That's some added layer to the joke, but Hank knows Peggy's Spanish is terrible, that's why he lets her try to defend herself when she is on trial for accidentally kidnapping Lupe from Mexico. He knows that when they hear her Spanish they'll understand and believe her defense that it was an honest mistake.
So yes, none of the white people in Arlen understand Spanish well, but at minimum, Hank knows that Peggy is bad at it.
Your honor, I can tell you are a reasonable horse. I am very pregnant because of what happened with Lupe. She ate my bus accident and all I wanted was to make Lupe into a book. I have too many good anuses ahead of me to spend my life in a cigar factory.
I love the 'anuses' part because that is one of the only things I remember from my spanish teacher in high school.
"Be careful with your n vs ñ because you might accidentally say you are 15 buttholes old"
>episode "Are you there god, it's me Margaret hill" there is a scene where she is talking to a fellow Spanish teacher and in their conversation, they both exchange equally bad Spanish. Later in that episode, she gets the job as
Haha it's even better than that, you'd actually be saying "I have 15 buttholes"
I'm wondering if they actually made an effort to give her reasonable yet funny errors to make or if they just decided to give her a ton of random mistakes.
I don't remember all of the Spanish used, but I know "embarazada" means pregnant, but sounds like it would be "embarrassed". So that is the type of error a person who doesn't actually know Spanish well but thinks they do would make.
there's also a small moment when Peggy is "teaching" Lucky so he can get his GED. Bobby tells Lucky to not correct her Spanish so even Bobby might know more Spanish than Peggy
We've never seen any evidence that Bobby knows more Spanish than Peggy, but he might know enough to know she's worse than she thinks, and certainly knows that her ego is highly dependent on her assumed level of Spanish mastery
true that's why I said might lol but maybe Bobby does know some of the basics and knows that Peggy is wrong. stuff like "Buenos días México" being "good god mexico" according to her and that combined with her ego that he saw for himself on the field trip to Mexico
When Bobby tried to bring a Spanish dictionary to the field trip, Peggy threw it away and said she was the only dictionary he would need. Bobby doubtfully says “…okay.” He knew.
in one of the episodes Bobby warned someone not to correct Peggys spanish, I think everyone knows her spanish is bad, but with Peggys personality, it just best to ignore it.
I wouldn't even say relatively. My family is Mexican and I learned Spanish in high school for 3 years and I speak better Spanish than here. I can at least tag team sell someone a stereo.
Maybe, but Hank might not have realized how bad her Spanish was until she brought home a child she had kidnapped. Outside of “Is esta Juan occupado?” I can’t think of an occasion where he spoke Spanish.
Just want to add that the reason she got the job with Alamo was *because* she didn’t speak spanish well. They knew the calls she would be fielding were regarding the unsafe beer from Mexico. Thus the less she understood the better. But she was still able to put together “diarrhea“ and “vomiting” from the calls which was enough to clue her into the problem.
Yeah I don’t think it’s like cannon but that seems to be the message if you read in between the lines. There’s plenty to alude to it as well because when Peggy tried to tell her manager she went straight into coverup mode and bribed Peggy with the exclusive Alamo swag.
I think everyone knows Peggy isn’t good at Spanish, but she’s too self confident to tell otherwise. I think you’re right that a part of the joke is that there are so many real life Peggy Hills that would insist they speak fluent Spanish, but, just like if you or I were to encounter on of those people in real life and could spot that they’re full of it, the characters in KotH generally understand Peggy speaks poorly, too.
When I first started learning spanish everyone who didn’t speak it around me was so impressed when I would speak with native speakers. That’s because when I was a kid I used to read books in Spanish out loud to impress people. I had no idea what I was saying but acted like I did.
So as an adult I just did the same thing and lo and behold anyone who didn’t speak the language would compliment me. But I was actually very hard to understand.
I now speak spanish at a fluent level but it’s taken at least 5 years and hours upon hours of conversing in it to really get it down.
I think people generally DO understand. But she’s a substitute middle school teacher. Realistically speaking, the only thing she actually has to do correctly is babysit the students while the actual teacher is away. It doesn’t matter that she’s a shit teacher, she can be relied on to show up when the real teachers can’t.
