'Chinglish' Opens On Broadway

by JEFF LUNDEN

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Tony Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Henry Hwang's new play Chinglish opens on Broadway after a sell-out run in Chicago. Author of the hit play M. Butterfly, Hwang is back to exploring the complexities of the clash of Asian and American cultures.

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MELISSA BLOCK, host: This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block. Playwright David Henry Hwang explored the clash of cultures between East and West in "M. Butterfly," his Tony Award-winning play set in 1960s China. He revisits those themes in a new play opening tonight on Broadway. It's called "Chinglish." And as Jeff Lunden reports, instead of a period piece, this time, it's ripped from the headlines.

JEFF LUNDEN: "Chinglish" starts with a PowerPoint presentation. An American businessman named Daniel is talking about the challenges of doing business in China. One of the biggest is Chinglish, the sometimes wildly funny, sometimes terribly inaccurate translations from Chinese to English, says playwright David Henry Hwang.

DAVID HENRY HWANG: And I think there's a whole kind of subculture of ferreting out Chinglish signs. The first one that we show in the play is to take notice of safe, the slippery are very crafty, which is a sign that means slippery slopes ahead.

LUNDEN: And with that, the audience gets to watch Daniel in flashback negotiate those slippery slopes and occasionally fall on his face. He's trying to convince Chinese bureaucrats to hire his Cleveland, Ohio, company to make English signs for a new cultural center in a provincial capital. Director Leigh Silverman was working with David Henry Hwang on a play a few years ago when he approached her about "Chinglish." He told her...

LEIGH SILVERMAN: I have this idea. I don't know if it's going to work. It's a kind of "Glengarry Glen Ross," but it's romantic, and it's set in Guiyang, China, and I want the characters to have their dignity of their own language. I want them to speak in Chinese. And it's a comedy. And I thought, OK, great, a bilingual sex comedy, sounds really fun.

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Bilingual Babies More Perceptive To Nonnative Tongues

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A study of bilingual infants suggests that a bilingual upbringing outfits infants with more sensitive language perception abilities, even for languages other than the two spoken at home. Psychologist Janet Werker discusses the findings, and whether the trend may hold true through the years.

Bilingual Voting Ballots Ordered In 25 States

by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) — In the run-up to the 2012 elections, the federal government is ordering that 248 counties and other political jurisdictions provide bilingual ballots to Hispanics and other minorities who speak little or no English.

That number is down from a decade ago following the 2000 census, which covered 296 counties in 30 states. In all, more than 1 in 18 jurisdictions must now provide foreign-language assistance in pre-election publicity, voter registration, early voting and absentee applications as well as Election Day balloting.

The latest requirements, mandated under the Voting Rights Act, partly reflect second and third generations of racial and ethnic minorities who are now reporting higher levels of proficiency in English than their parents. Still, analysts cite a greater potential for resistance from localities that face tighter budgets, new laws requiring voter IDs at polls and increased anti-immigration sentiment.

Effective this week, Hispanics who don't speak English proficiently will be entitled to Spanish-language election material in urban areas of political battleground states including Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wisconsin and Utah, as well as the entire states of California, Florida and Texas. For the first time, people from India will get election material in their native language, in voting precincts in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York, due to their fast population growth.

More American Indian tribal languages will be made available in many parts of Alaska, Arizona and Mississippi, while Vietnamese and Taiwanese will get their own voting assistance in several new areas, including parts of Washington state, Texas, Massachusetts and California. Asian Bangladeshi must be provided for the first time in Hamtramck, Mich, which neighbors Detroit.

"We would like to be in a society where everyone has equal opportunities to vote, but that's not the reality we're living in today," said James Thomas Tucker, a former Justice Department attorney who is now a voting rights lawyer in Las Vegas. Tucker said the law has been key in the election of new Hispanic and Asian officials in many places, even as he noted that a vocal English-only language movement and new budget constraints on local governments could stir fresh tensions.

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Being Bilingual May Boost Your Brain Power

by GRETCHEN CUDA-KROEN

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In an interconnected world, speaking more than one language is becoming increasingly common. Approximately one-fifth of Americans speak a non-English language at home, and globally, as many as two-thirds of children are brought up bilingual.

Research suggests that the growing numbers of bilingual speakers may have an advantage that goes beyond communication: It turns out that being bilingual is also good for your brain.

Judy and Paul Szentkiralyi both grew up bilingual in the U.S., speaking Hungarian with their families and English with their peers. When they first started dating, they spoke English with each other.

But they knew they wanted to raise their children speaking both languages, so when things turned serious they did something unusual — they decided to switch to Hungarian.

Today, Hungarian is the primary language the Szentkiralyis use at home. Their two daughters — Hannah, 14, and Julia, 8 — speak both languages fluently, and without any accent. But they both heard only Hungarian from mom and dad until the age of 3 or 4, when they started school.

