|
 |
Have you ever.. | ||
Tags: Discrimination | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| languagenerd09 Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom youtube.com/user/Lan Joined 4910 days ago 174 posts - 267 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Thai | Message 17 of 119 04 December 2013 at 9:31pm | IP Logged | ||
|
A friend of mine and I were speaking to each other on the local metro a few years ago in French, she got off the metro and then these young people who had been staring at
us looked over at me and one of them started speaking in an overly too loud voice saying across to me " URGH, WHY DO FOREIGNERS SMELL? WHY ARE THEY STUPID AND NOT KNOW ENGLISH? THEY NEVER SPEAK IT EVEN WHEN IN OUR COUNTRY, HOW RUDE" - luckily I was getting off at the next stop but I wasn't hesitant to tell them - " in terms of how rude, that's you and secondly i'm not a foreigner, i'm British but I just have the ability to speak in another language, stick to your ABCs and 123s maybe? Your spelling on the front of your file is atrocious". 14 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Tetsu Triglot Newbie Japan Joined 3851 days ago 9 posts - 22 votes Speaks: Thai, English*, Japanese Studies: Mandarin, Korean | Message 18 of 119 05 December 2013 at 2:19am | IP Logged | ||
|
As an Asian American who looks Japanese, living in Japan, I always get a few unpleasant looks when I speak in English with a friend (who obviously is not Japanese). I have no idea why this is...
However, when I speak Thai in public, instead of the unpleasant looks I get when I speak English, I get curious looks. I haven't directly experienced any negative comments though, luckily. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4063 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 19 of 119 05 December 2013 at 12:52pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I usually speak Finnish everywhere with my friends/family in a normal conversational tone. I've never had any problems. Sure, sometimes people give us looks. Like the one time I was in Nice with my friend, I am around a head taller or more than the average southern-French person and he is ten centimeters taller than I am, both being pale nordic people we attracted some gazes.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Einarr Tetraglot Senior Member United Kingdom einarrslanguagelog.w Joined 4423 days ago 118 posts - 269 votes Speaks: English, Bulgarian*, French, Russian Studies: Swedish | Message 20 of 119 05 December 2013 at 4:11pm | IP Logged | ||
I really can't stress enough how true this is. And other posts mentioned stares might occur due to curiosity. yes of course they can occur out of curiosity. I mean I myself am always :D eavesdropping when I overhear a foreign language, just because it's so pleasant to be able to catch a glimpse of colloquial speech, even if you don't understand it and just recognize the language. Anyway, whenever I get seen as a listener to the foreign speech I always crack a gentle smile and it obviously leaves a nice impression I believe. Then I guess, nobody will complain of having gotten the wtf look :D. Edited by Einarr on 05 December 2013 at 4:13pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4498 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 21 of 119 05 December 2013 at 5:14pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I haven't had similar bad experiences, thankfully, but I immediately thought of this
recent incident: LINK Fortunately, such an incident is sufficiently rare as to be newsworthy nationwide, and isn't what you expect to happen on an average evening. But the blind hatred of certain "others" is sadly very real. Edited by geoffw on 05 December 2013 at 5:15pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| alang Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7031 days ago 563 posts - 757 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 22 of 119 05 December 2013 at 5:39pm | IP Logged | ||
|
@ geoffw, Once I read the first sentence and knew it was in the U.S.A. I thought the attacker, must have thought the language was Spanish. Sure enough upon reading some more, the nail on the head was hit. It is unfortunate the prejudice ignorant people have, when it is reflective on their own individual and societal insecurities. An example: A woman I met here in Canada could not understand a Russian man's English and her response afterwards was "Why doesn't this Frenchy speak properly?" I said, "He is not French. He is Russian." 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| TehGarnt Diglot Newbie Germany Joined 4662 days ago 33 posts - 63 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish | Message 23 of 119 06 December 2013 at 7:02pm | IP Logged | ||
|
These kinds of hostile reactions are obviously assholism of the highest order and have
their roots in insecurity, but having people around speaking languages that other people present can't understand does reduce feelings of group cohesion and community in a way that I think is unavoidably unpleasant. I try to speak the local language in public if possible, just because it feels more polite. There might occasionally be negative reactions to public English-speaking in Germany, but I think it is probably of a different and milder kind than with other languages - resentment of cultural imperialism rather than associations with poverty or crime as with other languages. I think most people assume you are tourist or here on business, anyway. Edited by TehGarnt on 06 December 2013 at 7:03pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| DaisyMaisy Senior Member United States Joined 5190 days ago 115 posts - 178 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish Studies: Swedish, Finnish | Message 24 of 119 12 December 2013 at 6:49am | IP Logged | ||
|
I saw something today that made me think of this thread: I was riding the streetcar on my way to work, and it happens that the recorded announcements of each stop and the usual, "be cautious crossing the streets" etc are given in both English and Spanish. An older gentleman got on and must have been hearing this for the first time because he made a statement like, "Did you hear that? Don't people speak English?" in a rather rude way. The response of everyone near him was to stare at his rudeness and one person said "So?". He got the message pretty quickly and said something to the effect that he was just kidding. I think he would have been the type to say unpleasant things to others, but fortunately he had no supporters on the streetcar, so he shut up.
A bus driver was fired here a few years ago for berating a Spanish speaking woman (incorrectly as it turned out) for not having paid her fare. She made statements about the woman not speaking English (also incorrect). A complaint was filed and the racism aspect was key in her being terminated. Interestingly this same driver had a prior incident of shouting at a young Spanish speaking woman with a crying baby on a crowded bus and telling her to get off the bus if the baby wouldn't be quiet. The woman got off the bus, as did the rest of the passengers, in protest of the driver's actions. Made me happy that people sided with the woman and got off with her! 5 persons have voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
