Customer Reviews

How I Learned English: 55 Accomplished Latinos Recall Lessons in Language and Life

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Aside from teaching 'new words,' the process of learning a new language teaches empathy--so sorely lacking in today's 'me-first' and 'sucks-to-be-you' world...EVERYONE who only speaks one language should be required to read this book--everyone needs to gain insight into what it means to find oneself in a parallel linguistic universe. Better yet, everyone should study a second (and third, and fourth) language!

In today's increasingly charged immigration/language-debate, this book is essential. The essays and anecdotes speak volumes about human communication, separation, cruelty, kindness, understanding, and desires--all in a non-partisan, readable way.

All people who work with the public--whether it be in customer service or education--should read this book. Just because a person can't 'say what s/he means' does not mean the person is stupid--linguistically challenged does not equal mentally disabled!

Although the book deals only with the specific experiences of those whose native language is Spanish or Portuguese, those experiences translate into any language. Whether people want to remember or not, this IS a nation of immigrants, and so many of its citizens come from families who, at some point in the past, were the 'language-outsiders.' May we not forget...

How I Learned English (also published in Spanish as Como aprendí inglés) is a collection of essays written by 55 Latinos about how they mastered the English language. Some of them learned English from popular music, some from the movies, some others learned it the old-fashioned way - in a classroom. Tom Miller has gathered contributions from novelists, journalists, musicians, performance artists, physicians, athletes, entertainers, businessmen. They are natives of 11 Central and South American countries, three Caribbean islands -- including Cuba -- and Mexico. Some found it easy, other found it difficult. But for all, learning English was the key to success in this their adopted homeland.

The idea of the book came to its editor Tom Miller when he moved from the East Coast to the Southwest in the late 1960s as a journalist. He found that most of the people he wrote about were people fir whom English was their second or perhaps third or fourth language. "And they carried it different from how they carried Spanish. They acted different. They had different body language. The pacing was different. The cadence was different. Their facial expressions were sometimes different. English is not just a language. It's a whole presence. And more and more, these people I was writing about became colleagues, they became friends. And eventually, I married into a Spanish- speaking family and watched, with wonder and pride, and my wife and my two stepsons as they acquired English." Miller believes that anyone learning a new language not only adopts a new persona, but also loses a bit of their old, pre-English persona.

Ilan Stavans, author of On Borrowed Words: A Memoir of Language, contributed an excerpt. "Each language has its own world view, its own personality. It allows its speakers to dream, to think, to make love, to engage with one another in different ways. Probably, there is no better language than Spanish and French to say I love you. The best language to say offensive words might be Yiddish. The best language to put together thoughts, to develop argument, to make a speech, probably, in my mind, is English. The way the language the sentences are shaped, the way one knows where to put a period and a comma and a semicolon, it gives me a sense of a very precise, very methodical, very clear cut civilization that knows where it's going, what it's after, what its mission is. I think that one of the beauties of speaking more than one language is precisely the fact that one can live in different universes, as in different mentalities, in different levels of existence by using each of them at different points."

Another intentionally forgets Spanish: "Now, almost 40 years later, when I try to remember an intentionally forgotten Spanish word, what I first recall is the heartbroken expression on my [grandmother's] kind face."

Another writes, "Once you possess another language, your sense of reality changes. ... Suddenly the world seems twice as large, and twice as peopled, and more interesting than it did before."

Some offer practical advice, carry a pocket dictionary, or to ask "older people who [don't] seem in a hurry" for directions. Others listen to Sinatra, Fitzgerald, Van Halen or Cyndi Lauper, or watch "I Love Lucy" or subtitled movies from the '30s and 40s, or compare ESL lessons with what they hear on the street.

Some of the essays in the collection are thoughtful, many are anecdotes. But all are intensely human.


Robert C. Ross 2008

For a change of pace, consider this new collection of essays, "How I Learned English: 55 Accomplished Latinos Recall Lessons in Language and Life" (National Geographic Society, $16.95 paperback), edited by Tom Miller. The contributors include politicians, authors, scientists, athletes, educators, and others. One of my favorite essays is "The Learning Curve" by journalist Rubén Martínez. He recounts that "long before the debates over bilingual education or English Only or whether a hyphenated American was a real America," his parents decided that he, "their first child and American citizen by birth, would speak Spanish before English." This book will enlighten and, perhaps, lower the volume on the often incendiary debate over bilingualism in this country. [The full review first appeared in the El Paso Times.]

I confess (embarrassedly) that along with many Americans, I am not bilingual. But I know more than enough Spanish to get by and I get the basics of the struggle to understand or be understood in a foreign language, having lived in Japan for several years. The "Lessons in Language and Life" of How I Learned English are probably best enjoyed by bilingual native Spanish speakers, who have the ability to empathize with and appreciate the writings of the "55 Accomplished Latinos" whose words are included in the book. The contents of their stories fall into a few basic categories: how to improve ones chances of learning English, examples of ridicule suffered by English learners due to teachers and students equating lack of language proficiency with stupidity, joyfulness at their bilingual ability in general or the English language in particular, specific activities or incidents which facilitated their ability or desire to learn, and (my favorite) funny or embarrassing anecdotes about language-related mistakes or misunderstandings. How I Learned English is a good book for bilingual Spanish-English speakers, but can be appreciated by anyone who has ever tried to learn a foreign language.

As an ESL teacher, I'm enjoying this book and I use it with some students. I wish there were more books with contributions from people who speak languages other than Spanish.

I heard this book reveiwed on NPR and it was just as interesting as they said it wuld be..