Just Spanish 4u 

PETAL, Miss., October 22, 2009

Command Spanish® Inc. has available a new English/Spanish handout for healthcare professionals dealing with the seasonal flu and H1N1 viruses.

With the winter and cold months fast approaching, the chances of catching a cold, the flu or even the H1N1 flu virus increase greatly. Influenza, whether seasonal or H1N1, poses a greater threat to those people with certain chronic conditions; left untreated, the flu may cause complications such as pneumonia.

However, the best offense is a good defense: the vaccine. As the first doses of the seasonal flu vaccine arrive, healthcare workers are seeing an influx of patients arriving to the clinics, drugstores and hospitals where the vaccine is being offered. Some of these patients have limited English abilities.  In order to bridge the communication gap with Spanish-speaking patients, Command Spanish®, Inc. has created a handout: Survival Spanish for Healthcare Providers: Influenza and H1N1 Care.  This English/Spanish handout focuses on phrases appropriate to care of H1N1 patients -- from vaccinations to diagnosis to treatment. The document, which is phonetically encoded for easy use, is in PDF format and is available as a free download:

Click here to download the handout  HIN1.PDF

August 2005.
Occupational Spanish is the newest field of Spanish Language instruction. Developed initially in the 1980's by Dr. Sam Slick in conjunction with the Police Training Academy at Sam Houston State University, Hunstville, Texas, it quickly became the primary training methodology for public safety officials across  the United States. In 1985, Dr. Slick founded Command Spanish(R), Inc. and began developing additional occupational Spanish training materials for professions outside the field of public safety. In 1990. Dr. Slick joined forces with Dr. Maryjane Dunn who then was the department chair of modern languages at Metropolitan Community College in Omaha, Nebraska, and who was simultaneously developing occupational Spanish programming for the Omaha Fire Department and its EMS services. Click here to read more about this article.

 As stated by Ludwig Wittgenstein “…to imagine a language means imaging a way of living.” In such an environment there are not only relationships between elements but also, relationships between relations and so on, developing in a highly dynamic net, sensitive to context, generated by use more than by rules.  In this environment it is possible to experience the power of written language. The minimum element is not the single word but group of words punctuated by such marks as hyphens, colons, semicolons, and periods. The power of the language comes from the use of sentences reflecting verbal systems.

Reference must be made not to the availability of a word but to the language as a whole. Language is made of words, feelings, ideas, shapes, colors, sounds, and so on.

Language is not just a dictionary. Knowledge of the single word is just the beginning.

Gianfranco Minati and Arne Collen

Introduction to Systemics.

Spring 2005.

June 26, 2008
Click here to read the complete article