At the Iowa Caucus back in February, Univision political reporter Fernando Peinado posted a video of one of the now infamous tiebreaker coin tosses with a Spanish caption:

That tweet got some traction and Peinado’s video got some replay in other news outlets. He quickly tweeted the same video in English:

“Our reporter decided to do it himself. There was no specific strategy behind it. Yet when he tweeted the same thing in English, it went huge. We had outlets all over calling us to ask if they could use Fernando’s video,” Borja Echevarría, VP and editor-in-chief for digital at Univision (and a former Nieman Fellow), said. “It was in those moments that we thought, when you have something no one has, and you put it in English, the market gets that much wider, and you have the attention of a completely different market. If we’re going to have something unique, why don’t we also put that content into English?”

Univision is now starting to offer English-language stories at a dedicated English section of its website. The section is starting out with a three-person team, helmed by former Reuters Miami bureau chief David Adams, Jessica Weiss from the Miami New Times, and Rachel Glickhouse from Medium, and publishing an expected mix of original reporting stories translated from the Spanish-language side, selected from several Univision TV and radio affiliates, as well as some original reporting. There will be collaborations with Univision Investiga, and with Fusion.

“Many Latinos now are Latinos of the second, third generation, and feel very comfortable in English. Maybe they can read in Spanish and have a Latino background, the culture is there, but they feel more comfortable in English, while they still care about specific issues like immigration,” Echevarría said. (According to research by Pew, more than 60 percent of U.S. adult Hispanics speak English or are bilingual. Univision is, of course, the dominant U.S.-based Hispanic-oriented TV news network.) “Why? Maybe because their parents are immigrants. There are even cases where you might be a 20-year-old U.S. citizen but your parents are undocumented — is there relevant content we can give them?”

There were hints of this mission in the original proposition of Fusion, which was conceived of as the first English-language cable network targeting Hispanic millennials. Fusion changed its tune quickly, though, and began targeting the broader demographic of all millennials. Its website now is decidedly general-interest, with an eye toward more diverse voices and a spunkier lineup of verticals (“Justice,” “Sex & Life,” “Real Future”).

“If they speak Spanish or are over 30, they work for Univision. If they’re under 30, they work for Fusion,” Jorge Ramos, Univision Anchor and host of a daily news show on Fusion called America, joked back in 2014. (I reached out to Fusion for comment on its potential collaborations with this new English-language site and will update if I hear back.)

The Univision News section will cover politics, health, education, environment, cultural topics like music, and other issues with a focus on how they affect Hispanics, and will also dive into Latin American coverage (“the English side is going to be important for us there, too”), according to Echevarría.

“The Latin American stories are still underserved in the U.S., though it’s true that mainstream media here has recently been looking to the region, but we already have a strong sensibility with that, and we’re going to push hard with both Spanish and English,” Echevarría said. “We’re still testing the waters, and we’re not going to be covering everything. But we’re making it bigger. For the first year, we’re going to be growing slowly and looking at various metrics to see what makes sense — let’s just try things out and see what works.”

He pointed to a digital project that traces the relationship between the Colorado River and Latino and Hispanic populations living near it, presented in both English and Spanish: “Our environmental reporters took a long trip following the river and reporting on the huge impact it’s had — it’s not the kind of project I would say an English-speaking U.S. media company would normally take.”

“It’s impossible to understand the future of this country if you don’t understand it bilingually,” he added. “It makes no sense for us not to look at both languages.”

Your Editor Remembers: Some 40 years ago, I led a group of investors, journalists and newspaper publishers in a project to publish a nationally distributed one-million circulation magazine for Hispanic readers IN ENGLISH. And I cannot let the opportunity pass without telling our readers about Univision´s robust opposition to our project, claiming that the only way to reach Latinos in the U.S. was in Spanish. Vista is not published any longer. But still, I feel some satisfaction in welcoming Univision to the club.

English proficiency among U.S. Latinos has risen over the past 14 years, an increase almost entirely due to the growing share of younger Hispanics born in the U.S., according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data.

When asked about their language use and English proficiency in 2014, some 88% of Latinos ages 5 to 17 said they either speak only English at home or speak English “very well,” up from 73% who said the same in 2000.

