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Is it rude or not? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| languagenerd09 Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom youtube.com/user/Lan Joined 4890 days ago 174 posts - 267 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Thai | Message 1 of 48 16 December 2010 at 3:36am | IP Logged | ||
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So basically; the other day when at uni, I had literally a one minute French conversation with my friend, another girl in our group looked at me and said "do you have speak a foreign language, it's so rude" - because I was in a room with English people ...
What do yo think? 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tracker465 Senior Member United States Joined 5142 days ago 355 posts - 496 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 2 of 48 16 December 2010 at 6:17am | IP Logged | ||
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Were the two of you having a side conversation or were you talking about something that concered the group as a whole? Were there other people in the group besides the three of you?
I feel mixed on this issue since I have been on both sides of the coin. I used to hang out with two guys, and we would weekly go down to the local dance club to hang out and get a few beers. My two friends both spoke French and Spanish, and I didn't speak either of these languages. I usually wasn't concerned that I didn't understand when they spoke in these languages, as I enjoy hearing other languages, enjoyed having a few beers, and also sometimes would then use the time to mingle with others. Besides, these guys would then usually explain to me what they were talking of too. If I am with someone who speaks a language that I speak (other than English), I prefer speaking in the other tongue for a bit, either for practice (Spanish, Dutch) or for fun (German). On the other hand, when I run into a German speaker, it always seems to be when my brother is along, and he hates when I converse in German then. The only time that I was really bothered by people speaking foreign tongues in front of me was when I was with three Danish friends in Denmark for a week. When we would drive around Denmark, the three Danes would constantly speak in Danish, and I was just left for hours on end trying to catch a word here and there. Knowing that these three girls all spoke perfect English, as they had studied together at my university in America where we first met, it just bothered me quite a bit, as they always spoke English to me when we all hung out in America. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6493 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 48 16 December 2010 at 10:22am | IP Logged | ||
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If you are in a group and the others exclude you by constantly speaking a language you don't understand then you have the right to protest. On the other hand they shouldn't be forced to speak a specific language all the time just because you are present, so the problem is to strike a fair balance. Let common sense prevail.
But in the situation described by languagenerd09 it was just a nosy girl who interfered in a conversation between two other persons, either because she falsely believes she has a godgiven right to eavesdrop on everybody around her or because she simply hates other languages. In both cases she is an extremely rude person and should have been told so. Edited by Iversen on 16 December 2010 at 10:24am 13 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Siberiano Tetraglot Senior Member Russian Federation one-giant-leap.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6283 days ago 465 posts - 696 votes Speaks: Russian*, English, ItalianC1, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Serbian | Message 4 of 48 16 December 2010 at 10:56am | IP Logged | ||
Edited by Siberiano on 16 December 2010 at 10:59am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5556 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian | Message 5 of 48 16 December 2010 at 12:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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When my friends and I are together we speak French all the time now since that's my new project for the time being, only switching to English when speaking to shop assistants or whatever. The people I have in mind are French and Belgian natives and our friends all speak French either by birth or through university and self study. We never switch to English around monolingual friends if the conversation just concerns those who speak French but we of course do if it involves those who don't speak it. We've asked our monolingual (or non French-speaking) friends whether they find it rude and they don't. Even when my girlfriend and I speak French or German together at the dinner table (which between the two is 100% of the time) our families don't mind - they're fascinated to hear our conversation and interrupt every so often to ask if they understood the odd word or phrase.
Jack 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Siberiano Tetraglot Senior Member Russian Federation one-giant-leap.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6283 days ago 465 posts - 696 votes Speaks: Russian*, English, ItalianC1, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Serbian | Message 6 of 48 16 December 2010 at 1:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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By the way, languagenerd09, I've got an idea. This girl was seeking attention. May be not a particular person's, but definitely needing to feel important. If you have such a situation again, and hesitate to tell them to go hiking, use a "psychiatrist comeback line":
"Oh, you're jumping into other's conversation quite impolitely. Dude, you're seeking attention. You must be low on self-esteem." I'll keep this in my mind for the future. Usually if people misbehave, and you're not rude in response, but tell them why they do it, most times they admit it and step back, and you look like mind reader. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 4920 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 7 of 48 16 December 2010 at 2:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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My little anecdote:
When I lived in Mexico after college, I made friends with mostly Mexicans. After living there for about a year, I became friends with another American that had moved there. Anyway, we were all at a party one night. I only spoke Spanish with my Mexican friends, but at some point during the evening I had turned to my American friend and spoke to him in English (he also spoke Spanish, but between the two of us we almost always spoke English). A woman that both of us knew came up to us and simply told us we should know better than to speak English in a group setting of non-English speakers. She wasn't mad, just letting us know it was rude. Neither one of us had considered that it might be rude. We switched to Spanish, no harm done to anyone. Lesson learned. It was socially unacceptable to go off speaking in a language unknown by most of the people. Whether you thought this girl was eavesdropping or not doesn't really matter. She told you it was rude because she probably really thought it was rude. R. == 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| languagenerd09 Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom youtube.com/user/Lan Joined 4890 days ago 174 posts - 267 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Thai | Message 8 of 48 16 December 2010 at 3:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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The situation was; we were at class, there was me and my friend speaking the conversation, then the girl and three others (who were discussing the work) and all our conversation was -
me: tu aime le danse? friend: oui, et vous? me: oui! j'aime le chorégraphie that was it ... 1 person has voted this message useful |
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