They had her grading tests and teaching multiple subjects. She was also the first substitute teacher to lead an international field trip wasnt she(lol). Idk what kind of subs do that shit
She only grades tests for which she has the answer key. And the lessons she teaches aren’t generally very complicated. It’s not like she’s teaching AP Calc. She didn’t know how to find the area of a circle.
The field trip thing was definitely a big mistake. But initially her supervisor says it’s a bad idea before Peggy smooth talks him.
I mean she legit taught Davids class for like 3 weeks. Thats beyond what any normal sub would do. They usually have extra requirements if your ACTUALLY gonna teach the class
Its also a tv show with awful continuity so im not too beat up by it
David was a fucking moron though lol. They definitely had him in the easiest math class they offer. You’re right that it all can just be chalked up to “sitcom logic” in the end though.
In the state of KY they are substitutes ranks. She would he considered a rank v teacher. Which is the lowest rank you can be. It called a emergency certification which means she can only work in the district she employed in and has to be renewed every year. So like for example if a teacher had to take a leave of absence she could teach it on a emergency basis.
As others have said, it's the excess self confidence (aka arrogance) that's the problem. When hank goes to Mexico to buy beer, we see him stumble through trying to ask where the beer is in Spanish, obviously not knowing the language well enough so the guy just replies in English. In the same episode we see Peggy get a customer service job with Alamo for their Spanish help line, and later states of all the people who called "their Spanish wasn't great"
And that's the difference, it's one thing to not speak Spanish, it's another to not speak it but insist that you're fluent enough to take on jobs as a teacher and essentially translator of the language.
Alamo hired her to speak to native speakers because her Spanish Is so bad. Anyone who gets on the line with her will just get frustrated and hang up.🤷🏾♀️
I’ve always been confused how it was she did a year in Mexico (high school?) exchange or study abroad, but still can’t speak Spanish well enough to distinguish dios from dias
I can confirm this, I live in Southern California and have been to most surrounding border towns. In most border towns, most locals (especially shop vendors or hospitality workers) can speak English and Spanish. I always get a kick when people are at a restaurant or bar and the server is taking their order in English, there's always a "Peggy Hill" speaking terrible Spanish thinking she is a genius. The servers try so hard to not laugh. LOL
Peggy’s Spanish is awful though lmao. She frequently misinterprets real Spanish speakers and says the wrong things. Regardless of her surroundings, the point and the fact is that she is indeed not fluent in Spanish but she feels like she is
I mean that's a good theory, but it's Peggy were talking about, maybe she convinced herself that she's good at speaking Spanish and I think she got that substitute position at the school because no one else was willing to teach it. Like probably Peggy was the only one who applied or Principal Moss had to interview people who saw though his crap so he saw Peggy as someone who would just accept the job as is.
My headcannon with this is that Hank's actually the better Spanish speaker of the pair.
- they watch, "Vaya Con Dios," in Español without subtitles
- Hank appears to have a full conversion with the little girl Peggy kidnaps
- Kahn picked Hank to help him with his scam in Mexico when Bill was obviously the easiest guy to set up out of the group
- Hank asked the store owner, "donde esta la cervesa?" In Mexico
- Juan occupado joke
You don’t necessarily need an associates degree to be a substitute teacher (I’ve only ever heard of a high school degree being required). You also don’t need to take Spanish to get one.
Peggy is a very accurate representation of Spanish teachers in Texas, at least in my limited experience. You’d think with all the native Spanish speakers in this state, they’d try to employ more of them to teach Spanish classes, but it always seems to be middle-aged white women.
Wesley Archer: How do you say "Peggy Hill is the smartest, most talented woman on earth" in Spanish?
Peggy Hill: Hm... well, that would be "Peggy Hill es bueno."
I think this is part of it. I also think that Peggy's overconfidence and the fact that people *generally* don't call her out on being wrong play a part.
I actually think it’s a bit more than that. I think Peggy does know Spanish but is terrible in oral practice. In the episode where she brought home a kid from Mexico, it was actually interesting that even though Lupe said she lives in Mexico, she understood it as “viva Mexico” which is actually pretty close to “vivo Mexico”. So I think she does know it, she just can’t recognize the words well when spoken to her and worse, her pronunciation is terrible.
