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When cops speak Spanglish to a non-English speaker.

By Marks & Katz, LLC

Photo from website of U.S. District Court (W.D. Mi.). Too many monolingual people seem to think that if they speak louder or repetitively that ultimately they will be understood by a person who does not speak the speaker's language. Too many people think that if a person understands such phrases as "Do you speak English" or "Fire, fire" that this means the person speaks the tens of thousands of other words and phrases needed to have a sufficient command of the English language.  Nothing beats struggling with learning a second language to understand how hard it is for others to learn English, including figuring out how to conjugate verbs in the past, present and future tenses, struggling to understand native speakers who talk a mile a minute, and memorizing and pronouncing a jumble of strange-sounding words...continue to full post

Full post as published by Underdog on November 13, 2008 (boomark / email).