"When she did go to preschool that accent was very thick – she counted like Vun, two, tree," said Judy Szentkiralyi, recalling Hanna's early experience with English. "And by the time four or five months went by, it was totally gone."

Dispelling Confusion Around Bilingualism

The Szentkiralyis say that most people were supportive, but not everyone. Paul recounts an uncomfortable confrontation Judy once had in the local grocery store.

"I remember one time you came home and you said this one lady was like, 'When is she going to learn English?' And it was like, 'Well, when she goes to school she'll learn English,'" he said.

For a bilingual who really has two good languages that they use, both of them are always active.

- Ellen Bialystok, a psychologist from York University in Toronto

"People would often say, 'Well, won't they get confused?" added Judy. "And I would have to explain, 'Well, no, it wasn't confusing for us.'"

The idea that children exposed to two languages from birth become confused or that they fall behind monolingual children is a common misconception, says Janet Werker, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia who studies language acquisition in bilingual babies.

"Growing up bilingual is just as natural as growing up monolingual," said Werker, whose own research indicates babies of bilingual mothers can distinguish between languages even hours after birth.

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For A Bilingual Writer, 'No One True Language'

by NPR STAFF

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Gustavo Perez Firmat is a Cuban-American who writes novels, memoirs, poetry, and academic works in both Spanish and English. "But I have the feeling that I'm not fluent in either one," he says. "Words fail me in both languages."

Perez Firmat, who is also a professor at Columbia University, says that being bilingual can be both a blessing and a burden.

"I don't have one true language," Perez Firmat tells Morning Edition co-host Renee Montagne.

In everyday life, trying to communicate in two languages can bring awkward situations, Perez Firmat says. And the speaking habits that result can be very revealing.

"I can only curse in Spanish," he says. "I had a difficult relationship with my dad, and there may have been some cursing involved, on both parts."

"On the other hand, I have a hard time saying 'I love you' in Spanish," he says. "When I say te quiero, te amo — it sounds stilted, sounds like the kind of speech you hear in Mexican soap operas."

"But for me it's very natural to say, 'I love you,'" in English, Perez Firmat says. "My wife is American; English is a conjugal tongue, it's a filial tongue. Every time I talk to my son or my daughter, we end the discussion by saying, 'I love you.'"

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RENEE MONTAGNE, host: Let's get back to our series Two Languages Many Voices, about Latinos in the U.S. living biculturally and often bilingually. This morning we'll hear about writing in Spanish versus English, or writing in the combination of both languages known as Spanglish.

Gustavo Perez Firmat knows all about being creative in different tongues. He's a literature professor at Columbia University who's written poetry and academic papers, novels and memoirs.

Thank you for joining us.

GUSTAVO PEREZ FIRMAT: I'm glad to be here.

MONTAGNE: You know, let's start with the fact that you were born and grew up in Cuba. Obviously then Spanish was your first language. Well, how did you learn English?

FIRMAT: Well, in Cuba, one took English classes in school. And so, I never had the typical experience that many immigrants have of walking into an American classroom and not understanding anything.

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Two Languages, Many Voices Series

Moreno, Leguizamo Talk Latin Life In 'Hollywouldn't'

by MANDALIT DEL BARCO

Rita Moreno — the only Latino performer to win an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony — is reprising some of her most memorable characters in a solo show at the Berkeley Repertory Theater. Up the coast in Los Angeles, John Leguizamo, who co-starred opposite Al Pacino inCarlito's Way and voiced Sid the sloth in the animated Ice Age films, is performing another of his acclaimed solo shows. And while their Hollywood success came 40 years apart, the two say they encountered many of the same hurdles.

In the 1961 movie version of West Side Story, Moreno portrayed feisty Anita, the sister of a gang member — and like Moreno, Puerto Rican.

EnlargeAP

Moreno won her Oscar for the part of Anita, the firebrand girlfriend of the heroine's brother, in the film West Side Story, which recently had its 50th anniversary.

"When I got the part, I thought, 'Dear God,' because she sings, 'island of tropic diseases,' and I thought, 'I can't say that about my beautiful little island,' " Moreno explains from her home in the Berkeley Hills. "Island of tropic diseases? Whew!"

There were other issues, too. Co-directors Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins wanted a big contrast between the warring gangs, the Sharks and the Jets.

"So the white kids had to have their hair bleached and have extra-pale makeup," Moreno recalls, "and we had to wear all one-color makeup, almost the color of mud — and it feltlike it. We all had to have accents — many of us who were Hispanic did not have them. I asked the makeup artist, 'Why do we have to be one color? Because Hispanics are many different colors.' "

Still, Moreno says she's grateful for the role that earned her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar.

