Like many college students looking to get their college degrees speedily, 

LaTasha Moore chose Spanish as an elective class in high school and college in hopes of getting an easy grade. 

Little did “Tasha” know that her collegiate ruse would eventually guide this proper southern-speaking Black woman into her chosen profession as a non-native Spanish-speaking linguist – an uncommon occurrence that often brings stares and weird comments. 

“A lot of people like to ask – Latino and non-Latino – if I had any connection to the (Hispanic) culture. And the answer is always no. I don’t have any Latino blood that I know of, but I do consider most Latinos to be the cousins of African Americans. With the diaspora, it was just a matter of where you got off the board,” said Moore. 

I jokingly tell people I am Cuban because I like the culture,” said Moore, a native of Prescott. “Like everybody else, I took (Spanish) in high school because it was required and did not care.” 

Once she entered college at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro her brother advised her to continue her Spanish studies due to the increasing influence of the global economy. With radio and television as a major and Spanish as a minor, Moore continued her studies collegiately but still had no real love for the language of romance. 

Known for its soft consonants, long vowels and blurring of beginnings and ends of words, Spanish is one of the favorite languages for wooing love because it is easy to rhyme and conducive to music and poetry. But Moore still had no real affinity for the young language that originated in northern Spain from a dialect of Latin in the ninth century. Later, it was introduced to the Americas in the 16th and 17th centuries thanks to Spanish explorers like Juan Ponce de Leon, Hernando de Soto, and Hernan Cortes. 

“At the time, I wanted to be a radio and TV broadcaster – I wanted to be on the news. So, I just made Spanish my minor, but I still didn’t care, only enough to make an A or B, but it wasn’t a passion,” she said. 

But that all changed in the last semester of her college before early graduation. However, her father who never had a college education thought that Moore was looking for an easy route to her education by finishing early in under four years. 

“He thought I was doing something wrong, and he fussed at me, saying ‘you’re trying to cheat the system, you’re supposed to go for four years, ’” Moore recalled laughing. “ He didn’t comprehend that it was a good thing.” 

But after speaking with her mother, who suggested using the extra years of education to get a double major in Spanish, Moore took that advice and pursued the Latin-influenced language more seriously. 

“Once again it was my family influencing my decision to pursue Spanish. Once I took my mother’s advice and made it into a second major, I got more serious and it started to click more,” she said. That extra educational path earned the Prescott native a second major in Spanish where she learned to speak fluently and understand the rhythmic language.” 

“That (process) took 2-1/2 years, but I did get to the point of my last year in the program, I could read it and comprehend,” said Moore. “It was like I was looking at English. But it took those serious years, but that is what a lot of people don’t want to hear. We get clients who call and are interested. I tell them, ‘it is going to take some years and it is supposed to.’ 

“But the commercials don’t say that. They say you can start speaking Spanish in three weeks. But it is a journey, but it is worth it,” said Moore, who now seamlessly goes between Spanish and English.

LaTasha eventually graduated from A-State in 2014 with communication studies and world languages degrees. While at A-State, LaTasha received the 2014 R.E. Lee Wilson Award, the highest honor for a graduating student. 

After graduation, Moore signed up for the North America Language and Culture Assistants program sponsored by the Education Office of the Embassy of Spain in the U.S., the Ministry of Education of Spain and the regional education offices in the 17 regions of Spain. 

Through the program, American citizens can serve in classrooms across Spain to encourage students of all ages to broaden their knowledge of the world in general and the United States in particular. As cultural ambassadors, American grant recipients share their language and culture throughout the education system of Spain. At the same time, the program offers recipients the opportunity to immerse themselves in the language and culture of Spain. 

After waiting several months for her acceptance in the program, Moore received word in September 2014 that she would soon be headed to Bullas, Spain, a small town in the Region of Murcia, known for the production of wine. 

“That’s really when my love for language and culture really took off by going to Spain,” she said. 

During her European adventure, Moore noted that, unlike the Americas where there are large populations of Afro-Latinos in Brazil, Columbia, Venezuela and the U.S. that speak Spanish, she stood out as the only Black Spanish-speaker in the southern region of Spain near the Mediterranean Sea. 

Because she was isolated in a small community, she had a wonderful experience as a Black American woman in a European country. “When you go abroad, where you live can make or break your experience,” she said. “I thank God I was put in that town because even though I was different, a lot of families accepted me.” 

“It sparked in Spain,” she added With no one speaking English in the small southern Spain community, Moore’s experience accelerated her linguistic skills. On her European adventure, she visited Paris and London too. After returning to the U.S. She returned to central Arkansas to get a master’s degree in public health from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS). 

But after her UAMS graduation in 2018, she lost her job as a Spanish-speaking teacher at a local school. “That’s my story,” she said. But not really. From those early beginnings, Tasha Teaches Spanish began with Moore as the lone tutor. It now employs a staff of seven teachers, one document translator and one social media coordinator. As CEO, Tasha primarily serves in an executive and administrative role, managing the staff and contractors, developing partnerships with outside organizations, and creating and executing new programs and events. 

People from all races are still surprised to see and hear a non-Latino Black woman fluently speaking the romantic language, but Moore says she uses those opportunities to educate and unify. 

“I am of African descent,” she said proudly, “and they don’t expect me to speak Spanish. But it is that surprise, that connection and the new things that I learn about others – and they learn about me and my culture – simply from speaking another tongue.” Well-spoken, Tasha, well-spoken.