Breaking Barrier

Language is long the dividing factor for countries, and people in the country. I have had a unique experience with the idea of language being a dividing factor. As I am a mixed child, half- Caucasian, and half- Hispanic, I do have family who are in another country and speak another language.

Born in the late 80’s, I have been to Panama about 7 times from birth to pre- 9/11. I do not believe I have ever had a full conversation with my dad’s side of the family. The love is still there, but there is a definite barrier present in the relationship. To provide the prime example, until recently, I have not understood Spanish well enough to know simple verbs such as “comer” and “lavar”. In order to express hunger, we had to have signs involving the mouth and the stomach. We never had the ability to effectively communicate.

Language has been something which has long been a grand part of my life. My dad’s second language is English, and his first of course is Spanish. In my previous blog, I have mentioned that things do not translate well for the converted speakers. This would also cause the communication barrier, simply because mistranslations would cause problems. I have also witnessed many occasions in which the Spanish speakers are trying to get things done in America, like purchasing groceries, or receiving admissions to hospitals, and due to the lack of Spanish- English translators, have had trouble getting the intentions across. I would then finally get to learn Spanish, and everything started clearing up.

When I started learning Spanish, my understanding of the communication barrier started to clear up. I started to learn that Spanish is one language in which the verb comes before the adjective, and then eventually learned that Spanish does not literally translate into English, and therefore the communication barrier started to crumble. I got the realization that though Spanish natives are trying and failing at speaking English, it was easy to understand their intentions. This allowed me to start to understand my dad clearer, and to try to effectively communicate with Spanish speakers. Now that I am seeing the language barrier crash, I am seeing it in the realm of politics.

Politics, until recently, never regarded the language barrier of most Americans. In the Election of 2004, I had started to see signs that multiple politicians were actually regarding the minority Spanish- speaking populations. Before the election, there was not a lot of publicity and regard for the Hispanics and Spanish- Americans. Language was something that most were expected to know, and the politicians were not too keen to deal with the Hispanic population. The change came rapidly after 9/11, when the government started to recognize how grand the minority Spanish- speaking population, and began to smash down the language barrier.

Really the language barrier is being broken all over the place, in my life, in politics, and even in the rest of the world. Many people fail to realize that there was a barrier for language, and that it is currently in the process of being knocked down. We are making progress as a nation, and I am making progress as an individual, with the rupturing of the language barrier.