This is the warning sign near the pool at our hotel in San Salvador (Hotel Miramonte.) It is helpfully lettered in both Espanol and English for the convenience of their guests. We happened upon it as we were setting out for our first day as a group in El Salvador.
This sign provides a good lesson to anyone who has a need to make signs in a language other than the one that they were born to; don't let your sister's kid, who has had one year of foreign language in High School convince you that he can handle the translation part of the job, (particularly if the main object of the sign is NOT to amuse snarky groups of tourists who might happen upon it!)
While everyone was smirking and snapping photos of the sign, I had to ask aloud, "yeah, well just how good is YOUR Spanish?" That made us all laugh a bit. And consider that for the next ten days, we were going to be communicating as best as we could in the little snippets of Spanish that we COULD understand, and inventively cobbling together phrases and hand signs and pantomime where we had no clue! It is a really good experience to be the minority, the out of place, the foreigner sometimes, to give a sense of what it is like for those who are living and working among us here back at home.
This and more photos are online at our flickr.com account
This sign provides a good lesson to anyone who has a need to make signs in a language other than the one that they were born to; don't let your sister's kid, who has had one year of foreign language in High School convince you that he can handle the translation part of the job, (particularly if the main object of the sign is NOT to amuse snarky groups of tourists who might happen upon it!)
While everyone was smirking and snapping photos of the sign, I had to ask aloud, "yeah, well just how good is YOUR Spanish?" That made us all laugh a bit. And consider that for the next ten days, we were going to be communicating as best as we could in the little snippets of Spanish that we COULD understand, and inventively cobbling together phrases and hand signs and pantomime where we had no clue! It is a really good experience to be the minority, the out of place, the foreigner sometimes, to give a sense of what it is like for those who are living and working among us here back at home.
This and more photos are online at our flickr.com account
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