re: #8 goddamnedfrank
“proving your Americanism” is insidious.
It is part of the reason, I suspect, that my mom did not teach me and my sister Spanish when we were growing up. She would deny it, and claim that I was slow to speak as a kid, but she had cousins raised bilingual. But I think it’s a desire to not be different - even now, she doesn’t speak Spanish unless she has to.