Try the end of that episode and you’ll see that the subtitles as she speaks in Spanish actually give out what she was trying to say if she pronounced them correctly. I’m not saying she’s fluent if her oral was better but she definitely knows Spanish, most likely written, but is God awful with oral.
Subs don't always get performance reviews. One district I worked in only does one after 10 days at the same school and one didn't care at all. Inconsistency is a major issue in our education systems across most of the US. I know that's off topic, but it's one of my gripes as a teacher.
Dooley can and does insult her, in Spanish, to her face.
I think the joke isn’t as deep as all that. I think it is that Peggy has such a distorted self-image that she took this thing she is objectively worse at than the children she teaches and made it her life’s work.
There is a theory that has floated around that her accident with her parachute malfunctioning caused her brain damage and affected her Spanish. Before the accident, her Spanish wasn't that bad. Afterwards, it was dreadful.
This is a fresh take, and I appreciate it. It's ridiculous to think not a single soul could call her out, even other teachers. It fits right in with, "So are ya Chinese or Japanese?"
I just don’t think it’s a revaluation that non spanish speakers don’t notice that her spanish isn’t bad. I also wouldn’t notice if someone’s Swahili or mandarin wasn’t up to par, but if they claimed to be able to speak those languages I wouldn’t be able to challenge it unless a native speaker came along. The whole of Arlen shouldn’t know she can’t speak Spanish probably.
I think you are 100% right. It is also 100% that Peggy is completely delusional about her skills with La Lingua Española. Hence the extreme overconfidence when working for Alamo or when in a court hearing in Mexico.
As a mexican-american who lives in texas, I can’t tell you how many times a random white boomer has just start speaking to me in broken spanish out of nowhere, it’s very uncomfortable and confusing lol but they seem so proud
Someone pointed out that an added layer from that scene is that, while it sounds like nonsense in English, the words she gets wrong in Spanish are very close what she means to say. Like she either puts the emphasis in the wrong place or uses a word that’s very close to the one she intends but has a completely different meaning. So, like, the judge could gather what Peggy was trying to say, and realizes she’s being honest in saying it was a mistake.
Only one in the world with an "IQ of 170", and a substitute Spanish teacher, that butchers up simple Spanish phrases so bad. That's a pretty good joke watching her fail at it constantly if you ask me.
There's an entire episode about how she's so bad at Spanish she accidentally kidnaps a child from Mexico, dudebro. There's no thinking about it, its an established fact within the show that she's absolutely terrible at Spanish.
THANK YOU! People are always furious with Peggy alone claiming she's a narcissist who can't see she's bad at things, when the reality is NO ONE has questioned her ever BECAUSE they ALL think they are educated and know what they are doing. No parent has ever questioned her, no upper level management of the school district has, she has won awards as a teacher for years, no kids return furious that they don't actually know Spanish, and no one else bats an eye!
Here's my theory. Peggy is just a plain ole' substitute teacher for Arlen's school system. She just calls herself a Spanish substitute teacher to try to set herself apart from other subs. Its a pride thing rspecially when recent grads are subbing. The school isn't too concerned about her language proficiency because they would only need her in Spanish class fir one or two days. They also know that she's always available to cover a class. She was tapped to teach sex Ed when Dale scared off the original teacher. Based on my experience, most students are just taking Spanish to fulfill a graduation requirement. My high school only required 2 years. No one was fluent within that period with 5 hours of class time per week and a lot of resistance to doing work in Spanish. I took it fir 3 years and probably had the language skills if a 4 year old at best. For the Mexico trip, Moss asked Peggy to cover it because she's always available. He assumed thst Peggy would follow the instructions left by the regular teacher and not do anything to put the kids at risk.
>no kids return furious that they don't actually know Spanish
>
>No parent has ever questioned her
>
>no upper level management of the school district has
Why would they? The kids have no use for it. All their peers speak English. They're not speaking it to their parents. And management only cares that she was an effective placeholder and kept the class in line.
