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Showing posts from June, 2011

Speaklish portendo kuklamondo

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I spent the better part of a year last weekend in various airports, buses, restaurants and venues on America's "Left Coast." Interesting places to see, not much real history, certainly forgettable in most cases once you get indoors. Seen one mountain in the distance, they all look alike. What I didn't admire was that nearly everybody there speaks something of a language that entitles them to not understand what I said. I have some ideas on how this happens in a place that's inundated with the fear that not being inclusive somehow will exclude you permanently from participation. So all the stores and eateries that are owned by people who don't speak English are hiring the college-age (read that: cheap) labor that speaks "some" English, which is interpreted by the non-English speaker as being "enough" English. Hey, I speak enough Spanish to ask somebody how to find somebody who speaks English. I can also, in Russian, ask a Russian where a U.S