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Hey everyone! Been thinking (had alot of thinking time in Pr with our 4 hr layover!!) and am curious, is anyone out there bilingual that lives down there and if so, does it help?
I've always wanted to learn spanish and knew some for when I was working as a bank teller here in Charlotte but mainly just key phrases. After our trip, I've been seriously considering taking some spanish classes and for certain jobs I know it'd help but do you use it that often if you're on STX/STT?
If you haven't noticed in my posts so far, I tend to ramble 🙂 Point is, does/would knowing Spanish in the islands be helpful and would it be used or just forgotten?
Thanks!
Amanda
Posted : July 4, 2005 11:19 pm
When we bought our lot we had the opportunity to see our realtor in his normal enviorment. He spoke spanish and some island frensh/spanish slang. I am sure he did no speek it when he first moved o Stx. I am considering taking up spanish in any case. If the danisch return I will try that languare as well. I think it can not hurt. People in general do appreciate if you at least try and speek their lingo.
Posted : July 5, 2005 12:15 pm
Hello Amanda,
I am and it has come in handy from time to time; primarily at jobs that I had where the customer base was largely residents. In my experiences my employers never asked if I spoke any other language so it wasn't a factor in hiring, however depending on your field of work it may be different. I'd say I encountered customers that spoke no English maybe once every three or four months and they either spoke Spanish or French/French Creole.
I pulled up the Census and it does state that about 75% of the VI population speaks only English. And of the 25% that speaks English and other languages only 8.7 said that their English wasn't very good. Spanish (16.8%) and French/French Creole (6.6%) were the major 'other languages' listed.
We have a good section on language in the USVI at http://www.vinow.com/general_usvi/culture/language.php if you wanted to learn more about language spoken now and the history of language in the VI.
--Islander
Posted : July 6, 2005 9:12 pm