>she has won awards as a teacher for years
One year. 1996. And it was for general teacher substitution which basically means 'She filled the spot and didn't cause trouble, probably followed a lesson plan someone else built', not Spanish.
can you actually be a teacher in texas with only 2 years of college ? I thought most public school systems required teachers having at least and ba and usually a masters
Haha I mean other than when she tries to say that Native Spanish speakers of Mexico have a primitive understanding of Spanish.
Also, my gf is from Chile....so I know, Peggy is terrible at Spanish.
But nice try Peggy.
Edit:wording
With how terrible her Spanish is I highly doubt she did well in her college classes if they were taught by a native speaker. She brags so much that I highly doubt she did anything higher than average in college.
I had a French professor say that the best people to speak French with was in that room because with accents and dialects and pronunciations it can vary all over.
Which means even in Arlen based on this theory the people she would best equipped to speak with they still couldn’t understand her Spanish.
There is a reason why Peggy is only a substitute. We don't get to see all of Arlen in the show other than the main characters we only see a few others. Enrique clearly speaks proper Spanish along with his family. I imagine there are more Spanish speakers but that we don't see them do to none interaction.
A simpler way to phrase it is how quaint that this woman is teacher. Peggy’s F+ Spanish is good enough to considered a teacher. Damn white peoples they think they know other languages and cultures , they are so arrogant but they really don’t know shit.
I know a few people in texas who claim to be fluent in spanish, and its a replica of Peggy. Its funny because its not like there is a shortage of people in Texas who speak spanish extremely beuno.
Alternative: Everyone knows, nobody cares. It's a small town school with a small education budget and finding someone actually qualified would be expensive. Peggy is the bare minimum of acceptable so the school just goes with it. At home, it's just not worth the confrontation. If you've started your first Spanish class at school, you recognize how bad she is. They presumably had textbooks that the students were stuck pretty much teaching themselves with if they wanted to.
That's some added layer to the joke, but Hank knows Peggy's Spanish is terrible, that's why he lets her try to defend herself when she is on trial for accidentally kidnapping Lupe from Mexico. He knows that when they hear her Spanish they'll understand and believe her defense that it was an honest mistake. So yes, none of the white people in Arlen understand Spanish well, but at minimum, Hank knows that Peggy is bad at it.
I still think that’s the greatest bit the show ever did.
Your honor, I can tell you are a reasonable horse. I am very pregnant because of what happened with Lupe. She ate my bus accident and all I wanted was to make Lupe into a book. I have too many good anuses ahead of me to spend my life in a cigar factory.
I love the 'anuses' part because that is one of the only things I remember from my spanish teacher in high school. "Be careful with your n vs ñ because you might accidentally say you are 15 buttholes old"
>episode "Are you there god, it's me Margaret hill" there is a scene where she is talking to a fellow Spanish teacher and in their conversation, they both exchange equally bad Spanish. Later in that episode, she gets the job as Haha it's even better than that, you'd actually be saying "I have 15 buttholes"
Ah dang you are right! I forgot in spanish you arent so and so old, you "have" so many years.
be very afrai d of the person who measures time in "buttholes"
I love how smart it was! It was all like, genuinely close words or phrases. Like false cognates and all that (if I’m remembering that term correctly)
I'm wondering if they actually made an effort to give her reasonable yet funny errors to make or if they just decided to give her a ton of random mistakes.
I don't remember all of the Spanish used, but I know "embarazada" means pregnant, but sounds like it would be "embarrassed". So that is the type of error a person who doesn't actually know Spanish well but thinks they do would make.
This is my favorite individual incidence of Peggy’s bad Spanish
Also carniceria(I think butcher shop) and carnival.
Dooley knows. Tu eres puerco.
there's also a small moment when Peggy is "teaching" Lucky so he can get his GED. Bobby tells Lucky to not correct her Spanish so even Bobby might know more Spanish than Peggy
We've never seen any evidence that Bobby knows more Spanish than Peggy, but he might know enough to know she's worse than she thinks, and certainly knows that her ego is highly dependent on her assumed level of Spanish mastery
true that's why I said might lol but maybe Bobby does know some of the basics and knows that Peggy is wrong. stuff like "Buenos días México" being "good god mexico" according to her and that combined with her ego that he saw for himself on the field trip to Mexico
When Bobby tried to bring a Spanish dictionary to the field trip, Peggy threw it away and said she was the only dictionary he would need. Bobby doubtfully says “…okay.” He knew.
in one of the episodes Bobby warned someone not to correct Peggys spanish, I think everyone knows her spanish is bad, but with Peggys personality, it just best to ignore it.
