Hilton Princess phone call gone wrong

One of my polyglot friends was doing an intership at the San Salvador Hilton Princess hotel. Yes we have a Hilton here, and yes there are people who speak four languages in this country that only expects you to speak Spanish and basic English.

The usual Hilton phone call starts with a "Buenos días Hilton Princess", this one had an unusual ending:

Hilton staffer: ¿Hay algo más en que le pueda ayudar?

Caller: Gracias por ayudarme.

Hilton staffer: Ya sabe, el placer es todo mío.

Caller: ¿Y por qué no lo compartimos?

Surprisingly enough, people actually try to pick up girls like that.

Comparing 911 and Pizza Hut call centers

There are two phone numbers every Salvadoran should know: 911 for emergencies and 22577777 for Pizza Hut. Why Pizza Hut? It's the only restaurant preferred by 61.9% of the Salvadorans.

I decided to benchmark both phone services and the results were these:

Pizza Hut (100% of the calls went through)

• Pizza Hut does an excellent job handling phone calls, it takes a couple of seconds for calls to be connected and pizza is delivered in less than thirty minutes. (Unless you order pizza during a Barcelona-Real Madrid match).
• All of my three calls were connected inmediately.
• Pizza Hut knows my name and address if I've called before.
  

911 (28% of the calls went through)

• Two years ago, I tried to call 911 after witnessing a fatal car accident, my call didn't connect until the fourth attempt. When the call finally connected the guy who answered had no idea were Atiquizaya was.
• The day I was comparing the two services it took three times for the call to connect!
  

(1): http://archive.laprensa.com.sv/20070828/eleconomista/849954.asp

Wine with ice

After visiting the crypt below the Cathedral of San Salvador two friends and I decided to go to a nearby pizza restaurant. We ordered pizza and a bottle of red wine.

We were expecting our waitress to come with wine glasses - but - she came with three glasses half filled with ice. Perhaps she thought it'd be more refreshing, it was a particularly warm morning.

As we had no easy way of throwing the ice away we ended up drinking wine with ice. It seemed to me like we were Uva Tropical!

'Vos' in the Salvadoran Education System

Aniuxa, a Salvadoran blogger, recently wrote about the use of 'Tú' instead of 'Vos' in Salvadoran media. For those of you not familiar with Latin American Spanish, vos is a widely used second
person pronoun. It's the most commonly used pronoun in El Salvador, Northern Central America, Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina.

'Vos' is used every day in El Salvador, its existence is recognized by the Real Academia Española... But it is not mentioned in the Lenguaje y Literatura books kids and teens use at school to learn the Spanish language. As a consequence 'vos' and its conjugations stay only as part of the spoken language, 'vos' is rarely seen on writing because kids aren't taught how to write it. If I had a penny every time I saw 'vos' misspelled! It's shocking to see how many people can't even spell 'vos' (that's sort of seeing 'he' or 'she' mispelled').

To make things more confusing for students, they are taught to conjugate 'vosotros', a pronoun they'll never use (except for mocking the Spaniard accent). To make matters worse students aren't taught the difference between 'vos' and 'vosotros'. Many Salvadorans can't explain the difference clearly. That's really an Education System failure! Can you imagine if half of an English Speaking country wasn't able of distinguishing 'he' from 'they'?

Probably 'vos' is a taboo topic on Lenguaje classes the same way that the Salvadoran Civil War has been tabooed in Estudios Sociales.

'Vos' is rarely used in Salvadoran media, TV hosts use a fake sounding 'tú' (and usually wrongly conjugated) during shows and ads. I wonder why. There's a newspaper that uses 'vos' though, the 'MAS!' newspaper, a paper aimed to the lower-middle and lower classes, a paper that boasts two spelling mistakes in its title. This contrasts with the ubiquity of 'vos' in spoken language, it's used by everyone in El Salvador whether they read the MAS! or Blur.

¿Emerjenci ecsít?

I sat next to an emergency exit and I was surprised to see that its handle had been soldered. Perhaps someone was unable to read the non-Spanish sign and decided to solder a seemingly misplaced door.

Our governement requires less vital labels to be translated. A sticker on a Worcestershire Sauce bottle lets me know it contains 'Sal, cebolla y tamarindo'. Not life-saving unless I happen to be allergic to salt, onion or tamarind.

But the translation of signs like 'Emergency Exit' has never been enforced. I've seen more signs like this labeled in English, Portuguese and French than in Spanish. Someone without basic English knowledge won't be able to figure out what 'Pull up Handle. Push out door' means. I guess someone expects everyone else to guess the meaning of 'Sortie de secours' e 'Saída de emergência'. Salvadoran's lack of regard to safety rules must be one of the reasons our life expectancy is low

Someday

Someday I'll add something here.