los portrillos
Someone told me that los portrillos means "the goats". I'm not sure if that's true or not, but it's the name of the Mexican restaurant my friends and I went to last night. Funnily enough, there were horses on the cover of the menu.
If I go into an ethnic restaurant and the menu is in the language of origin, I usually just show the waiter what I want, and tell them I am not all about butchering their language. Some people say this makes me look stupid, some say it shows respect. Really, I just don't want to embarrass myself in public. I have to feel for the poor staff at Mexican places though. No matter what town or city you are in, if you eat at an authentic Mexican eatery, you will hear "The only Spanish I know is uno, dos, tres..." followed by raucous laughter. You see, I openly admit that the Spanish I know comes from Sesame Street and Dora the Explorer. However,I do not feel this qualifies me to spout off my minimal understanding in a place filled with people who know how to speak it properly. Often it is the same people who feel the need to uno, dos, tres their way through dinner who complain when the English language is not spoken to their liking. This is truly irritating, as English is the most difficult language to learn outside of the Asian languages.
We have a large Russian population in our area, and a lot of the adults do not speak English, they rely on their children to be translators. I recently heard a group of older men complaining about them and their heavily accented words, as well as how the schools have hired Russian translators to help the kids out. "If they can't speak it right, they should go back where they came from. It just ain't Christian." I was annoyed and walked over and said, "Jesus didn't speak English either, give them a break." They kind of stared at me and then one guy said, "That's just cause he didn't have no one to teach him". Ignorance at its finest.
BTW, court was fine. The judge actually called the ex "ridiculous". Exact words.
posted by Samantha_K @ 11:22 AM
Comments: 2
