Only in America

[imamonger]

A few nights ago, I went out to eat at a local Asian buffet. There, I witnessed a little Asian woman fire off some instructions into the kitchen in machine gun Chinese and in the same breath, she instructed a waiter, in Spanish, to get some water to a table.
Now, I have no beef with her being a polyglot, and it is not uncommen to hear either Chinese or Spanish being spoken casually, but hearing these two languages spoken together by the same person, seemed a bit odd to me.

BTW, the food and service were both very good.

[royamcr]

Did she speak greek?

[JD Barleycorn]

I had a teacher a few years back from Paraguay. She was teaching a child English and his little sister (about four I think) was picking up both Spanish and English. Her native langauge was Chinese.

[vitokc]

Originally Posted by imamonger

" hearing these two languages spoken together by the same person, seemed a bit odd to me".

BTW, the food and service were both very good.

Odd only in America to Americans. Not in other countries

[imamonger]

Agreed Vito. It struck me as odd here. In Europe it would perfectly normal.

[vitokc]

Originally Posted by imamonger

Agreed Vito. It struck me as odd here. In Europe it would perfectly normal.

They put a lot more emphasis on language study than in the US. Students in US should be learning more languages. Like it or not, businesses are needing Bilingual workers and the need is increasing. It's a great time to be a intrepeter. I know several and they have all the business they can handle.

[algrace]

...Still looking for that bilingual encounter but a Chinese buffet sounds like a bad place to fulfill the experience