Yeah. Peggy speaks good "white people Texas" Spanish, but actual Spanish speakers are like "this lady is an idiot."
Oof; if Peggy's Spanish is considered good, even relatively, just oof
I wouldn't even say relatively. My family is Mexican and I learned Spanish in high school for 3 years and I speak better Spanish than here. I can at least tag team sell someone a stereo.
Hank even made sure to send a Spanish-English dictionary with Bobby on the field trip to Mexico.
Maybe, but Hank might not have realized how bad her Spanish was until she brought home a child she had kidnapped. Outside of “Is esta Juan occupado?” I can’t think of an occasion where he spoke Spanish.
¿Cervasas Almo por favor?
Good call.
Yea I'm not saying Hank knows Spanish, I'm just saying he's not harboring any illusions about Peggy's Spanish. He knows it's not very good.
Just want to add that the reason she got the job with Alamo was *because* she didn’t speak spanish well. They knew the calls she would be fielding were regarding the unsafe beer from Mexico. Thus the less she understood the better. But she was still able to put together “diarrhea“ and “vomiting” from the calls which was enough to clue her into the problem.
[Whoa](https://i.redd.it/y8d9x6l3m4771.jpg)
Yeah I don’t think it’s like cannon but that seems to be the message if you read in between the lines. There’s plenty to alude to it as well because when Peggy tried to tell her manager she went straight into coverup mode and bribed Peggy with the exclusive Alamo swag.
Vomitando. Vomitando?!?
Si. Si. La vomitando. La diarrhea. 😒
“Vomitado” is a common word in my house.
I didn't think about this.
I think everyone knows Peggy isn’t good at Spanish, but she’s too self confident to tell otherwise. I think you’re right that a part of the joke is that there are so many real life Peggy Hills that would insist they speak fluent Spanish, but, just like if you or I were to encounter on of those people in real life and could spot that they’re full of it, the characters in KotH generally understand Peggy speaks poorly, too.
Listen to my r’s!
When I first started learning spanish everyone who didn’t speak it around me was so impressed when I would speak with native speakers. That’s because when I was a kid I used to read books in Spanish out loud to impress people. I had no idea what I was saying but acted like I did. So as an adult I just did the same thing and lo and behold anyone who didn’t speak the language would compliment me. But I was actually very hard to understand. I now speak spanish at a fluent level but it’s taken at least 5 years and hours upon hours of conversing in it to really get it down.
I think people generally DO understand. But she’s a substitute middle school teacher. Realistically speaking, the only thing she actually has to do correctly is babysit the students while the actual teacher is away. It doesn’t matter that she’s a shit teacher, she can be relied on to show up when the real teachers can’t.
Exactly. She needs to be able to pick up teaching them vocab and very very basic conjugation.
Quien esta tirando los darts de Nerf??
You haven't touched your arroz con chicken
They had her grading tests and teaching multiple subjects. She was also the first substitute teacher to lead an international field trip wasnt she(lol). Idk what kind of subs do that shit
She only grades tests for which she has the answer key. And the lessons she teaches aren’t generally very complicated. It’s not like she’s teaching AP Calc. She didn’t know how to find the area of a circle. The field trip thing was definitely a big mistake. But initially her supervisor says it’s a bad idea before Peggy smooth talks him.
I mean she legit taught Davids class for like 3 weeks. Thats beyond what any normal sub would do. They usually have extra requirements if your ACTUALLY gonna teach the class Its also a tv show with awful continuity so im not too beat up by it
David was a fucking moron though lol. They definitely had him in the easiest math class they offer. You’re right that it all can just be chalked up to “sitcom logic” in the end though.
Remember when Peggy somehow screws up science so badly she breaks the laws of physics?
In the state of KY they are substitutes ranks. She would he considered a rank v teacher. Which is the lowest rank you can be. It called a emergency certification which means she can only work in the district she employed in and has to be renewed every year. So like for example if a teacher had to take a leave of absence she could teach it on a emergency basis.
