This school is teaching 2nd and 3rd generations the language of their ancestors. They have lost the language as all immigrants do, and are trying to get it back. DP
By PATRICK McGEE, Star-Telegram Staff Writer
star-telegram.com: ARLINGTON -- The school has a superintendent, a dean, a principal and 40 language teachers. Everyone who works there is a volunteer, and the budget is from donations and dues.
This is Vietnamese Martyrs Catholic Church's Vietnamese language program. It's a highly organized, energetic effort by the church to keep the native language alive in immigrant families' second and third generations.
"We want them to know their roots," said Anna Nguyen, an Arlington resident who had her daughter, Dianna, go through so many classes she became a teacher's aide. "I don't want them to forget Vietnamese because they are Vietnamese."
The south Arlington church's school, called Ducme La Vang, also teaches religious classes. The school efficiently runs with color-coded attendance sheets, a bell between classes and signs in Vietnamese next to each doorway.
But experts say immigrants' efforts to keep their language alive is an uphill battle.
Rubén Rumbaut, a sociology professor at the University of California at Irvine, said America has proven for centuries to be a "language graveyard" where immigrant families' native language is almost always lost by the third generation.
He said Spanish follows this pattern, too, but it might hold on a little longer than Asian languages because there are many more Spanish speakers to talk to. America's current wave of immigrants from Latin America has not stopped yet so the crop of Spanish speakers keeps being refreshed.
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