Recently while writing emails in Spanish, I found a humorous examples of what a big difference a little letter makes. For the three years I worked with a teaching partner in a two way bilingual immersion program, he and I would proofread one another’s’ writing. However, now that I am working in a new school, I do not have human editor available. I try to compensate for that loss, I compose my emails in Spanish and then use an online translation service to check my Spanish grammar and syntax before sending them off.
In a report to someone about an unfinished project, I wrote what I hoped was “I wanted to let you know” However, when I plugged the text in for translation, I found that instead I had written “I wanted to bury you.” Not exactly what I wanted to communicate. Just goes to show what a big difference a little letter makes.