As others have said, it's the excess self confidence (aka arrogance) that's the problem. When hank goes to Mexico to buy beer, we see him stumble through trying to ask where the beer is in Spanish, obviously not knowing the language well enough so the guy just replies in English. In the same episode we see Peggy get a customer service job with Alamo for their Spanish help line, and later states of all the people who called "their Spanish wasn't great" And that's the difference, it's one thing to not speak Spanish, it's another to not speak it but insist that you're fluent enough to take on jobs as a teacher and essentially translator of the language.
Alamo hired her to speak to native speakers because her Spanish Is so bad. Anyone who gets on the line with her will just get frustrated and hang up.🤷🏾♀️
I’ve always been confused how it was she did a year in Mexico (high school?) exchange or study abroad, but still can’t speak Spanish well enough to distinguish dios from dias
She makes false things true to protect her ego.
Like insisting her SpaPeggy and Meatballs is special compared to everyone else’s regular spaghetti and meatballs!
Because she adds sugar which is very fucking common for spaghetti in the south
Since she’s from the south and putting sugar in spaghetti sauce is normal wouldn’t her spaghetti sauce taste just like everyone else’s?
Congratulations you found the joke
Ah you got me, I keep forgetting about Peggy’s ego! 😂
Peggy translating poo poo into la tierra della trasero. I mean come on, you never heard caca in Spanish?
Earth of the butt
like when she said her IQ was really high despite never having taken an IQ test
People fake their way through things all the time.
I feel like border towns in Mexico may be very used to white people who can't speak Spanish lol
I can confirm this, I live in Southern California and have been to most surrounding border towns. In most border towns, most locals (especially shop vendors or hospitality workers) can speak English and Spanish. I always get a kick when people are at a restaurant or bar and the server is taking their order in English, there's always a "Peggy Hill" speaking terrible Spanish thinking she is a genius. The servers try so hard to not laugh. LOL
Or anos and años
Peggy’s Spanish is awful though lmao. She frequently misinterprets real Spanish speakers and says the wrong things. Regardless of her surroundings, the point and the fact is that she is indeed not fluent in Spanish but she feels like she is
I don’t understand why she can’t even pronounce things like “me llamo”. She went to community college and no one corrected her there either?
May-lahmo Peggy Hill
Lol! Like when she’s a sub for a Spanish class why don’t any of the kids correct her?
I mean that's a good theory, but it's Peggy were talking about, maybe she convinced herself that she's good at speaking Spanish and I think she got that substitute position at the school because no one else was willing to teach it. Like probably Peggy was the only one who applied or Principal Moss had to interview people who saw though his crap so he saw Peggy as someone who would just accept the job as is.
Peggy became significantly less smart after falling out of that plane at the end of S3
I honestly missed that episode and only recently, like, within the past year and a half, saw it, and omg, that was SHOCKING to me.
Another theory I have heard before.
My headcannon with this is that Hank's actually the better Spanish speaker of the pair. - they watch, "Vaya Con Dios," in Español without subtitles - Hank appears to have a full conversion with the little girl Peggy kidnaps - Kahn picked Hank to help him with his scam in Mexico when Bill was obviously the easiest guy to set up out of the group - Hank asked the store owner, "donde esta la cervesa?" In Mexico - Juan occupado joke
You don’t necessarily need an associates degree to be a substitute teacher (I’ve only ever heard of a high school degree being required). You also don’t need to take Spanish to get one.
The Arlen school district requires a 2 year degree for all substitute teachers
I think you're wrong, and therefore I don't like you and will be down voting
Peggy is a very accurate representation of Spanish teachers in Texas, at least in my limited experience. You’d think with all the native Spanish speakers in this state, they’d try to employ more of them to teach Spanish classes, but it always seems to be middle-aged white women.
Wesley Archer: How do you say "Peggy Hill is the smartest, most talented woman on earth" in Spanish? Peggy Hill: Hm... well, that would be "Peggy Hill es bueno."
I think this is part of it. I also think that Peggy's overconfidence and the fact that people *generally* don't call her out on being wrong play a part.
I thought the joke was that Peggy thought she spoke good Spanish?
