[crusso]

Nope. The people I worked with were almost all from Spain. They spoke Castilian. My main exposure before them was always from Latin American sources. I LOVE the way Castilian people speak since it's so clear.

We had Latin American folks in the office too. They never had a problem speaking with each other. Maybe a border guard speaking broken Spanish confused someone, but this woman was just trying to ask basic Spanish 101 type questions.

The follow-up to the story is that I came across the same candidate's resume 6 months later. He had changed the "fluent in Spanish" to something like "basic Spanish".

[gcp]

I had a very similar experience when I was much younger, fooling myself that by not specifying how fluent I was, I wasn't lying when claiming knowledge of language X. Then I had an interview much like the one you described and learned that "misleading statement" and "lying" are close relatives.

No job, but life lesson learned.