Published in:
01-05-2022 | Letter to the Editor
Letter to the Editor in Response to: My Son, My Interpreter
Author:
Pilar Ortega, MD
Published in:
Journal of General Internal Medicine
|
Issue 6/2022
Login to get access
Excerpt
As a bilingual physician, I was absorbed by Dr. Rodriguez’s story,[
1] yet my eyes got repeatedly stuck on the word “
toz.” “
Toz” is a misspelling of “
tos” (meaning “cough”), with a phoneme change that, in some varieties of Spanish, alters pronunciation and affects comprehension. Other errors in the article, like missing accents in words like “
sí,” “
él,” and “
qué,” change meaning in ways that can impact medical content (
si = if,
sí = yes;
el = the;
él = he;
que = that,
qué = what). …