{"slug": "does-embracing-english-only-mean-losing-your-family-heritage", "title": "Does embracing English-only mean losing your family heritage?", "summary": "A new report from Pew Research Center shows that English is becoming increasingly dominant among second- and third-generation immigrant families in the U.S., with heritage language fluency declining across generations. For many Bay Area Gen Z students like Aveah Pok and Cedric Pinto, growing up disconnected from a family language raises complicated questions of identity and belonging.", "body_md": "**Getting your**\n\n[Trinity Audio](//trinityaudio.ai)player ready...*Editor’s note: This story is part of the annual Mosaic Journalism Program for Bay Area high school students, an intensive course in journalism. Students in the program report and photograph stories under the guidance of professional journalists.*\n\n“Fake.” “No sabo kid.” “Banana.” “White-washed.”\n\nIn American culture, these labels mock people who speak English but struggle to speak their heritage language. For many Bay Area Gen Z students, growing up disconnected from a family language is a complicated question of identity.\n\nAveah Pok, 17, a second-generation senior at Aragon High School, grew up speaking English. Though half Cambodian, part Mexican and part Italian, Pok never learned Cambodian, Spanish, or Italian fluently as a child.\n\n“I’ve definitely felt not good enough,” Pok said. She doubted she could claim to be Cambodian or Mexican, because she didn’t speak those languages well.\n\nThat sometimes affected how others viewed her identity.\n\n“If I told someone I was meeting for the first time, ‘I’m half Asian and part Mexican,’ they would be like, ‘No, you’re not, you’re just white,'” Pok said. “It was hurtful … and I just felt like my culture was being diminished.”\n\nGrowing up, Pok was called a “no sabo kid” because of her inability to understand Spanish. While the term “no sabo kid” — an ungrammatical slur — is generally aimed at children with Spanish-speaking ancestors, heritage language loss and confusion extends to many communities.\n\nSome young people, however, do not see the need to learn the language of their parents.\n\nCedric Pinto, a second-generation 21-year-old college student at the UC Santa Cruz, grew up in a South Asian household in San Jose where English was the only language spoken at home, despite his parents knowing their native language, Hindi.\n\n“Our family just seemed to mold around the American lifestyle,” Pinto said. “It was a lot easier than having an Indian or South Asian lifestyle.”\n\nFor Pinto, living in the U.S. also had a big impact on his decision not to learn the language.\n\n“There’s really no use for it here in America, since I’m not really going back to India or anywhere else,” Pinto said. “There’s really no point in me learning it.”\n\nBecause he can’t speak Hindi, Pinto said he feels little connection to his Indian culture.\n\nA 2013 report from the Pew Research Center found that English is becoming increasingly dominant among second- and third-generation immigrant families in the U.S.\n\nPew Research defines a first generation immigrant as any person who was born outside the country and permanently lives in the U.S. The center considers people second-generation if at least one of their parents is first-generation.\n\nPew found that among Hispanic Americans, 48% of first-generation immigrants reported speaking English well, compared with 93% in the second generation. A similar pattern is seen among Asian Americans, with English fluency at 78% in the first generation and 92% in the second generation.\n\nAt the same time, Pew pointed out how fluency in the heritage language declines across generations. Spanish fluency was 92% in the first generation but 80% in the second.\n\nAmong Asian Americans, only 41% of the second generation reported speaking their ancestral language well.\n\nFor Gen Z, cultural identity is increasingly complex. Some students reclaim heritage languages later in life. Others grow more distant from their roots.\n\nIn Pok’s case, she chose to study Spanish in school.\n\n“I was really confused and upset with myself for not learning Spanish when I was younger, even though it was really my fault,” Pok said. “But I decided in middle school, I’m just going to learn on my own through school, and I’ve continued that through high school.”\n\nDespite that frustration, Pok said her relationship with language has shifted over time as she’s taken steps to reconnect with her heritage through school and self-study.\n\n“We all learn about our cultures and our languages at different times in our lives,” Pok said. “It used to be the norm to grow up speaking the language and being already fluent, but that’s not the reality for everyone, especially for Gen Z, and I think people should be more accepting and tolerant.”\n\n*Claire Dong is a member of the class of 2027 at Aragon High School in San Mateo.*", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/does-embracing-english-only-mean-losing-your-family-heritage", "canonical_source": "https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/06/30/does-embracing-english-only-mean-losing-your-family-heritage/", "published_at": "2026-06-30 14:30:01+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-30 14:51:17.150928+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["natural-language-processing"], "entities": ["Pew Research Center", "Aragon High School", "UC Santa Cruz", "Aveah Pok", "Cedric Pinto"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/does-embracing-english-only-mean-losing-your-family-heritage", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/does-embracing-english-only-mean-losing-your-family-heritage.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/does-embracing-english-only-mean-losing-your-family-heritage.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/does-embracing-english-only-mean-losing-your-family-heritage.jsonld"}}