BBC team make US Spanish journey
This Saturday, I am setting off on a two-week long trip across the United States with a simple goal in mind: to only speak Spanish during the journey.
I am not trying to achieve or break any record. I just want to see what it is like to cross the country without uttering a word of English.
Big deal – looking at the map of the route they will be taking it doesn’t seem like much of a challenge in terms of finding people along the way who speak Spanish. Why not try cutting across the country from New York to San Francisco instead?
I’d actually quite like to see a Canadian version of this, showing someone going from Victoria to St John’s only speaking French. 
casa azahar 
This sounds interesting. I’ll have to remember to follow it at some point. While it may not be too hard a challenge to find folks who speak Spanish, it should be very revealing about attitudes towards speakers of languages other than English, and Spanish speakers in particular.
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I seem to remember being told that French was the fourth-equal most spoken language (along with Italian) in Canada, after English, Norwegian and Russian. Une mythe urbane?
Have you read ‘The Milagro Beanfield War’? If not, do. It’s marvellous. It includes a reminder, if we needed it, that Spanish-speaking Americans are not necessarily immigrants or descendents of immigrants. (Well – obviously they are – but you know what I mean.)
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Well, Canada is supposed to be bilingual, or at least it has two official languages. But I doubt someone travelling coast to coast there would be able to find French speakers everywhere they went.
I saw the film The Milagro Beanfield War but just vaguely remember it.
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The film’s good, but the book’s much better. The film doesn’t feature the old man whose arm is eaten by butterflies…or the blind man with a gun…or the Anglo Peace Corps student who lives inside an outhouse full of black widow spiders…
When I was in Canada – this is going back 20 years – I was astounded by how monolingual so,e people were. Even I spoke better French than a lot of people!
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Perhaps a more ‘recent’ Canadian than myself can comment better on the state of bilingualism in Canada these days, Edward – I haven’t lived there since 1990.
I’ve heard that French immersion classes are now offered in primary schools for children who are at an age where they can pick up a second language much more easily, which makes wonderful sense. Though I don’t know if they are offered everywhere or just in the bigger cities.
I didn’t start learning French at school until I was 12 and the classes were abysmally boring – just parrotting phrases without ever learning to actually speak. I took French until I finished high school, somehow managing an A+ grade at university entrance level (A levels in the UK), even though I could barely string a simple sentence together. Go figure.
I’ll check Amazon for that book – thanks for the recommendation.
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Um… it’s not too Garcia Marquez-ish, is it?
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