He is not a natural Spanish-speaker, I understand. He grew up in the years when Hispanics determined that their children only speak English so they would not have an accent. It was perceived as important in moving up the social ladder. Hope he's taking lessons now, however. It will definitely help.

enough to learn how to roll his "rs" and the other few eccentricities of the language, most likely.

If you do i was going to ask you how good Jeb Bush's Spanish is?

English, let alone Spanish. I'll see if I can find a clip online. That's almost like going to Freeperville. LOL

parent conferences. So if someone took me into a kitchen, for example, and tried to carry on a discussion in Spanish, I would be woefully monolingual.

I think learning any other language, or so they say, makes you smarter by using different parts of the brain, so go for it. Can only help in California.

Both Jeb and George P speak Anglo Spanish. Jeb is very fluent, fast speaking and understanding...I'd give him a B- as compared to a native speaker. George P, less...maybe C-. Again fluent, some halting and you can tell he hasn't spoken it a lot because of the gaps. Probably like Julian Castro is going to sound...I haven't heard him.

Spanish is like some of the Asian language...there is a sing-song, non linguistic element to it that is nigh impossible to learn.

My 2 cents.

be even more grating on the ears,

I used to live in Spain, had school in Spanish, majored in it in college, can do major regional accents.

Then I can go after the Russian-American vote, since I can speak Russian and can play balalaika.

Then the Cajun vote, since I can speak French.

Then I'll lock up the upper Midwest since I can speak German and Swedish.


In other words, I agree that there's a lot more than arroz con pollo involved in locking up the support of a voting bloc.