A roaring chant echoes through the Super Bowl stadium as singer Bad Bunny enters the stage. Dancers surround la casita, a pastel pink house built center stage, with tall sugarcane arrangements framing the set and flags of Spanish-speaking countries etched into the scenery. Some fans are shouting every lyric in Spanish while others attempt to mouth the sounds they don’t fully understand. Beneath the surface lies a deeper reality: a crowd united by football, but divided by language.

Although Puerto Ricans like Bad Bunny are U.S. citizens, their distinct cultural traditions and predominance of Spanish over English cause people to perceive their country as foreign rather than part of the United States.

“As a Puerto Rican, it felt really good seeing Bad Bunny on such a big stage because I feel like we need that representation nowadays,” sophomore Gianna Gonzalez said. “People tend to alienate us since they don’t realize that Puerto Rico is a part of America.”

Many critics online framed the performance as political because it was almost entirely in Spanish, which was a shift away from a typical Super Bowl performance.

“There was definitely a political and emotional defensive reaction after Bad Bunny’s performance,” Spanish teacher Maria Gavilanes said. “Immediately after the show, we witnessed on social media a huge defensive response to the idea that the ‘meaning’ of being American was being rewritten.”

America is one of the linguistic melting pots of the world with nearly one-quarter of Americans speaking languages other than English. For many multilingual Americans, however, the language one speaks often shapes opinions before identity does.

“When I think of the Spanish language, I might think of the culture, the celebrations and the food,” Gonzalez said. “Maybe it is because of the accent or the way we speak that non-Spanish speakers (in the U.S.) associate us differently.”

Spanish teacher Gabriella Weaver shares a similar experience where Spanish was seen as “the other” in the U.S. when she moved here from Costa Rica.

“I came to a country that was not my own,” Weaver said. “I come from a very different background of culture, and American, to me, is a foreign culture. I had to learn English in high school. I was not given a second choice to speak in my own language. It was either swim or sink.”

For many immigrants, language is both a lifeline and a way others mark them as different, especially in a public setting.

“When I’m in public, and my mom calls me, she’s talking to me in Portuguese,” freshman Enzo Kuada said. “Sometimes I may get a bad look, and I think it’s because I don’t have an accent, so (my) speaking Portuguese might seem surprising and also that they already have a stereotype built up in their head about me.”

That stereotype is different for all languages. English is the dominant language in the United States, with around 75% of Americans speaking it. Because it is seen as the common language, other languages may be perceived as foreign in comparison.

A study published in the National High School Journal of Science surveyed 101 participants aged 14-18 who rated recordings of different romance languages on a 7-point scale for qualities such as warmth and competence. The study showed that French was associated with higher competence and status and that Spanish was rated as more friendly.

“When I was looking at which language I wanted to take in school, I chose French because I thought the language and the people that spoke it sounded cool,” eighth-grader Amelia Sasser said, “I also thought that France was really pretty.”

Despite the French language being perceived as more sophisticated or elegant, this does not change how languages other than English, including French, may be viewed in a negative fashion as foreign or “other.”

“Sometimes I get made fun of just because I speak French,” freshman Damien Layus said. “I think it’s cool. Not a lot of people can take French or three languages. When I meet people that can, I start a conversation with them because I feel more (at) home.”

Whether it may be French, Spanish or Portuguese, the moment people hear a different language, assumptions follow. For some, hearing their native tongue feels like home. For others, that same sound can trigger distance, curiosity, or even judgement.

“I have seen acceptance and racism and I think there’s two completely different ways people can perceive languages,” Kuada said.