Rude to Speak in Another Language?
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Forum Name: Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages
Forum Discription: The place to share your personal cultural experiences in foreign languages: books you read, trips, Zeitgeist abroad and other memorable things you did in a foreign language.
URL: http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=32443
Printed Date: 13 June 2021 at 5:27am
Posted By: tanya b
Subject: Rude to Speak in Another Language?
Date Posted: 21 May 2012 at 1:53am
I'm a native English speaker and I have always thought it was unfair that non-native English speakers would struggle to speak to me in English to make me feel more at ease, as if everyone must cater to the English speaker, but on the other hand I'm no sure I would feel comfortable if they all started speaking Nicobarese either. I wouldn't feel very welcome, but I don't know if I would call it "rude".
What do you think? Is it rude to start speaking in a foreign language when others are present who don't understand the language?
Apparently some people are deeply offended by this. Some Englishmen complain of going into Welsh pubs and suddenly being surrounded by Welsh-speaking monolinguals, undoubtedly joking and gossiping about them.
Sometimes I feel that some, not all, Hispanic Americans make a point of speaking Spanish very loudly, almost to flaunt the fact that they are bilingual, and to make others feel excluded.
Being excluded or not, I know it's difficult to put into words what a source of pride the Spanish language is for so many Hispanic Americans, even 5th or 6th generation. "If it ain't brown, it ain't down" is not a joke to them, but proudly speaking Spanish sometimes has the power to alienate those outside their ethnicity.
Some African American city workers actually sued their employer because their Hispanic co-workers would only speak Spanish on the job. I believe the court ruled in favor of the English-speakers, stating that not speaking English created a divisive working environment.
So, always having English as the default language is certainly more convenient for me, but when it's imposed on non-native speakers it requires them to sacrifice part of their identity. Is this the price we must pay for world peace?
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Replies:
If those others are in your party or directly interacting with you, then, yes, I consider it rude to speak in a
language they don't understand. Though it may or not be true, speaking to someone else in a language the third
person
cannot understand gives the implication that you are talking about them, or saying something you don't want them
to hear. And, indeed, if that is the case, it is better to wait until you have found some modicum of privacy to say
whatever it is you didn't feel comfortable saying in-public.
Edit: I should add that I think it's perfectly okay to speak a different language whilst walking around in public, or
what have you. For example, speaking, say, French or German though you may be living in London. That's all
fine
and good.
Tecktight on 21 May 2012
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No language should be imposed on anyone
and the price we must pay for world peace is for people... and governments to not stick
their nose where it dosnt belong
about the language thing... speaking another language humbly and kindly shouldnt bother
anyone... if it does then thats the problem of whoever is eavesdropping... being
obnoxious like you said about hispanics speaking loudly and quickly to brag their
bilingualism, at whatever level it may be, could be rude, but unless they are harassing
someone, is it really that hard to ignore?
What it boils down to is, one can be polite or rude in any language, so be polite.
Also, some people will just hate your existence even if its their first time seeing
you, wether or not your behavior is socially acceptable. and their shouldnt be a
problem... and if you find someone being rude or at least acting rude, then ignore them
if they arent harassing you.
so be polite but dont bother trying to please everyone, itss not going to happen.
zerrubabbel on 21 May 2012
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We have had a similar discussion before, and it didn't lead to a general agreement. The common ground seemed to be that if you are in a small group where interaction is intended among all persons then it is rude to exclude some of them by choosing a language which some of them don't know. However it can also be rude to demand that everybody except one person speak a language in which they aren't comfortable just to accommodate one member of the group - especially if this person is an intruder who decided just to mingle into a discussion among speakers of another language. I simply can't see that the group has any obligation to yield to such a person and thereby sacrifice the ease of communication for everybody else.
The point where opinions differed with no chance of reconciliation was the situation where a fairly large group is assembled, and a few persons speak another language than the prevalent one among themselves. I would see it as extremely rude for a speaker of the prevalent language to interfere in the discussion between the minority members. Others found it extremely rude to use another language than the majority - which I simply didn't understand and to this day don't understand. But a clue to the explanation could be that those who wanted linguistic uniformity were Anglophones (although the example used in the old thread conveniently was a Hispanophone woman somewhere in Latinamerica). It makes sense that speakers of large languages have less to lose by demanding the same language from everybody in large groups, while speakers of smaller languages or language learners have no reason at all to bow to this demand.