During the filming of West Side Story, she created her own Puerto Rican character with an amusing, exaggerated accent: Googie Gomez. "One day I hiccupped her," Moreno says, before singing, a la Googie: "'I had a drean, a drean about chu, bebe.'"

Moreno says people asked her, back in the day, whether the caricature wasn't offensive to Latinos. "They laughed their heads off, because they know the character," she says. "The big hair, the big attitude. She's a huge exaggeration."

Googie got her shot at stardom in the 1975 Broadway musical The Ritz, earning Moreno that Tony Award. But between the awards, she got to play only what she called the "Conchita-Lolita" Latina roles — or the generic ethnic.

"I played a Siamese girl from Thailand, I played an Arabian girl, I played a lot of American Indians," Moreno remembers. "I was never able to do just A Girl, and I was never able to do a part without assuming some kind of accent, which is why I invented my own universal ethnic accent."

In her solo show Life Without Makeup, Moreno describes how frustrating and demoralizing it was to be typecast. She says it even affected her personal life, and that she tried to take her own life after a tumultuous relationship with Marlon Brando.

EnlargeRicardo Montalban Theatre

John Leguizamo's fifth solo show, Ghetto Klown, tracks the arc of his show-business career.

By the 1970s, Moreno was finally able to do something different, on television. She guest-starred on TV shows such as The Rockford Files and the children's show The Electric Company, where she co-starred with Bill Cosby and Morgan Freeman.

Today, Moreno plays a Jewish mother on TV'sHappily Divorced, and she enjoys watching younger comedic actors exploring new frontiers — Sofia Vergara on Modern Family, for instance.

Moreno says Latinos still are rarely given the kind of meaty roles that land them big awards, but that it's a bit easier for them now than when she started out in Hollywood. "Things are a lot — not great, but better," she says, quoting actor Ricardo Montalban, who once said about Latinos in Hollywood: "the door is ajar."

'You Gotta Kick Your Foot In There'

Backstage at the Ricardo Montalban Theater in Hollywood, John Leguizamo takes the analogy further: "Yeah, yeah, you gotta kick your foot in there, then kick the other foot in, then throw somebody in there quick. That's what you gotta do, exactly."

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Spanish, English And Spanglish: Facebook Fans React

by TASNIM SHAMMA

EnlargeiStockphoto.com

A sign spells out Se Habla Espanol (Spanish Spoken Here).

NPR's Morning Edition is exploring bilingual life in the U.S. as the population of Spanish speakers grows. How does the use of English and Spanish affect your life?

When we asked our Facebook fans how the use of Spanish and English was affecting them, we were surprised by the more than 1,000 comments the question received. Fans shared feelings of appreciation, claimed it had enhanced their love lives and expressed annoyance and anger at being turned down for jobs for not knowing Spanish. One mother in Texas even told us she made her husband sleep outside her son's school "in the cold and rain" to secure a spot in a dual language program. Here is a sampling of responses. ¡Que disfruten!(Enjoy!)

Razz Irasema Cortes-Maceda: "Spanish is voice of my soul and English is the voice of my expression. As a fully bilingual person, I cannot imagine how narrowly monolinguals perceive the world."

Brian Purcell: "I am a self described 'Gringo with the Lingo,' who learned Spanish in high school and college and even lived in Chile for a few years. Today I work in the Seattle tech industry dealing exclusively with the Latin American market switching between Spanish, English and Portuguese all day long. I love it!

Barb Blond: "I hate it. In San Antonio the Hispanics are proud that they are here for generations and speak English. Do not speak Spanish to them as it is an insult. In Chicago it is the opposite. Hispanics want Spanish and they speak it [in] public. It could hold them back intellectually. English is the language of USA. If you come here, learn it just like proud immigrants of the past."

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Interactive: How Latinos Are Reshaping Communities

by COREY DADE

Over the past decade, the story of population growth in the United States was defined largely by the story of Latinos emerging as the nation's largest minority.

Latino USA: A Decade Of Hispanic Population Growth

Scroll over the map to see population change by state, or zoom in to see county data. Yellow, orange and red represent the areas with the greatest growth rates. Check out the larger map to enter your own zip code and see population change down to the census tract level.

View larger map

They surpassed African-Americans for that distinction, by accounting for 56 percent of America's growth from 2000 to 2010. They now number more than 50 million. Put another way, 1 in every 6 U.S. residents is Latino.

Hispanics remain heavily concentrated in states such as California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Florida and New York. The majority reside in just three of those states — California, Texas and Florida.

Yet the 2010 count showed that Hispanics have begun to fully spread across the nation.

Their populations increased in virtually every state. And on the local level, Hispanics increased their populations in 2,962 of America's 3,142 counties. They declined in number in 108 counties.