And among Latinos ages 18 to 33, the share who speak only English at home or say they speak English “very well” increased from 59% to 76% during this time.

Increasing English use by young Hispanics has been driven in large part by demographics. More Hispanics in the U.S. today were born in the country than arrived as immigrants (the number of newly arrived immigrants from Latin America has been in decline for a decade). For example, 65% of Latinos in 2014 were U.S. born, compared with 60% in 2000. One consequence of this trend is that a greater share of young Hispanics ages 5 to 17 are growing up in households where only English is spoken – 37% in 2014 compared with 30% in 2000.

By comparison, English proficiency among older Latinos has changed little since 2000. For instance, among Latinos ages 34 to 49, 55% spoke English very well or only spoke English at home in 2014 – nearly unchanged from 2000, when the share was 53%. Among Latinos ages 69 and older, just 43% said they spoke English proficiently in 2014, compared with 42% in 2000.

Even as more Latinos speak English proficiently than in the past, many also speak Spanish. The Pew Research Center analysis shows that 36.7 million Latinos speak Spanish at home, making Spanish the most spoken non-English language in the U.S. Looked at another way, three-in-four (73%) Latinos say they speak Spanish at home.

Despite the rise of English among U.S. Latinos, nearly all say they value the ability to speak Spanish, with 95% saying it is important to them that future generations of U.S. Latinos speak the language. Still, as English use rises, most Latinos say Spanish doesn’t define their identity: 71% say speaking Spanish is not necessary to be considered Latino.

You can see a statistical portrait of the nation’s Hispanic population here that documents key demographic and economic trends from 1980 to 2014.

Comments to the original story by Edward Rincón

The increasing use of English among U.S. Latinos has been well documented over the years by Pew as well as our own research. This trend is not commonly known or accepted in the advertising industry largely due to the strong advocacy efforts by selected Spanish-language media that have historically misled the public into believing that Spanish-language usage was increasing in the U.S. and was the best way to reach U.S. Latinos. Hopefully, your research will be useful in changing these inaccurate perceptions.

Nonetheless, readers should also recognize the limitations of self-reported language measures. A person might… Read more speak a couple of words of Spanish at home and be classified as a Spanish speaker. Also, measuring just speaking skills overlooks other language functions like reading, writing, and listening skills — just as important as speaking skills. Our own research also shows that Latinos tend to over- and under-estimate their language skills on self-reported language measures, which are less valid than behavioral measures, i.e., the language actually used when given a choice.

Just some food for thought.

The author writes for Pew Research Center

Your Editor Asks: Is it a good practice to speak “only” English at home?

A well-known Hispanic publisher was asked by then NYTimes reporter Alex Jones 20 years ago if he made love in Spanish or English. The publisher responded: ’Well; It depends on the woman’s language’.

Like many first-generation Mexican immigrants, Juan Rivera grew up in a home where the family communicated exclusively in Spanish.

So when he had his own children, it was important that his home be bilingual. He plastered the family’s Paramount home with sticky notes inscribed with words in Spanish and English of each household item.

But soon the children reverted to speaking just English, and the notes vanished.

The Rivera family’s experience mirrors a dramatic linguistic shift occurring in Latino communities across the country. More Latinos are growing up in households where only English is spoken.

A new Pew Research study released this week found that in 2014, an estimated 37% of Latinos ages 5 to 17 grew up in households where only English was spoken. That’s up from 30% in 2000.

See the most-read stories this hour >>Overall English proficiency is on the rise and a declining share of Latinos of all ages are speaking Spanish at home, the study found.

The findings reflect the significant decline in immigration from Latin America in recent years, which has reduced the number of first-generation families. It also shows that Latinos are repeating a well-traveled path of assimilation embraced by other immigrant groups such as Italians and Germans.

“The typical trend is that the first [generation] prefers to speak Spanish, the second generation is bilingual, and the third generation is generally monolingual,” said Jody Agius Vallejo, an associate professor of sociology at USC who studies immigrant integration.

Still, the movement runs counter to some of the fears critics often express about the huge amount of immigration — both legal and illegal — into the U.S. from Latin America in the last few decades. California voters in 1998 approved a ballot measure that killed most bilingual education programs in public schools in favor of English only amid fears immigrants would prefer to keep speaking Spanish.

