This story from Salon News was reported on the Forensic Linguistics mailing list (thanks to Gillian Grebler).
The girl is 5 and her Hispanic father has been in prison for 5 years, so she doesn’t speak Spanish. Her mother requested that speaking Spanish be a condition of visitation (or access as we at least used to call it in BE – in BE we talk about a visitationof the plague but not of a parent).
The father talks English some of the time, but also tries to teach his daughter about Spanish and some terms.
bq. The judge did not oppose such instruction, but said the rest of the communication should be in English for the sake of the girl’s education.
“The principal form of communication during the periods of visitation is going to be English,” Reagan said. “That does not mean that you can’t instruct and teach her the Hispanic language.”
Interesting story – made even more stimulating by a Skin show-jingle interlink with Robert Evans is Kid Notorious and shown with shades on, languishing in a bathtub with two women.
I do wonder how the linguistic order is going to work. In England, ‘equity does not act in vain’.
Visiting and access rights are now just called contact order in the UK.
If the sins of fathers were visited in biblical visitation upon their sons, I’d have been locked up a long time ago.