The greatest gains occurred in the South and Midwest, which have had traditionally low Hispanic populations, but have attracted Hispanics with lower costs of living and jobs in agriculture.

"Throughout the decade, we were tracking the faster-than-average growth in what have been called the new settlement areas in the Southeast and Midwest. For the most part, the census numbers not only confirmed that, but said we had underestimated the growth in these new areas," says Jeff Passel, chief demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center.

Southern states posted the top five fastest growth rates, led by South Carolina and followed by Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky and Arkansas.

In Alabama, the Hispanic population grew 145 percent. About 186,000 Hispanics now live in the state, compared with roughly 76,000 in 2000, drawn by low-wage jobs at food-processing facilities and three large automobile plants.

The majority of Hispanics live in the Birmingham area, which is in Shelby County, where the Latino population grew by nearly 300 percent.

States With The Fastest Hispanic Growth Rates

The majority of the nation's Hispanic population live in just three states: California, Florida and Texas. But for the fastest rate of growth, look to the South:

1. South Carolina
2. Alabama
3. Tennessee
4. Kentucky
5. Arkansas

"A lot of the growth has been because of the housing boom and the construction jobs, poultry plants and the Mercedes, Honda and Hyundai plants," says Jeremy Love of the advocacy group Hispanic Interest Coalition of Alabama.

The surges in Alabama and other Southern states have stirred hostility. Alabama and Georgia have passed laws cracking down on illegal immigration. Alabama's new law, which is being challenged in federal court (as is Georgia's new law), grants broad authority to law enforcement to detain people suspected of being in the U.S. illegally. The law also requires public schools to report the citizenship status of their students, as well as their parents, to authorities.

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Immigrant Parents Rely On Kids For Help Online

by ALEX SCHMIDT

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On a weekend in East Los Angeles, kids do what they do anywhere else — play games, hang out in restaurants. But in this immigrant neighborhood, many of them have grown-up responsibilities. Fifteen-year-old Gonzalo Cruz says his parents depend on him for help online.

"When they need to look up a place, like a doctor's appointment, I show them," Cruz says. "Computers right now, in our country, they're just English. You have to use them a certain way, and they didn't learn to do that when they were little."

Thirteen-year-old Cassandra Flores helps her parents pay bills online.

"Yeah, a lot of kids from school do the same thing," Flores says. "It fills a very important role because you're helping your parents with a lot of work and [the stress] of understanding."

Of course, it's not unusual for younger generations to help adults with strange and challenging new technology. But when you add in the language barrier, that help becomes a crucial family responsibility. Vikki Katz, a professor at Rutgers University, has studied the way immigrant kids help their parents with technology.

"A lot of the resources immigrant families need the most are online, and sometimes they are only online," Katz says — things like visa forms and school applications and important everyday things, too, like finding a local business.

A Spanish speaker in Los Angeles looking for an orthopedist might go to Google.com and type in "oficina ortopedista Los Angeles." The top result is in Madrid.

"There's no excuse for us not doing a better job with this," says Trystan Upstill, an engineer at Google.

Upstill says this is a problem all over the world. There are a lot of Turkish speakers in Germany, for example, who have a hard time finding what they need. But right now, if you search in Spanish, it's difficult for Google to guess that you want an orthopedist in the U.S. Upstill says to determine that, Google needs to deal with mind-bogglingly high numbers of combinations.

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In Miami, School Aims For 'Biliterate' Education

by CLAUDIO SANCHEZ

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In the fall of 1963, in the throes of the Cold War, Coral Way Elementary took in the children of political refugees fleeing Fidel Castro's Cuba. The goal was not just to teach them English, but to make sure they remained fluent in Spanish and held on to their culture. Cuban-Americans thrived in Miami, and so did Coral Way's bilingual immersion model.

Every morning, shortly after 8 o'clock, students at the Coral Way Elementary School pledge allegiance to the flag and stand for the national anthem. Then Spanish becomes the language of instruction. In one fourth-grade class, reading assignments, science, math and social studies lessons are entirely in Spanish. After lunch, classes switch to English. On the playground, you hear a mix.

EnlargeClaudio Sanchez/NPR

A photo at Coral Way Elementary School, one of the first bilingual schools in the country, shows some of the school's first students.

Coral Way principal Josephine Otero questions a child on the playground: "Buenos dias mija, why are we running? Why?"

Otero is one in a long line of bilingual principals at the school who have presided over what experts consider the "gold standard" of public bilingual education in the U.S.

"When parents come to Coral Way, they already know what they're buying into," Otero says. "We have proven that our methods here at Coral Way do work, and that our students are successful and prepared to face the challenges ahead of them."

Most of the 1,500 students at the school are low-income, but their test scores are among the highest in the city. After eighth grade, many go on to Miami's top private and public high schools. Some take up a third and fourth language.

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