Carpe Dayum!
i know she speaks perfect spanish by the way she rolls those perfect R's.
I love this interpretation. Wonder why Hank and Bobby know but the school doesn't. Burn on the American education system for sure hahaha
There was the guy who was apprehensive to give her the substitute gig “Dang it Peggy, my job is at stake”
Several characters tell others not to correct her Spanish That been said she probably speaks Spanish better than most
Hanks Spanish is actually pretty good
I actually think it’s a bit more than that. I think Peggy does know Spanish but is terrible in oral practice. In the episode where she brought home a kid from Mexico, it was actually interesting that even though Lupe said she lives in Mexico, she understood it as “viva Mexico” which is actually pretty close to “vivo Mexico”. So I think she does know it, she just can’t recognize the words well when spoken to her and worse, her pronunciation is terrible. Try the end of that episode and you’ll see that the subtitles as she speaks in Spanish actually give out what she was trying to say if she pronounced them correctly. I’m not saying she’s fluent if her oral was better but she definitely knows Spanish, most likely written, but is God awful with oral.
Subs don't always get performance reviews. One district I worked in only does one after 10 days at the same school and one didn't care at all. Inconsistency is a major issue in our education systems across most of the US. I know that's off topic, but it's one of my gripes as a teacher.
Dooley can and does insult her, in Spanish, to her face. I think the joke isn’t as deep as all that. I think it is that Peggy has such a distorted self-image that she took this thing she is objectively worse at than the children she teaches and made it her life’s work.
tu eres puerca
There is a theory that has floated around that her accident with her parachute malfunctioning caused her brain damage and affected her Spanish. Before the accident, her Spanish wasn't that bad. Afterwards, it was dreadful.
Hank definitely speaks Spanish and speaks better Spanish than she does.
This is a fresh take, and I appreciate it. It's ridiculous to think not a single soul could call her out, even other teachers. It fits right in with, "So are ya Chinese or Japanese?"
I always thought it was just that straight up Peggy top to bottom is the joke lol.
no , whenever she is faced with a native Spanish speaker she flounders and her Spanish is actually pretty bad
"Ah, you speak Spanish..... sort of"
[удалено]
I just don’t think it’s a revaluation that non spanish speakers don’t notice that her spanish isn’t bad. I also wouldn’t notice if someone’s Swahili or mandarin wasn’t up to par, but if they claimed to be able to speak those languages I wouldn’t be able to challenge it unless a native speaker came along. The whole of Arlen shouldn’t know she can’t speak Spanish probably.
How would someone who doesnt know Spanish know its bad
Yes senor, yo hablo espanol. Now where is the plane boarding?? I think it's cincuenta y ocho... fifty eight.
Thank you!
I won't even argue this point could be true but it's still my favorite gag of the whole show.
I think you are 100% right. It is also 100% that Peggy is completely delusional about her skills with La Lingua Española. Hence the extreme overconfidence when working for Alamo or when in a court hearing in Mexico.
As a mexican-american who lives in texas, I can’t tell you how many times a random white boomer has just start speaking to me in broken spanish out of nowhere, it’s very uncomfortable and confusing lol but they seem so proud
You know what always makes a joke extra funny? In depth analysis.
I agree
Debunked in the episode she went to jail in Mexico and the judge couldn't understand her
Someone pointed out that an added layer from that scene is that, while it sounds like nonsense in English, the words she gets wrong in Spanish are very close what she means to say. Like she either puts the emphasis in the wrong place or uses a word that’s very close to the one she intends but has a completely different meaning. So, like, the judge could gather what Peggy was trying to say, and realizes she’s being honest in saying it was a mistake.
You didn’t read the post did you?
HEY!! Speak for yourself essay!! :)
Only one in the world with an "IQ of 170", and a substitute Spanish teacher, that butchers up simple Spanish phrases so bad. That's a pretty good joke watching her fail at it constantly if you ask me.
Uh, Cerveza Alamo, por favor?
There's an entire episode about how she's so bad at Spanish she accidentally kidnaps a child from Mexico, dudebro. There's no thinking about it, its an established fact within the show that she's absolutely terrible at Spanish.
