Mexican-American children who have lost their Spanish language and culture: Exploring their relationship with their Mexican, Spanish-speaking grandmothers

The purpose of this study is to examine the communication issues and loss of cultural capital that monolingual English-speaking Mexican-American children face in order to communicate with their monolingual Spanish-speaking Mexican grandmothers due to language loss.

This study depicts 20 first generation monolingual Spanish-speaking Mexican grandmothers' perceptions and reflections of language and cultural loss for their third generation monolingual English-speaking grandchildren. Interview questions focused on grandmothers' attitudes, beliefs, and thoughts related to language and cultural loss and the implications of such on the inter-generational relationship. Results indicate that grandmothers are concerned about cultural and language loss which have started with their children and are increasing with new generations, and their impacts on relationships between grandmothers and grandchildren because they think that their relationships with their grandchildren are inevitably affected by language barrier and this unfortunately influence cultural and language loss throughout generations.