Reply #18: My husband has learned a lot of mandarin which sounds hilarious with a boston accent

[AlCzervik]

anyhow we live in California and hear Spanish at times, my daughter has been taking it for 8 years so she's pretty good at translating on the very few occasions it's come up. The only time i've called into someplace and it's been in india was avis i think, no problems, the guy had an accent but i understood everything he said.

i don't know why you think you're expected to learn a new language, It doesn't sound like you're dealing with the esl folks all that much. I'm trying to learn mandarin right now because i'm interested and not because i feel i'm expected to. Most other countries in the civilized world require another language be learned, i think that's a great thing.