Re: CHAT: False friends - echos from the mother tounge

Quoting Roberto Suarez Soto <ask4it@...>:

> On Jul/09/2003, Stone Gordonssen wrote:
>
> > >Well, USA is the fourth or fifth Spanish-speaking country, after Mexico,
> > >Spain, Colombia and Argentina...
> > I've found knowing at least basic Spanish to be a plus in Atlanta
> (Georgia),
> > Chicago (Illinois), Phoenix (Arizona), San Diego and San Francisco
> > (California), and Seattle and Redmond (Washington).
>
>         Great. In a few years, I won't have to show my poor spoken
> english if I want to travel in USA ;-)
The usefulness of Spanish can easily be exaggerated.  Generally
speaking, by far most of the Spanish speakers in the United States
live in parts of the country that have had large Hispanic populations
for centuries -- Texas, California, and other parts of the Southwest.
This generalization is beginning to change in the South and parts of
the Midwest and Northwest, where Hispanics are increasingly frequent
as agricultural workers, but it is by no means the case that you can
get by without knowing English in most parts of the country.

 =========================================================================
Thomas Wier            "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago   half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
1010 E. 59th Street     Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
Chicago, IL 60637

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