Linguistic fracture in Belgium (2/23/2008)

Spanish vs English (11/23/2007)

Languages evolve just as species do (10/16/2007)

Súbete, "Get in" (9/23/2007)

Understanding bilingualism is important in understanding how the brain learns and deals with language (9/13/2007)

School Translators Can Help Parents Lost in the System (8/13/2007)

Police recruit linguist officers (5/29/2007)

Poet and Publisher Bridges Cultures (2/11/2007)

A drive to encourage more students to study languages is being launched after a drop in undergraduate numbers (9/26/2006)

The mayor of Merchtem in Belgium has defended a ban on speaking French in the town's schools (9/1/2006)

Entries this summer in German were down at GCSE by 14.2%, while French declined by 13.2% and Spanish by 0.5% (8/24/2006)

Modern languages and politics were no longer viable due to falling applications (5/22/2006)

Found in Translation: Endangered Languages (4/21/2006)

The loss of languages continues, and it's a worldwide phenomenon (3/07/2006)

Language exams in sharp decline (8/25/2005)

I wanted a job which would make the most of my language skills and cultural experiences (7/19/2005)

English 'world language' forecast (12/09/2004)

English is no longer the universal language of business it once was (4/16/2004)

Those who think Texas is a good place to live adopt the flat 'I' -- it's like the badge of Texas (11/28/2003)

Celtic became a distinct language and entered the British Isles much earlier than supposed (7/01/2003)

Brits abroad are the least well-regarded by foreigners (7/19/2002)


Nurses hit language barrier (2/27/2002)

Babylon Languages (1/08/2002)

In England only around one primary school in five teaches a foreign language. (8/03/2001)

Is the Atlantic the only thing that divides the UK and US? (7/19/2001)



Spanish vs English
 
 
November 23, 2007
 

Cuban-born Maria Carreira, the co-author of two college Spanish textbooks, can glide easily between her native tongue and English. But in her daily life in Southern California, picking which language to speak can be very complicado.

Such as the time when she was at a taco stand where everyone seemed to be ordering and chatting in Spanish. Carreira started placing her order en espanol, but she quickly switched to English after she got a look at the young employee behind the counter.

"He had the bluest eyes," Carreira said.

Carreira, a linguist who teaches at California State University, Long Beach and an expert in the use of Spanish in the United States, acknowledges she blundered at the taco joint. Although the employee responded in English, it dawned on her that he had been capably handling orders in Spanish.

Yet her flub reflects a language-etiquette question confronted daily by the nation's growing ranks of English-Spanish bilinguals: When to use ingles and when to speak Spanish?

Among the estimated 18 million Americans proficient in both languages, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the issue isn't whether to speak English or Spanish but when. There's the delicate matter of courtesy -- and avoiding hurt feelings. Occasionally, Carreira said, "it's a land mine."

For example, switching to Spanish might seem rude if it suggests the other speaker is inept in English. Yet among Hispanics proud of their ethnic heritage, completely avoiding Spanish can come across as standoffish.

Experts such as Carreira say the language decision among bilinguals is often made in a split second, based on cues such as age, clothing and apparent social status -- along with skin, eye and hair color.

Names can be giveaways -- or traps. When UCLA student Maricruz Cecena introduced herself with a friendly hola to one of her freshman-year roommates, Laura Sanchez, and then tried to strike up a phone conversation in Spanish, all she got was an earful of English.

Cecena, a child of Mexican immigrants who grew up speaking Spanish, had assumed too much.

Sanchez can get by fairly well in Spanish but is much more comfortable in English, which was the primary language in her upper-middle-class Mexican-American home. She said she sometimes is intimidated by people who speak Spanish better than she does.

Despite the initial awkward moments, three years later Sanchez and Cecena remain friends. But they do that, in part, by keeping their conversations in English.

Despite her slip, Carreira has a finely honed sense of Spanish-English etiquette that leads her to use Spanish sparingly in public, unless she is approached in Spanish.

Say Carreira needs directions and bumps into somebody who appears Hispanic. She'll ask in English and stick with the language even if the other person speaks with a heavy accent. Switching quickly to Spanish, Carreira reasons, would be "sort of saying, 'Huh, I get it. You can't speak English.'"

But by refusing to speak Spanish, "you also risk coming across as aloof or superior, more Americanized, or not one of them," she said. The solution? Carreira will continue an exchange in English to avoid insult but will toss in a well-pronounced gracias or por favor as "a way of being gracious and showing solidarity."

Among Hispanics, trying a little Spanish sometimes can defuse hostility. Ana Celia Zentella, an ethnic-studies professor at the University of California, San Diego, says older U.S. Hispanics often "think they're being lied to" when they encounter young Hispanics who say they don't know the language.

English speakers struggling to use a few words of Spanish can, in some circumstances, come across very well.

"There are people who are very touched when there is a genuine approach to them by people who are trying to speak Spanish to communicate and to connect with them," Zentella said.