Are you of French ancestry? MrT5 was Canadian French-grandparents were from Quebec. He spoke Quebecois French as a 2nd language, as did both his siblings and his parents. I’m Hispanic and am fluent in Norteno/Mexican Spanish as a 2nd language-both my bro and I learned at home from mom in early childhood-my family had left Mexico in the rearview for Texas/NM before 1800-but my mom believed it was still important to speak/read/write Spanish because most ranchers and truckers here do business on both sides of the border.
There do not seem to be as many Americans who speak a 2nd language as there were 30 years ago, when just about every third person you met person spoke either Norteno/Mexican Spanish or Quebecois or Cajun French. Now-as you observed, they murder English-it makes me want to scream. My husband and I broke our cub-who went to private school-of saying “like/I’m like/she’s like”, and “she goes/he goes” instead of “said” by playing a tape of that “Valley Girl” song for her-and correcting her every time she did it-it took weeks, and we were almost shouting sometimes...
Oops-2nd “person” typo...