Learning Spanish in 2025 | Opinion

Growing up, I didn’t see a lot of people speaking Spanish, much less another foreign language. 

Granted, I’d always lived in middle-class suburbs populated by copy-pasted homes and copy-pasted families, everything always a slight variation of its neighbor. A trampoline in one yard, a swing set in the other, two kids, a dog or maybe a cat…  Home upon home upon home of white families with equally white picket fences. 

It’s the American Dream. That dream isn’t as white as people would like to think. 

For me, I first noticed it in ninth grade history class: a classmate with a hijab. It was different, but nothing I found too interesting at the time. Looking back on it now though, it feels like an emblem of something bigger. A realization I should have made far sooner– the United States wasn’t just people that practiced Christianity– it really was a melting pot. 

I heard that melting pot sentiment over and over, but I never really internalized it until that moment; all I had known was Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian and Atheist. So when I saw that classmate wearing a hijab, it made me even more curious about the people around me. 

At the time, I had been taking Latin because I figured it would be a good way to further my understanding of the English language. Now, seeing so many people speaking Spanish and other languages in my classes, I can’t help but wonder why I didn’t start with Spanish instead.

Since moving to Chattanooga for university, I’ve been in contact with a lot of new cultures, especially Latin American ones, through events put on by UTC’s Office of Multicultural Affairs, like their Hispanic Heritage Month events in September and October of last year.

I also attended the Mesa de Español –  or Spanish Table, events that the Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures department host throughout the semester.

Even during summer and winter break, I’ve seen and heard more languages spoken in my suburban hometown than I’ve ever heard before. Now, there’s hiring notices in English and Spanish in my local Dollar General, and businesses are beginning to boast about being able to speak Spanish, too. 

With that change in demographics, I’ve seen a lot of people around me begin to speak about how they feel about learning Spanish. For them, it seems like they think of it as an unnecessary but admirable pursuit, like there is no need to reach out and try to understand another language when English is the dominant one here.

That idea sounds so short-sighted to me when some of those same people try to go into service-oriented fields. In those jobs, they sometimes are forced to neglect people that don’t speak English because they don’t know another language that could bridge the gap. Spanish speakers here are often already trying to do that, why can’t we?

The fact that I’m learning Spanish in this changing country has given me a lot of comfort. For all of the doubts that I have with my schooling and life after college, I feel content with my choice to learn Spanish, if not for the appeal it brings on a resume, then for the ability to learn more about one of the many cultures around me.