Reactionary Paragraph to "Why and When We Speak Spanish In Public"

What’s the harm in talking in a foreign language in America? Myriam Marquez’s essay, “Why and When We Speak Spanish in Public,” reveals how there is really nothing wrong with speaking Spanish in public amongst your Spanish speaking family or friends as long as there are no only English speaking people amongst the conversation because that would be rude. If you were in a conversation with two other people speaking Spanish and person who only speaks Spanish comes up to you and your party then it would definitely be very rude to continue speaking Spanish and keep the person who only speaks English out of the conversation like that. Although it might seem rude to some people when they see a group of people near them speaking a foreign language, but if you think about it, you’d be asking them to drop their family’s heritage if you asked them to stop and that’s not right. Seeing people in public speaking Spanish is not affecting anyone else’s life in a negative way, unless there was a person in the conversation that didn’t speak Spanish, but besides that who cares? That’s their family’s language passed down from generation to generation, so why would we ask them to not do it. The United States is considered the ‘Melting Pot’ of the world anyway, we should encourage all the other different types of cultures to express themselves as however they’d like, well only if it doesn’t harm or affect anyone else negatively of course. So next time you see a Spanish family or a group of Spanish people talking in Spanish, don’t seem annoyed or tell them to stop, instead almost examine them and enjoy what you observed because we should be proud of having their culture blending in with yours.

Marquez, Myriam. “Why and When We Speak Spanish In Public.” Models for Writers: Short Essays for Composition. A. Rosa and P. Eschholz. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin, 2010. 511-3.