[URBAN NOTE] Code-switching

[rfmcdonald]

I was riding home, westwards on the westbound Bloor-Danforth line, when the train stopped at Spadina station and two women and their children boarded, one child per mother, and settled down just across from me. The children, one boy and one girl, sat next to each other while their mothers stood across from them, chatting to each other as each held her own beautiful big bouquets of flowers. One of the woman had a knit purse with "El Salvador" stitched into the side.

As I watched the children tug the water-filled vials attached to the stems of those flowers that were sticking out of the plastic wraps, I heard the women hadn't been switching fluently between English and Spanish as they talked to each other. One woman, the taller one, was distracted by her son, who kept asking her for juice, or pop, when they got home.

- Leche or agua.