[ilbegone]

Originally Posted by Jeanfromfillmore

One of the sons corrected me, to which I replied that I didn't really care I'm an American and I don't speak Spanish. He then told me I should because there are so many who do living here.

On a job where I was staying in a motel, I approached the owners and asked for a couple of towels, as the used ones had been removed and not replaced. The husband walked to the laundry room and returned with a couple of towels. In the meantime, the wife got the maid and sent her to service my room. I declined, and the owner told the maid in Spanish to give me a couple of towels. I stated that I now had the towels i had needed, there is no problem and the room can wait.

The maid didn't understand a word of the English. However, the owner was from India, and speaks at least two languages not native to India - English and Spanish.

Not long ago, I worked with a Mexican who's been here for twenty years, the last ten working almost exclusively with English speakers: he's just now getting around to the idea that he needs to take some English as a second language classes. I asked Elena how this could be - at least he should have picked up more English through osmosis. Her reply was that for all those years he didn't want to.