The same of course applies to large groups who speak small languages - I wouldn't dream of stopping a discussion among two English speakers in a corner of a room where everybody else spoke Danish, and I might even speak to them in English. But then the inverse must also be the case. The exception is of course meetings where there is a previously announced official language - cfr. HTLAL where English is our common language. But even here we have rooms for other languages, and I can't see why 8 persons in a room should force the last two to stop their discussion in a minority language just to achieve complete uniformity. It should be possible to find somebody to speak to in the majority language among 8 majority language speakers.
Iversen on 21 May 2012
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tanya b wrote:
Some Englishmen complain of going into Welsh pubs and suddenly being surrounded by Welsh-speaking monolinguals, undoubtedly joking and gossiping about them.
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I've heard this one before. Although the complainer never seems to stop and consider that the patrons may well have been speaking in their native Welsh before the arrival of the English customer.
Quote:
Some African American city workers actually sued their employer because their Hispanic co-workers would only speak Spanish on the job. I believe the court ruled in favor of the English-speakers, stating that not speaking English created a divisive working environment.
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Actually I agree with the court here. My wife (who speaks 3 languages) works in an office where people of many nationalities are present, but the designated company language is English. She found herself in a team of 3 where the other two guys kept nattering away in French during working hours, a language which she did not speak. She complained about this and her superior agreed with her. My wife had no objections to them speaking French during a break, but felt she was being excluded on the job.
beano on 21 May 2012
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Iversen wrote:
| We have had a similar discussion before, and it didn't lead to a general agreement. |
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Here it is:
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=24195&PN=121&TPN=1 - http://how-
to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=24195&PN =121&TPN=1
tractor on 21 May 2012
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There is no more a requirement to speak English in the presence of non-speakers of X
than
there is a requirement to speak louder in the presence of hard-of-hearing people who
aren't concerned by the conversation. If you aren't part of the conversation, you don't
have any business hearing it anyway.
There is an interesting situation in my workplace. I live in Central Canada where there
is a small population of French speakers. I'm Québécois, so I grew up in a French
monolingual environment. In MY culture, it's rude to speak English to another French-
speaker, so I speak French with my Québécois colleagues, even when English speakers
come
by, but the French-speakers who were born in this English environment switch to English
as soon as English speakers come! They obviously believe it's rude or that the English
speakers will find it rude.
Arekkusu on 22 May 2012
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Hmm, and this reminds me of a problem - is it rude for, say, a couple of D/deaf to sign to each other while out with their friends, for example?
Zireael on 22 May 2012
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I think it depends on the situation.
Just yesterday, I was driving from Sherbrooke to Montréal with 3 carpool passengers I
had never met. Since we all left from Sherbrooke, I just assumed everyone in the car
spoke French. So for like an hour, two of the passengers and I were just rattling away
in French about all kinds of things, but the third passenger was very quiet. I thought
"hey, maybe he's just not a talker. You get those from time to time."
Finally, I ask him in French what he does in life, studies or work. His response was
"Sorry, I don't speak French." My native language being English, I start to ask him
where he's from, what he does, etc. Turns out he's from Iran and he's only been in QC
four months. So I forgive him for the inability to speak French and all four of us chat
for a while in English. But naturally, the conversation drifted back into French after
a while since it was the dominant language in the car.
Was this rude? I don't know. Maybe it will be something that will convince the guy the
importance of learning French if he's going to stay in Québec.
I was once working in Ontario for a summer, and there were a couple other French
speakers working there. Sometimes, we'd chat with each other in French, but never
really in a mixed group situation. But that didn't stop anyone who might be in our
earshot from complaining about it. We had a lot of German-speaking co-workers who
naturally spoke to each other in German all the time. Funny how no one complained about
them... I chalk it up to a special prejudice these English-Canadian co-workers had
specifically against French. They know that people in Quebec take speaking French
seriously, so they felt I guess justified in 'defending' the primacy of English in
their Ontario workplace. Of course, I meet people in Montréal all the time who have to
speak English in meetings and stuff because they have one or two unilingual anglophone
co-workers. I find that to be extremely unacceptable.
The real question is does absolutely everybody at work or elsewhere who may be in your
earshot have the inalienable right to know what you and your compatriot are talking
about?
lecavaleur on 19 June 2012
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Zireael wrote:
Hmm, and this reminds me of a problem - is it rude for, say, a couple
of D/deaf to sign to each other while out with their friends, for example? |
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Ooh! This reminds me of a situation I was in once.
