Speaking Spanish at Work

A funny thing happened at harvest this year.

I saw a French guy speaking Spanish at a winery in California.

We speak Spanish at work almost exclusively. I’m lucky to be pretty fluent after two years in high school and immediately going to work in the field. There’s no doubt it’s been a huge part of my success within the industry. You won’t find a bigger cheerleader for the Mexican people. I’ve bailed guys out of jail, taken kids to school while their folks were working for me and been to countless weddings. When I worked the the field side by side with my guys, we would spend an hour during the day speaking only English just for fun.

When I saw the winemaker at Roederer speaking Spanish to someone on his crew it made me wonder: are we really helping these people? Wouldn’t it be better to be speaking English? We’re not helping them assimilate when we keep enabling are we?

All of their kids grow up and go to school. I chat with these kids almost daily and they’re great. They have no accent and the family watches tons of English speaking TV shows too.

I want to help and see my people grow and improve their lives. Seems like English would be the perfect path.

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Why the need to assimilate? Just because “these people” work in the USA does not mean they want to turn “American”. Learning a second language does not mean cultural assimilation. Puerto Ricans are born “American”, most are bilingual, and lots most certainly do not want to assimilate the USA culture.

All these said with respect and without animus.

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My grandmother spoke only Japanese and Spanish. No English. She ran a truck farm in Compton in the 1930’s. That said, my father and his siblings were pretty assimilated.

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I would just say you can assimilate without losing your culture, traditions and your soul.

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Agree, learning English while living and working in the US will make their life easier to navigate. It has worked that way for me in Spain. I wish my Spanish was better, it would make business easier. Poco a poco…

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The US doesn’t have an official language. It has been a multilingual country from its founding through the present. Forcing slaves and indigenous people to speak English and punishing them for speaking their native languages has been a weapon of white supremacists.

I don’t think your intention is the destruction of your employees’ cultural heritage, but I say these things to provide context as to why the focus on what language they speak is problematic.

If you’re concerned about helping “these people,” focus on paying them a fair, living wage. That is where you can make the most impact if you’re not doing so already.

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If someone desires to learn english, speaking to them in english will absolutely help.

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Language and culture are not zero-sum games.

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My grandfather spoke almost entirely Yiddish through the day (he had a grocery in a new immigrant neighborhood) and at home. He had some English skills, but used them principally among his grand kids. He had a black employee for 30 years who spoke impeccable Yiddish.

My grandmother, who circulated in the regular world was fully English fluent

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Assimilation plays out over generations. What’s the rush?

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Some people seem to be getting triggered by a word. Look at the damned context. Helping someone learn English who wants to learn is not the same as forcing people to speak English. Being an employer, you just are in a sort of patron role. You can respect your employees, treat them well, help them out where needed, reasonable, appropriate, help them better themselves where inclined, etc. You can see it as a win when one of them moves up in life, finding the “better life” they’ve strived for. You can see it as a win when one of their kids gets into college. You can hope for as many wins as possible with these people you care about.

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We have a lot of people at work who are native Spanish speakers who prefer to speak Spanish, and others who prefer to speak English. All are fully bilingual. I personally love working in an environment where people speak multiple languages, even more so because I really don’t (my French is pretty bad, but some people here are fluent so I can learn from them). Anyway, my point is that, regardless of fluency, some people will always prefer to speak in their first language, and others will prefer to speak in second/third etc languages. Some people prefer to stick with what feels like home, others prefer to adopt a new language (+/- culture) more fully. I don’t think either is better or worse, and in many parts of California you don’t need English at all.

I think the most important thing is to openly and honestly ask your coworkers / employees which they prefer: to speak in Spanish or to practice English, or a bit of both. I’ve seen all three, and having a respectful, kind, patient coworker/employer makes for great relationships, regardless of the language(s) they’re conducted in.

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I see some are so quick to virtue signal they don’t understand the OP. He wasn’t asking how to be a decent employer (which obviously he is with an ongoing business), but whether speaking Spanish to employees in an English-speaking country wasn’t as helpful as had he only spoken English.

An analogy is foreign-born parents who only speak to their children in native tongue so the kids are (at least) bilingual. They are forced to learn.

Decency and logic out the window part N.

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You make the point well. It’s patronizing and infantilizing. He’s not their parent.

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Lord, I hate the term “virtue signaling”. Anyone who uses it is doing just that

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Does that include you now? [wow.gif]

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Of course

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+1

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Nowhere in the original post does it say whether Casey asked his employees if they would like to improve their English by speaking it on the job, and he noted that they already did for an hour each day when they work together in the field. As Ben mentioned, the respectful way to go about this would be for Casey to ask them what they prefer rather than making the decision unilaterally.

And yes, coming from a family of Chinese immigrants with various levels of English fluency, it does trigger me when someone presumes to call it “enabling” to speak to someone in their native language in the US. This would require a certain level of empathy to understand.

That is a terrible analogy in that it infantilizes Casey’s employees and places him in an inappropriately paternalistic role. It’s condescending and patronizing.

Language is a strong way to connect with one’s cultural background; it’s a reflection of values and ideology, and a gift of connection. I’ve heard far too many stories from children of immigrants about how they wish they had learned their parents’ language and how they can’t even communicate with their grandparents because their parents made English the default language for them. And why did their parents do that? Probably because they were afraid that an accent would make others think they have a license to discriminate against their kids and cost them opportunities.

Consider that America was never a homogenous population of fluent English speakers, and there have always been immigrant, slave, and indigenous communities that spoke languages other than English. Given that diversity of language and culture, what does it mean to assimilate? Use that decency and logic, and ask whose agenda, whose vision of America, the concept of assimilation is really pushing. I know this might be an insurmountable challenge given that you thought my original post was “virtue signalling,” but just try to remember that there’s an American experience beyond white/white passing and maybe that will help you see why it can trigger people to see white guys on a wine forum talk about whether they’re enabling those Mexicans by speaking Spanish.

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Lots of interesting chatter here. I’ve always considered myself a helpful person. I don’t know how many times I’ve helped translate for a complete stranger in a store or on the street.

My proposal is certainly hypothetical at this point. I would never ‘require’ that ANY of my workers speak only English. There are various night classes and programs that Mexican speaking folks can learn English for free. One great example is a fellow who works for me now. When he came here in 1999 he spoke no English. He started with night classes. When I came to this ranch in 2010 I could tell he was a go getter. Two years ago he got his GED at Mendocino college. He can send me an excell spreadsheet and links to websites.

I want to see all people improve. I can tell folks didn’t like it when I said these people. I love these people and always have.

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