On Sun, 30 Mar 2014 00:52:20 -0500, Mark H Harris wrote: > On 3/29/14 10:45 AM, Mark Lawrence wrote: >> On 29/03/2014 08:21, Mark H Harris wrote: >>> >>> Yes. Well, as the joke goes, if you're trilingual you speak three >>> languages, if you're bilingual you speak two languages, if you're >>> monolingual you're an American (well, that might go for Australia too, >>> maybe). When whole continents speak the same language that tends to >>> happen. >> >> You mean like the USA, where I saw an ad in a shop for a bilingual shop >> assistant? Or is Spanish so like US English it doesn't count as a >> separate language? > > I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. We have people here from > all over the earth, and enough illegal immigrants speaking Spanish to > account for a population about the size of Ohio.
*raises eyebrow* Did you intend to imply that it is only illegal immigrants who speak Spanish in the USA? The most recent US census found there are 38.5 million people in the US who primarily speak Spanish, and 45 million who speak it as their first or second language. In comparison, there are only an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants (of which only 7 million is from Mexico). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_language_in_the_United_States -- Steven D'Aprano http://import-that.dreamwidth.org/ -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