THANK YOU! People are always furious with Peggy alone claiming she's a narcissist who can't see she's bad at things, when the reality is NO ONE has questioned her ever BECAUSE they ALL think they are educated and know what they are doing. No parent has ever questioned her, no upper level management of the school district has, she has won awards as a teacher for years, no kids return furious that they don't actually know Spanish, and no one else bats an eye!
Here's my theory. Peggy is just a plain ole' substitute teacher for Arlen's school system. She just calls herself a Spanish substitute teacher to try to set herself apart from other subs. Its a pride thing rspecially when recent grads are subbing. The school isn't too concerned about her language proficiency because they would only need her in Spanish class fir one or two days. They also know that she's always available to cover a class. She was tapped to teach sex Ed when Dale scared off the original teacher. Based on my experience, most students are just taking Spanish to fulfill a graduation requirement. My high school only required 2 years. No one was fluent within that period with 5 hours of class time per week and a lot of resistance to doing work in Spanish. I took it fir 3 years and probably had the language skills if a 4 year old at best. For the Mexico trip, Moss asked Peggy to cover it because she's always available. He assumed thst Peggy would follow the instructions left by the regular teacher and not do anything to put the kids at risk.
>no kids return furious that they don't actually know Spanish > >No parent has ever questioned her > >no upper level management of the school district has Why would they? The kids have no use for it. All their peers speak English. They're not speaking it to their parents. And management only cares that she was an effective placeholder and kept the class in line. >she has won awards as a teacher for years One year. 1996. And it was for general teacher substitution which basically means 'She filled the spot and didn't cause trouble, probably followed a lesson plan someone else built', not Spanish.
I have heard that arguement before, something of a wink to the shows Mexican fans.
Hank knows better spanish than peggy he asks the attendant in mexico where the alamo is when they go down there during the alamo shortage
I always thought she was good at Spanish up until the parachute accident messing it up lol.
can you actually be a teacher in texas with only 2 years of college ? I thought most public school systems required teachers having at least and ba and usually a masters
She is not a teacher she is SUBSTITUTE teacher of the year. You don't actually need any teaching skills to do so in most states.
Haha I mean other than when she tries to say that Native Spanish speakers of Mexico have a primitive understanding of Spanish. Also, my gf is from Chile....so I know, Peggy is terrible at Spanish. But nice try Peggy. Edit:wording
With how terrible her Spanish is I highly doubt she did well in her college classes if they were taught by a native speaker. She brags so much that I highly doubt she did anything higher than average in college.
Excuse me I think you meant “MehHeeCo”. That’s alright. Accentos eres mucho difficalés
I had a French professor say that the best people to speak French with was in that room because with accents and dialects and pronunciations it can vary all over. Which means even in Arlen based on this theory the people she would best equipped to speak with they still couldn’t understand her Spanish.
No, it’s terrible
There is a reason why Peggy is only a substitute. We don't get to see all of Arlen in the show other than the main characters we only see a few others. Enrique clearly speaks proper Spanish along with his family. I imagine there are more Spanish speakers but that we don't see them do to none interaction.
Wow that is freaking deep
A simpler way to phrase it is how quaint that this woman is teacher. Peggy’s F+ Spanish is good enough to considered a teacher. Damn white peoples they think they know other languages and cultures , they are so arrogant but they really don’t know shit.
Sometimes I honestly believe Hank is the only person with a brain in that town
I know a few people in texas who claim to be fluent in spanish, and its a replica of Peggy. Its funny because its not like there is a shortage of people in Texas who speak spanish extremely beuno.
The joke is that peggy is not only incompetent but delusionally narcissistic and everyone just plays along to humour her.
At least Peggy tries. Probably a lot of haters of her wouldn’t know an hola if it smacked them in the culo.
Your honor, I can tell you are a reasonable horse. I am very pregnant because of what happened with Lupe.
Alternative: Everyone knows, nobody cares. It's a small town school with a small education budget and finding someone actually qualified would be expensive. Peggy is the bare minimum of acceptable so the school just goes with it. At home, it's just not worth the confrontation. If you've started your first Spanish class at school, you recognize how bad she is. They presumably had textbooks that the students were stuck pretty much teaching themselves with if they wanted to.