I'm going to spring in to defend BillD, as we are both proud residents of Montgomery County, Maryland--our county tends to trump most other places that fancy that they are multicultural--more than 25% of our population are foreign born, and somewhere close to a third do not speak english at home. That third speak one of about 170 different languages.

I have heard the manager a local McDonald's give directions to employees in what turned out to be Igbo ( I thought it was Yoruba, but what do I know?), where previously, language spoken had been Spanish.

Just yesterday, I was shopping in Costco, and in the 40 minutes that I was in the store, I didn't hear English spoken until the Russian in front of me in line began insulting the African cashier.

The central shopping district in my little town is hard to navigate if you can't read Spanish, and the street and the shops are full of people til late in the evening, which causes a lot of friction with the long time residents of the area.

Many to most of the people we have to deal with each day aren't native English speakers, and some don't speak English at all(though you may not realize it at first), and, though in a larger sense, it is kind of invigorating, in an immediate way, it can be problematic.

A while back, I took a worn quilt to the Korean dry cleaners. She showed it to one of the Salvadorean seamstresses, then quoted me a price for the repairs, which I paid up front.

When I returned, there was another employee at the register who refused to return the quilt unless I paid a substantial additional amount.

The resulting fracas required the intervention of the consumer rights advocate in the county prosecutor's office who had to get two translators to figure out what was going on.

Briefly, the Salvadoran seamstress had told the Korean cashier that she couldn't do the repair. The cashier had misunderstood and taken the quilt. Then, another seamstress
took the quilt, thought that it needed something else done, gave an estimate for that, and sent it back to the cashier, who mistook the estimate for additional charges. Since communication in the shop was pointing, nodding, and smiling, with the odd "yes" and "no", no one knew what anyone else was doing. They all thought they did, though.

BillD, I am sure, joins me in a delighted appreciation of all the things that our new neighbors bring us, including delicious cuisines, charming customs, and a sort of eager and sincere manner that disappeared from mainstream America a long time ago.

Still, with neither malice nor recrimination, we occassionally wish our new friends had a more secure grasp of our common speak.