The Death of Imagination

I hear you. Your breadth of language knowledge far surpasses mine. But because I'm an Anglo North American, people are astounded that I can speak a few faltering phrases of ANY language other than English, and I'm disproportionately rewarded for it. I can muster up enough broken Spanish to ask customers about their needs, and people think I have remarkable linguistic skills because of it. But perfectly bilingual Latinos are shrugged off because, well, they're in the United States, of COURSE they know English. Which is crazy, because their language skills far outstrip mine, but they get little to no credit for it.