Caught in language gap

Latino families immigrating to Utah face many challenges, such as finding affordable housing, landing work and coping with cultural differences. Another challenge, unseen to most, is found within the homes of immigrant families — the potential language barrier between parents and children.

"Many children born here speak Spanish at home and English at school," says Isabelle Kiss, English as a second language and science teacher at Northwest Middle School in Rose Park, a school where Hispanics make up 60 percent of the population. "There are some kids that are not fluent in either language."

As immigrant children, or children of immigrants, attend school in English, watch movies in English, make friends who speak English and listen to music with English lyrics, their fluency in the English language soars while their Spanish fades. Meanwhile, the parents of these children often struggle to keep up with their rapid progress.

"This is a terrible problem. The parents have to learn English to communicate with their children," said Kiss. "They don't have time, and it costs a lot. There are many that don't even know how to read and write in Spanish, making it very difficult for them to learn a second language."

Martha Gutierrez, who runs Tio's restaurant in Murray with her husband, struggles to find a way to learn English for use at home and work.

A local English program "is $1,600 for 16 weeks. I have to better my English, but when I saw how much it cost I couldn't do it," Gutierrez said in an interview in Spanish.

That would be a significant amount of money for Gutierrez to pay, and the fact that her restaurant was broken into recently by a thief who took food and money has left her in a financial crunch, making the prospect impossible for the time being.

Gutierrez feels the need to learn English both to assist customers at work and to communicate with her two daughters at home.

Linguistically, Virginia and Melissa Gutierrez live in two different worlds, from home to school. Their parents hail from Mexico, but the two girls have lived in the United States their entire lives. They have received a healthy dose of both languages, but at ages 13 and 17 they are veering in the direction of straight English. Melissa, the older of the two, spoke more Spanish growing up than Virginia. She continues to have a stronger grasp of the language.

"Every night I spend time with the girls. I always speak with them in Spanish," their mother said. "Sometimes I have Melissa translate when Virginia doesn't understand my Spanish."