Post #1563402

I'm currently job hunting. A small annoyance is that some of the monolingual people in my life are convinced that it should be easy for me to get a good job because I "speak Spanish". No matter how I explain it, they don't understand that I speak only a LITTLE Spanish. Can I say "Have a nice day" in Spanish? Sure! But employers want more than that. I couldn't even say "breakfast cereals are in aisle six" in Spanish, much less participate in a business meeting. However, the monolingual English speakers in my life are convinced that I could, and that I just need to believe in myself. It is annoying not to be believed that my Spanish is limited. I DO believe that I'm capable of learning more, and am actively working to improve my Spanish. However, that's not at all the same thing as already being fluent. To give an analogy, I'm capable of learning to become a surgeon, but it would be disastrous for me to "believe in myself" and perform a surgery on a living person today, when I haven't yet developed the necessary skills. Why is this so difficult to understand?