Anna Miorelli’s Cuban grandparents always held on tightly to their cultural roots, even after living in South Florida for more than 30 years. This included their native language: Spanish.
“While my mom never spoke to me in Spanish, my grandparents who were my main caretakers always were speaking to me in Spanish, and I would respond in English,” said Miorelli.
Growing up in Miami, the 34-year-old Cuban-American artist and teacher communicated with her grandparents in what she calls a “Spanglish mix,” and although she considered them the most intimate people in her life at the time — there was always the language barrier.
“I don’t think I ever got to know them 100% intimately, and my mom was always a translator,” said Miorelli.
It’s why she now calls herself a “Cuban poser,” and although she flaunts it in tongue-in-cheek fashion and has taught herself more Spanish in adulthood, it comes from deeper feelings of pain and resentment for not always speaking and comprehending the language fluently, and being called out for it.
“ I’m a wannabe in my own culture because that’s how I’ve been kind of made to feel,” said Miorelli. “But… I wanna own it now.”
Miorelli is among the millions of second and third generation Latinos in the U.S. who are more proficient in English than Spanish, and who, at some point, have been shamed for it by other Latinos or Hispanics. This phenomenon for U.S Latinos is so common that there’s now a label for those who experience it: a “No Sabo Kid.”
Courtesy of Anna Miorelli
No sabo is the incorrect way to say “I don’t know,” and is a common slip up for those learning Spanish, or for those who have a passive understanding of the language. The correct translation is no sé.
There are countless posts and memes on TikTok and Instagram that poke fun at the No Sabo Kid experience of poor and incorrect translations, and limited or no comprehension of the language.
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“[No Sabo Kid] refers to any person who has the experience of being told, ‘don’t speak Spanish,’ or ‘speak it in this way, you’re doing it wrong, you’re doing it incorrectly’ and then being shamed for saying it the wrong way,” said Phillip Carter, a Florida International University professor of Linguistics and English. “That can be obviously a person who is a literal child or anyone who grew up with that experience and enters adulthood still having those feelings.”
The expression has even been used to measure one’s connection to their culture.
But Latinos across the country are now reclaiming the once derogatory term to prove that language and Latino identity are not mutually exclusive, even in a region like South Florida, where Latinos pride themselves in speaking Spanish openly — and speaking it well.
“ We need identity, but you can get really lost in aligning yourself to one thing and boxing yourself in,” said Miorelli, whose father’s side of the family is Italian and Eastern European. “I’m so many different things and Miami is so many different things.”
The ‘No Sabo Kid’ experience in South Florida
The emergence of “No Sabo Kid” coincides with a growing change in how Spanish is used in U.S. Hispanic and Latino households.
According to the Pew Research Center, as of 2021, 72% of U.S. Hispanics and Latinos ages 5 and older either spoke only English at home or spoke English very well, up from 65% in 2010. There are more than 63 million Hispanics in the U.S., representing about one in five residents. South Florida is home to about 3 million Hispanics, which is almost half the region’s population.
Both U.S.-born and immigrant Hispanics and Latinos became more proficient in the language during that time.
It’s what Carter and other linguists call “cross-generational language shift,” and it’s not unique to Spanish.
“Italian, Polish, Yiddish, German, French — all of those communities have had a version of this,” said Carter. “That’s a phenomenon that is really unique to the United States. Sometimes we linguists call the U.S. a language graveyard.”
Courtesy of Phillip Carter
But South Florida differs slightly in the trend. The cross-generational language shift is happening less in the region than in other places with large or growing Latino populations, like California, Texas or North Carolina.
“English bilingualism to English monolingualism is absolutely happening in South Florida,” said Carter. “But it takes a little bit longer just because of the presence of Spanish and the value that’s placed on Spanish here.”
For 28-year-old Joey Marin, growing up in Kendall meant there were lots of opportunities to pick up Spanish phrases and colloquialisms. His bilingual parents with Cuban, Puerto Rican and Colombian backgrounds primarily spoke to him in English, but living in South Florida allowed Marin to engage in some form of Spanish regularly.
Because of that, he developed the ability to code switch.
“When I speak to people from Miami, it’s often different from how I speak to people in D.C.,” said Marin, who now lives in the U.S. Capitol working for a national nonprofit focused on Latino student success.
But he argues it did not actually sharpen his Spanish skills in the way he would’ve wanted.
“Right now, if somebody asked me a work related question in Spanish, I would not feel equipped to answer it at all, even based on everything I picked up in Miami,” said Marin.
It also didn’t deter people from making side comments about his limited Spanish proficiency. This was more apparent during family functions or public social gatherings.
“ If my dad’s family was visiting from Colombia, it was kind of like I was the gringo in the room,” said Marin. “And that was something that made me feel like an outsider.”
According to Carter, this is why more dual language emergent schools are needed in South Florida. There’s the assumption that because of a person’s cultural background, that they’re going to get Spanish in the home, but that’s not always the case.
“How did you get your advanced English? How did you learn the names of the planets? How did you learn the names of math terms? You got that in school,” said Carter. “ So how do we expect our kids in South Florida to get advanced language skills? Mom and dad aren’t gonna sit down and teach you algebra in Spanish. That’s why you have schools.”
Carter adds that social attitudes in South Florida around Spanish also need to change. The Spanish a second or third generation Latino acquires and produces here will not be like the Spanish that their parents or grandparents acquired in their country of origin.
“I wish that folks in South Florida understood that this is a bilingual environment, it’s always gonna be bilingual,” said Carter. “Our Spanish will always be in contact with English, and our English will always be in contact with our Spanish.”
Language and identity
Self-proclaimed “No Sabo Kids” still acknowledge the importance of Spanish, and often feel plagued with guilt and resentment for not being able to engage in that part of their identity.
But most argue it’s unfair to have a language litmus test for “Latinidad”, and there’s even research that shows most U.S. Latinos believe it is not necessary to speak Spanish to be considered Latino.
It’s something that comes up all the time with Carter’s students at FIU.
“It seems really unfair to exclude people from the category of ethnicity,” said Carter. “Especially when our society, broadly speaking, has specifically and purposefully erected barriers to the access to that language.”
For Marin, it’s helped him understand and further cement the belief that Latinos are not a monolith.
“It doesn’t change where my family’s from,” said Marin. “It doesn’t change the music we like and what we like to eat, and the stories that we tell and the beliefs that we have about family, society and culture.
“Language and identity can be separate, not necessarily mutually exclusive.”