanish communication in order to make the best decisions about safety. This becomes jeopardized in situations where the safety threat shares our two languages. In these cases, we rely on nonverbal communication. When we can achieve private communicate in one language, we relay the decision reached to the English speakers through nonverbal cues.

There are also situations where using a second language in front of monolinguals will just spare us an awkward moment. For example, we will use a second language in a social gathering when asking each other when we want to leave a or if we are bored or inquiring about someone else there, all things that wouldn't be socially acceptable to just say aloud in a commonly understood communication form.

In How to Tame a Wild Tongue by Gloria Anzaldúa, she details eight different forms of communication across Spanish and English which each take place in different contexts. The forms of communication which exist in our community across Spanish and English are not the same as Anzaldúa's, but still exist distinctly and are reserved for specific situations/specific companies.

The Spanish we use around the Chilean and Honduran mothers of our communities is full of 'usted' and 'mande,' which exists in complete contrasts with the 'tu' and 'que' so casually included in the Spanish of our community. The Spanish we use in public/in dangerous situations/in awkward situations is secretive, figurative, inventive, and twists even our secret language into a form of communication that an outside Spanish-speaker may turn up an eyebrow at. We translate our English references into Spanish words that don't otherwise make sense, adding an extra layer of protection to our already intimate diction. Swear words in Spanish and English are meaningless to some community members and off-limits for others. Within our community, the music we listen to with just us three Spanish speakers is different than what we listen to when all five of us are present.

Chilean Spanish

Salvadoran/Honduran Spanish

the community members who use these dialects commonly express feeling that they never fully learned English or Spanish

Non-native Spanish learned from English

English-only speakers

Occasional frustration felt by these members when Spanish is used in contexts where immediate translation is unavailable

As explained in Understanding, connection, and identification, bilingual people feel most accurately understood by other bilingual people. This means that there is sometimes minor translations made in order to accommodate the two English-only speakers.

relies on intuition which she
sometimes will state as a feeling
which she believes came from God

reliance on intuition which I do
not credit to a higher power

rarely relies on intution; labels any feelings
as answers to prayer or answers from God

rarely experience intution, rely on
intuition of first two members;
frequently ask for input of these members