With ten days to go till the publication of my book ¿Por qué? 101 Questions about Spanish, the Spanish-language newspaper El Diario has just published a full-page review (below) in its National Hispanic Heritage Month supplement; click here for a slightly more readable image. I hope that this review will help my book find a readership among the Hispanic community as well as academia, a long-held dream of mine.
[Today is Spanish Friday so this post is in Spanish. ¡Scroll down for English translation!]
Le agradezco a Carmen Molina Tamacas por haberme incluido en su artículo:
Sin embargo, no comparto el optimismo del artículo en cuanto al futuro del español en los EE. UU. Según los lingüístas cuyas obras he leído, como Carmen Silva-Corvalán de USC (en California) y John Lipski (Penn State), los inmigrantes hispanos, como los italianos, griegos, alemanes, y judíos en décadas anteriores, van perdiendo su idioma dentro de pocas generaciones. Solo la llegada constante de nuevos inmigrantes permite la continuación del idioma.
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Many thanks to Carmen Molina Tamascas for having included me in her article about Spanish in the United States (see image/link above). However, I don’t share the article’s optimism regarding the language’s future here. According to the linguists whose work I have consulted, such as Carmen Silva-Corvalán at USC and John Lipski at Penn State, Spanish-speaking immigrants, like the Italians, Greeks, Germans, and Jews in earlier decades, generally lose their own language within one or two generations. Only the constant arrival of new immigrants enables the language’s continued vitality.