Spanish is spelled E-S-P-......

This will probably only be funny to Spanish speakers (not that I'm a spanish speaker by ANY MEANS), but the other day I was helping out one of my Hispanic kids with a journal article. He mentioned his sister, and I asked what her name was. He replied, "Candy" and I said, "Oh, how does she spell it?" He looked confused for a moment, and then said, "K, no D, U..." and then trailed off. I was thinking that Mom must have given Candy an oddly spelled variation of the name, and then my little friend looked at me, and tried again saying, "My mom spells it D-U-L-C-E." I said, "Oh, DULCE!! Your sister's name is Dulce!" He was trying to translate her name into English for Gringo ME (Dulce means sweet/candy in English), but spelled it for me in Spanish. I started giggling. It's no wonder our ELL kids have it rough!

On another espanol note, I was called into the office to translate one afternoon last week. Can we spell D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R? I politely explained to the man that I had learned "espanol guatemalteco" which is "mas despacio de espanol mexicano." I also tried to make it clear that I only knew a little bit of Spanish and he would need to talk slow. He seemed to understand most of what I said, but then he started rapidly talking about something...I have no idea what. I was able to figure out his name, that he was the uncle of the student we were looking for, and that the girl with him was his grandchild...luckily it was good enough to get his situation figured out, but I don't think the office will be calling me back to translate anytime soon!