Spanish is the second-most-spoken language in Nashville, but it’s just one of many represented in Davidson County, which has seen a significant rise in its multicultural population in recent years…
Nashville Scene. Room for Interpretation: How Nashville Could Better Serve Its Multilingual Community
…From the Uzbek cuisine at Osh to the city’s burgeoning Latin music scene, Nashville’s diversity enriches its character, offering multifarious perspectives, ideas and cultural identities. Plenty of research shows that diversity, in all its forms, enhances economic and social development across sectors.
Nashville’s rapidly growing cultural diversity is its strength. The vibrant mix of backgrounds can enrich the lives of every resident.
La diversidad multicultural aquí en Nashville es su fortaleza. La mezcla vibrante de fondos puede enriquecer la vida de todos los residentes.
¿Quién está aprendiendo español aquí en Nashville?
Who is learning Spanish here in Nashville?
Brandi
Operations Director at Nashville Diaper Connection
We work with a lot of cultures and lot of different people and it’s nice to be able to go out and converse with people in a way that they are comfortable instead of trying to force what we are confortable with on to other people. We generally have interpreters, but we can’t always do that. And at the same time it’s different when someone else is translating for me because I don’t get to become apart of that relationship.
Paige
Reporter
As a reporter at WPLN we are lucky to partner with Nashville Noticias, which is an all-Spanish news outlet here in Nashville. I really wanted to work on my Spanish so that I could better participate in that partnership and also to make sure that when I’m telling stories about our city and the people that live here, I’m able to do that regardless of whether someone speaks English or Spanish.
I use Spanish every week to translate some of the stories we do for Nashville Noticias.
Nichole
Spanish Heritage Speaker
I lovingly call myself a ‘no sabo’ kid sometimes, which is a joke in our Latino community based on a frequent mistake that people make in Spanish. I am the Latina who grew up in the States, but didn’t learn Spanish the way that some of my peers did.
Sally
School Counselor
Hola mi nombre es Sally, una de las consejeras de la escuela. I am learning Spanish because I want to be able to interact with my Spanish-speaking students more often.
I’ve had more students this year than ever before that speak Spanish that actually need counseling services. And so rather than have a third-party translator it would be nice to communicate a little bit more to see how they’re feeling and what their story is.
According to a recent survey by the American Psychological Association, only 5.5% of psychologists in the U.S. report being able to offer services in Spanish.
The Latino population here in Nashville has grown by 60% in the past decade.
La población latino de Nashville ha crecido por 60% en la última decada.
1 in 4 students in the Metro Nashville Public School system has limited English proficiency. As our city grows, speaking a second language becomes an asset to anyone working in education.
Nashville schools, business, hospitals, banks, and social services need bilingual staff in order to thrive, and Nashvillians need to speak more than one language to stay competitive in the job market.
Nashville’s Latino community is projected to represent 34 percent of the population by 2040. This change is bringing new cultural and social opportunities to the city’s residents.