Castro’s passing has reminded me of this old TV show, I used to see it on PBS back in the early 1980’s. Basically, it was your typical family-based, sitcom, with a laugh track, and ridiculous contrived situations. It’s premise was that it involved a family of Cuban emigres, and as I recall, many (most?, all?) actors were in fact Cuban. Yeah, we have similar shows with an ethnic twist, like Blackish, or Hijab in America (or whatever the title was.)
The real hook was, much of the dialog was in Spanish, which I was just learning at the time. Predictably, abuelo y abuela only spoke Cuban, Mom and Dad greeted each other in Spanish, but only lapsed out of English for complicated or angry topics. The youngest girl mostly only spoke English unless she had to translate for someone else (she was born HERE, to everyone’s chagrin), and the character played by Steven Bauer (the only actual Cuban actor from the movie Scarface) bridged the two worlds.
Has there been another sitcom using language in this way. That is, a foreign language used for humor. No subtitles, no translation, you get it because you know it, or you get it from the context. And the translation is likely to be, funny or mocking, or misunderstood.