they were watching over the air channels and there was only a setting in the tv for menu language. sure enough though, at 5pm that night we watched as the tv started speaking in spanish. we tried a few more channels and found that all but one or two were in spanish.
as it turns out, some stations broadcast audio in multiple languages and some tvs allow you to change the preference. sadly for this person, the used tv they bought came from a spanish speaking country and didn't have anyway to change that preference.