Interesting, as it is Latin Americans that tend to use usted in more instances. Maybe this preference of tu is indicative of English influence. My job has given me ample opportunity to utilize and improve my Spanish skills. Before we had funding for interpreters and translators I was the one that had to translate letters to Spanish. Then we received funding for this and had our form letters and documents translated to Spanish by a professional translator. This translator was Mexican American and when the documents came back, I was shocked by the misspellings, lack of accents and other Spanish characters and mistranslation – not translating the original intent. Some of the words appeared Spanish, but I could not find them in any Spanish dictionary. I would find numerous instances of or instead of o and is instead of es. Also the use of masculine or feminine adjectives and reflexive pronouns were not in agreement. In short his Spanish was very anglicized or Spanglish. Maybe it would make sense to other Mexican Americans, but we serve other Spanish speakers too. I brought this to the attention of my boss, who stated he is the paid professional. I finally got her to agree to allow me to edit his translations and send the edits back for him to proof. Never once did he find a problem with my edits. There are no standards or licensing for translators and most of the time the customer does not know what he is paying for.