The shift toward speaking only English comes with its own complications.

Outside a dance studio in the predominantly Latino immigrant town of Cudahy, mothers waited for their daughters to leave a folkloric dance class. Most of the children spoke English, but the instructor, Lourdes Perez, speaks almost entirely in Spanish.

As the mothers waited, they joked about speaking to their children in Spanish only when it’s time for punishment. But they also lamented the fraying line of communication between their children and their Spanish-speaking grandparents.

Maria del Rosario Peralta questions her own daughter about her reluctance to speak Spanish.

When she speaks to her daughter in Spanish, her daughter responds in English.

This summer, the family plans to visit the grandparents in Mexico. Peralta worries that her daughter will need an interpreter to communicate with her relatives.

“I tell her, ‘What’s going to happen when we go to visit your grandparents?'” Peralta said. “Vas a hablar o te vas a quedar muda?”

Translation: “Are you going to talk, or are you going to stay silent?”

Karen Rivera grew up speaking very little Spanish in the home, but her husband’s parents were born in Mexico and her mother-in-law doesn’t speak English. Whenever the couple visits her in-laws, the children practice the little Spanish they know on the car ride over.

“Buenas tardes, como estás,” her daughters will repeat.

“They’re in the car saying it over and over to make sure they can pronounce it correctly,” Rivera said. “If the grandparents ask them a question, they try their best to answer it.”

In the last 14 years, English proficiency among Latinos has been largely fueled by Latino youths born in the United states.

Nearly half are under 18, and 88% speak only English at home or speak English very well, according to 2014 data from the U.S. Census Bureau. That’s up from 73% in 2000.

Among millennial Latinos — ages 18 to 33 — the share who speak only English at home or say they speak English very well rose from 59% to 76% during the same time, the data show.

“We often tend to think of immigrants being the main driver of the Hispanic population, but it’s actually U.S.-born Hispanics who are drivers of the Hispanic population,” said Mark Hugo Lopez, director of Hispanic research at the Pew Center.

The number of newly arrived immigrants from Latin America has been in decline for a decade.

Erika Aparicio, 24, of San Diego arrived in the U.S. on a visa when she was 6 and is fluent in both English and Spanish. Her mother and father are also fluent in both languages. But Aparicio prefers to speak to her parents in Spanish.

Aparicio makes a concerted effort to speak exclusively in Spanish to her 3-year-old U.S. born daughter, too.

“I’m not going to let the Spanish die with me,” she said. “I see the value in knowing two languages.”

At times her efforts have led to awkward moments in public. Recently while in line at the bank, Aparicio said she was talking with her daughter Ashley in Spanish when she noticed an older man staring. When Aparicio responded to a bank associate in English, the man seemed to be taken aback, she said.

“He was surprised,” she said and let out a laugh. “I don’t think he thought we knew English.”

These perceptions can turn ugly. In August, a videotaped confrontation went viral online of a woman interrupting a Los Angeles mother and son speaking Spanish to each other at an IHOP in Koreatown. In the video, the woman yells at the mother for speaking Spanish and demands that she speak English. The mother cries and yells back at the woman in English.

Spanish has long inspired contradictory impulses. On the one hand, many middle-class and affluent whites have enrolled their children in bilingual charter schools so they could learn Spanish, believing it could give them a leg up in the job market. But Spanish use has also provoked English-only initiatives across the country, Vallejo said.

It’s an old story in many ways, Lopez said, pointing to how Germans were criticized in the 19th and 20th century for supposedly failing to assimilate. In some states, such as Nebraska and Iowa, laws were enacted to ban German in public schools.

“The United States truly is a graveyard of languages,” Vallejo said.

In Maria Torres’ home, she and her husband speak only Spanish, although the two can also speak English. Because of their relatives in Mexico, Torres said, it is important for her daughters to be able to communicate in Spanish.

“If I hear them speak English in the house, I tell them no; only Spanish,” Torres said. “It’s important they have a grasp of both languages.”

For many families, language is more than just about speaking, Vallejo said.

“It is about your identity,” she said, “the relationships that you build and deepen with family and friends or through experiences like travel, and the memories that are derived from those relationships and experiences.”