My uncle is from Argentina, so I grew up hearing Spanish. My Spanish isn't very good, but my pronunciation isn't terrible.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I speak Spanish because I grew up overseas in Spain, Uruguay and Argentina.
It was very difficult to leave Argentina when I was kid, so I only spoke Spanish for the first six years of my life.
I know Spanish pretty well. I'm half-Puerto Rican - my mom is from Puerto Rico - so I have a lot of family there, and my mom's first language is Spanish. But growing up in the States, and with my dad being from the States, I'm kind of just like this white kid.
All my mom's side speaks Spanish. I speak to my grandparents in Spanish. Slowly. And they're patient with me! But I do speak with them in Spanish and carry on conversations with them.
My first language is both English and Spanish. My mom was raised in Los Angeles, so with her we spoke English, but my father was born in Cuba, so with him we spoke Spanish.
I don't speak Spanish, I speak a little of Italian but no Spanish.
Even though I am very tied to and close to my heritage, I learned Spanish in college; I didn't grow up with it. Growing up in South Texas is different from Miami or L.A. where it is a necessity to speak Spanish.
When I came back from Bolivia, my Spanish was in some ways as good as my English. I am rusty today. But I am comfortable talking in Spanish. I am not flawless or fluent, but I am comfortable. It takes me a day or two speaking a lot of Spanish to get back into a rhythm.
I understand Spanish better than I speak it.
Being a third-generation Mexican-American and speaking English exclusively, I heard Spanish spoken by my relatives all my life, especially when they didn't want me to understand what they were talking about.