Spanish (San Antonio, Ferris, Anton: how much, high school, live)

[haggerwood]

If you were to say work in a bank in San Antonio would it be necessary to speak Spanish ?

[adtobias]

no the last I checked we were in the united states

[pobre]

Necessary, no. Helpful, perhaps.

Originally Posted by haggerwood

If you were to say work in a bank in San Antonio would it be necessary to speak Spanish ?

[rd2007]

A lot depends on what you look like, or at least that's what I've observed around here.. if you have blond hair and blue eyes then chances are nobody is going to come up to you speaking spanish.. might get some German though, that happened to me a lot in Curacao and Germany.. however, if you appear like you might have some spanish speaking nationality in your family history, then you might get people coming up to you speaking spanish.. funny thing is when people assume a person speaks spanish and they assumed wrong...

[haggerwood]

I just wondered because where I live now in central Fl a lot of hispanics seem to expect us to speak fluent Spanish at the bank I work at. Now that being said we don't have a lot of hispanics here so maybe the few we have haven't got to grips yet with English but anyway based upon experiences with small numbers of hispanics here and the fact San Antonio is 58% hispanic I was wondering if everyone there just spoke Spanish all of the time. Anyway it would appear from your responses that speaking just English is not a major issue.

[smuboy86]

Just because a place is 58% hispanic doesn't mean that it will be spanish speaking. Like Florida San Antonio was founded by Spain thus their have been hispanics in San Antonio since right after it's founding. I would say most in San Antonio would consider English their native tongue.

[01Snake]

I spent a few months in the Miami area in 2005 and I could not believe how much Spanish is used there. I was at the grocery store and nobody working there or shopping there would converse in English. It was kinda like the commercial for the Visa Check Card. Everything was going smoothly, people talking and laughing in Spanish and then whitey (me) gets to the register and everything grinds to a halt. No more smiles and laughter... Just silence. haha

[SA Greed]

I have shared a similar experience that 01Snake has. My wife and I flew to Miami to catch a Titan/Dolphin game, then drive to Orlando to see Mickey. In any case, everywhere we went, everyone assumed we spoke Spanish. (we are Hispanic) We thought it was just in Miami as it is more south however we were wrong. We went to look at a time share to get free tickets to Islands of Adventure and (I assume because we were Hispanic) were given a Spanish speaking Guide. The whole time she kept asking us questions like, isn’t your last name ****** and ******* Latino or don’t they teach you Spanish in school? We answered back, “yes, our names are Hispanic and yes they teach Spanish at school but as an elective, the last I checked we were in the US and if I didn’t learn Spanish to speak to my now deceased grandmother, I certainly am not going to learn it for you!!!”

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind if someone thinks I speak Spanish, I just don’t care for people EXPECTING me to speak it and question why I don’t. I understand it and that’s good enough for me.

I have been to many different cities and trust me guys, there is no place like SA.

[cheermomof4girls]

I am half filipino and half caucasian. I look hispanic. When I was in high school, I was a checker at Kroger (Marbach location) and I would alway get the old ladies that speak spanish with a little bit of english. When I tell them, sorry I don't speak spanish, they get upset and rude at me telling me that I should be ashamed of myself, that a mexican girl like me can't speak spanish. When I tell them, sorry, I am not even mexican, they would tell me "Yes you are", and this would go back and forth a few times. Now what's funny is my mother in law is japaneese and she can speak spanish fluently. You should see the people's faces at the flea markets when she asks them a question in spanish. LOL

[SA Greed]

that's funny, I worked for HEB 11 and would get that from the customers too. I would simply give them the line from Ferris Beuller, “uuhh, what country do you think this is?”