Where do you get your news?

@ninalanyon Two languages. Wow.

@Nelladell I think everyone should have at least two languages. Being able to read a newspaper from another culture can illuminate one's own. I'm a very poor language student so I didn't appreciate this until I emigrated and found it necessary to speak the language of the country I moved to.

@ninalanyon I know that we in the USA are often chastised for only speaking English. I guess it comes from usually not having to speak another language.

@Nelladell If you live in the south you could probably make use of Spanish in quite a lot of places. Including reading newspapers. Some years ago NC State Uni. in Raleigh made basic Spanish compulsory in the medical school because there were so many Spanish speakers in the area. There were protests in the local press but I don't know if any of the people complaining were medical students.

@ninalanyon That's interesting. We lived in the SW, mostly Arizona, and of course Spanish is very prevalent there. But I hadn't thought of it being so in the south. We lived in Florida and Georgia and didn't notice it at all. I guess different areas --

@Nelladell I think it depends on the bits of society one moves in, I think the English and Spanish speaking communities in the area I mentioned live quite separate lives. I was there on business trips over a period of about ten years, probably nine months altogether, usually two weeks at a time. I spent weekends cycling around the city, going to cafés, shopping for food to take back to my apartment, etc. I hardly ever heard anything other than English unless I went to a particular flea market in an area where there were a lot of Hispanic people.

On the subject of language what I found strangest was that if there was a second language on a product label in a supermarket it was almost always French.

@ninalanyon French! That's a far piece from Quebec.