Linguistically speaking

Florida has this problem, you see. It's called Linguisticmissatosis, and it is an affliction similar to what would happen if you asked me to perform neurosurgery on a muskrat. Dumbfounded stares, followed by a eulogy from the muskrat's best buddy. Millions of people in Florida can't speak English, and that's not including specific dialects like "redneck" and "NASCAR", which, incidentally, go together.

Linguisticmissatosis becomes painfully pertinent when ordering at the counter of a Chinese restaurant. Maria, a woman of Puerto Rican descent who was born, raised, and schooled (really?) in the Bronx, but apparently only has a working English vocabulary of around 16 words, walks into Ming Wok's Chinese Emporium, and she attempts to order a meal of chicken and snow peas. Behind the counter, taking her order, is Sun Li, 13 year old daughter of the owners of "Mings", who herself has an equally comparable understanding of English as Maria. What ensues then would stress the patience of Job himself, if in fact Job was in line and wanted to order and consume his meal sometime before the next millennia.

Sun Li: "How can may help you I ?"
Maria: "You have sheeken?"
Sun LI: "You want lice?"
Maria: "What eees lice?"
Sun Li: "White lice and flied lice."
Maria: "You have sheeken?"
Sun Li: "What kine o chicken want?"
Maria: "Sheeken."
Sun Li (confused): "We have chicken with lice a noodle"
Maria: "Pea?"
Sun Li: "Bathloom bloken"
Maria (visibly upset): "I wannn sheeken with peas."
Sun Li (turning to speak with her mother): Suuum luk toe, sum chung lahckee cho"
Mother: "What you want?"
Maria: "Sheeken peas."
Mother: "Ohhhh...lo sohm lock chu do sahhn," she says to Sun Li.

10 minutes later, Maria pays for her food with a debit card, and the "automation is a bitch" dance begins. After about 3 tortured minutes of watching Maria try to decipher the intricacies of the 9 digit pin display, she finally arrives at a solution, and leaves with her food. Pretty fast too, as she was out of there in less than 45 minutes.

I would have loved to see the look on her face when she got home and pulled that beef chow mien out of the bag because, like they say, "for everything else, there's Master Card."