Indigenous Languages of Mexico and Guatemala in Southeastern United States: A New Reality for Speech-Language Pathologists

 By: Dr. Cristina Saldaña, CCC-SLP

Dilemma in the U.S. School System

The minority population is constantly growing from year to year in school systems across the United States. The influx of immigrants crossing the Mexican border is creating a new reality for teachers who are desperately trying to understand how to teach children who come from rural and tribal regions with very little, if any, formal education. Because of the language barrier, lack of appropriate strategies, and the inability to adequately differentiate instruction for this population, monolingual English-speaking teachers are resorting to special education to resolve the issue. Referrals are placed before a Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) or Response to Intervention (RTI) is put in place in its true meaning and purpose. In teachers’ defense, there are no remediation programs normed on tribal, or indigenous, populations. Very few are even appropriate for Spanish speakers.

MTSS & Minority Students

According to the Georgia Department of Education, MTSS is a framework that incorporates assessment and intervention within a school-wide, multi-level prevention system to maximize student achievement. Many school teams throughout the country are bypassing this crucial stage and assuming that immigrant children are intellectually inferior or linguistically deficient instead of considering the traumas associated with leaving family behind, living in a new country, hearing an unknown language, and living in poverty. Most of these children are not disabled, they are simply different.

 

 Federal Law & Minority Students

The public school system is responsible for following federal laws and state regulations that provide all students, regardless of race or origin, with a free public education. The US Constitution requires that all children be given equal educational opportunities despite their citizenship status. The Civil Rights Act takes it further by prohibiting discrimination in education. With so many laws in place to safeguard against the prejudice and biases, it is a wonder why so many minorities are still being referred for special education services at alarming rates.

Speech language pathologists (SLPs) continue to be inundated with evaluation referrals for non-English speakers. For students from Mexico and Guatemala specifically, school teams assume that the primary language is Spanish, but this is not always the case. It is imperative that SLPs include parents in the assessment process, through interview and rating scales. Ask about all the languages spoken in the home. This includes the languages spoken by grandparents who are typically valued and taken care of in their extended family life.

Languages of Mexico & Guatemala

Mexico has not declared an official language, although Spanish is the main language taught in schools. The Mexican government recognizes 63 indigenous languages. While Guatemala’s official language is Spanish, the government recognizes 23 Mayan languages! These are not dialects. Dialects are a variation of a language. Depending on the sources you search, there are between 10 and 30 different dialects of English in the United States, but everyone can understand each other. Now imagine if you drive from one county to the next, or one state to the next, and encounter a completely different language. This is the experience in Mexico and Guatemala.

In the southeastern region of the US alone, the following indigenous languages are prevalent among Mexican residents:

Acateco- This language is spoken in Chiapas, Mexico and Huehuetenango, Guatemala.

 

Otomí- This is a tonal language. There are 4 variations of the language that are not mutually intelligible, and it is spoken throughout the central region of Mexico.

 

Mixtec- This language is spoken in the states of Oaxaca and Puebla in Mexico.

 

Nahuatl- This is an Aztec language spoken by 1.7 million Nahua people of central Mexico and southwestern US.

 

Purépecha & Tarasco- The Purépecha people may speak a combination of up to three languages, including Purépecha, Tarasco, and Quechua. The Purépecha tribe originated in South America and migrated to Michoacan, Mexico in the 1300s. They may use Purépecha and Tarasco interchangeably when labeling the language.

Q’anjob’al (Canjobal)- It is a Mayan language spoken in Chiapas, Mexico and Guatemala.

 

Trique- This is a tonal language spoken in Oaxaca and Baja California, Mexico. There are 4 varieties of Trique that are not mutually intelligible.

 

Tzotzil- This is a Mayan language spoken in the Mexican states of Chiapas, Veracruz, and Oaxaca.

 

Yaqui (Yoeme)- This Aztec language is spoken in Sonora, Mexico and in parts of Arizona. It is known as a partly tonal language.

 

Yucatec (Maaya t’aan)- It is a Mayan language spoken in the Yucatan and Belize.

 

Zapotec- It is a tonal language spoken by the Zapotec people living in the southwestern-central highlands of Puebla, Guerrero, Veracruz, and Oaxaca. It has existed since at least 700BC.

The families who arrive from Guatemala speak mainly Mam, a Mayan language spoken by half million people in that region. They may speak Acateco or Q’anjob’al as well. It is amazing that all of these indigenous people have been able to live near each other in peace while maintaining their tribal customs and languages.   

 

 BICS, CALPS & IDEA Law

As speech-language pathologists, it is our responsibility to investigate the languages of the home, advocate for minorities, appreciate linguistic variations, and understand the difference between Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS) and Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALPS). BICS refers to the socially undemanding everyday language in face-to-face interactions between students and their peers or teachers, which takes up to two years to master. CALPS, on the other hand, is the level of proficiency of academic language used in the classroom across content areas. It takes between 5 and 7 years to reach this English mastery. This is why the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) holds such value and magnificence. It stipulates that evaluations must be conducted in the student’s native language whenever feasible as a means to protect this population.

If there is no medical diagnosis, physical disability, or evidence of a developmental disorder, then the school district is responsible for carrying out MTSS. School teams, however, are quick to refer bilingual students for a speech-language evaluation when their speaking, reading, and/or writing skills are not to par. What the MTSS should do is provide a series of reading programs if one is not effective, as most programs are created for monolingual English speakers. Unlike English, Spanish literacy instruction, for example, uses syllables when segmenting and blending words, and there are few CVC words.

 

If standardized measures do not exist in a student’s language, then examiners must disclose that scores on English testing are invalid because the student does not fit the profile of the normative sample. This should also be the case for psychological evaluations.

Conclusion

Bilingualism and trilingualism should be considered a superpower, not a disability. As teachers and special educators, let us widen our perspective and see what we can learn from this population. They have so much to contribute about the sciences, culture, and languages. These students’ parents and grandparents cultivate the land, grow different foods, listen to exotic music, and have different religious rituals. Let us get out of our ethnocentric bubble and widen our viewpoint. It is not just about meeting standards and passing tests. If we show these students interest and love, they may want to return that interest and love through learning.