McKay High School sophomore Monique Guajardo, two generations removed from her family’s arrival from Mexico, has a difficult time speaking Spanish. Fifteen-year-old Whitney Peña, on the other hand, can’t speak a word of Spanish. Her ancestors immigrated three generations ago. According to a recent study, their difficulty with their native language is part of a national trend. Spanish dies out within three generations, and English becomes the dominant language.

The study, conducted by the University of California at Irvine and Princeton University, found that native language-expertise tends to disappear among descendants of Hispanic immigrants at a rate similar to that of other immigrant groups, such as Asians. The findings were published in the September issue of the journal “Population and Development Review.” Third-generation descendants of immigrants such as Peña are U.S.-born with U.S.-born parents and three or four foreign-born grandparents.

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