I was at a sports bar watching a game on one of the big screens scattered around the
bar and happened to be sitting next to a deaf person. We were cheering for the same
team, and eventually struck up a conversation. Because I don't know ASL, we started
writing messages on bar napkins to communicate. All of the sudden 4 more deaf friends
of his came into the bar to join him. They happily went about signing between each
other, and I sat back and watched - fascinated. They were kind enough to scribble
anything they wanted to include me in on napkins. Then they started actually trying to
teach me a bit. And it got to the point where, after some signing exchanges between
them, my new friend would turn to me and motion whether I could understand or guess
what they were saying.
Needless to say, I was pretty happy with the whole thing, but I'm a language nut, so
everything was great. And I gained some new friends out of it. We still meet up
occasionally to watch a game. I end up learning a little bit more each time :-)
Had I not been interested in languages, I probably would have just nodded and continued
cheering without any further conversation, but I somehow think that sign language would
be treated differently by most monolinguals. After all, it's a much different scenario
than a bilingual or multilingual with a choice of languages to speak.
R.
==
hrhenry on 19 June 2012
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Quite generally I would not want people in a group to switch languages just to accommodate me - unless of course I needed the information. But of course there are exceptions. For instance we once had a meeting in my travel club with one guest from Australia, and during our 'tour de table' (where everybody is supposed to listen) we switched to English. But I wouldn't want to do that at all meetings so maybe it is good that most meetings are limited to our active members.
Iversen on 20 June 2012
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Some people get offended when others start talking in a language they dont know.
I rememeber last year when my aunt's boyfriend who speaks enlgish, was here. We all were speaking in Portuguese but then I started talking in English to him, the thing is that everybody had gone quiet so as no one was talking I though there was not any problem. My grandparents, who dont speak English, left the room where we were, they only looked at each other, smiled and left the room. We kept talking in English though. A few minutes ago my aunt asked (actually sent us) to stop talking in English and switch to Portuguese, she was even kind of angry... It was a pity because he was the only person who I had the chance of practicing English with so far.
We were only talking about his trip to Europe and his trip to the US that was going to take place this year (and took)...
MarlonX19 on 02 July 2013
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A lot of people mentioned already it depends on the situation. Some of the time you have everybody else in the
room talking in 1 language and you are the only one not understanding their language. They would tell you
beforehand we're going to be talking in our language to get your approval.
Some of the time you have 2 people who are able to speak the same languages or understand each other to some
degree in each other's mother-tongue but intentionally speaking only in their language to make a political
statement. Like a person of English descent in Quebec talking to a person of French descent in Quebec. Although
both are fully bilingual, the English will only talk in his language and the French the same to make a statement
Canada recognize my language as an official language and I have the right to speak it.
Recently came across a few news report videos from Hong Kong. On the subway there were some unpleasant
encounters between Chinese tourists from Mainland China and the native Cantonese-speakers on the subway.
They bumped into each other but instead of saying sorry and be done with it the Hong Kong native would talk in
Cantonese telling the Chinese tourist Hong Kong doesn't need people from the Mainland, go home sort of thing.
And the tourist from China said something like without us spending money here, the Hong Kong economy would
sink in Mandarin. Both sides understood each other perfectly well. Just that they avoided talking to each other in
the same language to create a scene.
There are other times you wanted a discussion to be private so you switch languages to keep certain people from
participating.
shk00design on 28 November 2013
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lecavaleur wrote:
I think it depends on the situation.
Just yesterday, I was driving from Sherbrooke to Montréal with 3 carpool passengers I
had never met. Since we all left from Sherbrooke, I just assumed everyone in the car
spoke French. So for like an hour, two of the passengers and I were just rattling away
in French about all kinds of things, but the third passenger was very quiet. I thought
"hey, maybe he's just not a talker. You get those from time to time."
Finally, I ask him in French what he does in life, studies or work. His response was
"Sorry, I don't speak French." My native language being English, I start to ask him
where he's from, what he does, etc. Turns out he's from Iran and he's only been in QC
four months. So I forgive him for the inability to speak French and all four of us chat
for a while in English. But naturally, the conversation drifted back into French after
a while since it was the dominant language in the car.
Was this rude? I don't know. Maybe it will be something that will convince the guy the
importance of learning French if he's going to stay in Québec.
I was once working in Ontario for a summer, and there were a couple other French
speakers working there. Sometimes, we'd chat with each other in French, but never
really in a mixed group situation. But that didn't stop anyone who might be in our
earshot from complaining about it. We had a lot of German-speaking co-workers who
naturally spoke to each other in German all the time. Funny how no one complained about
them... I chalk it up to a special prejudice these English-Canadian co-workers had
specifically against French. They know that people in Quebec take speaking French
seriously, so they felt I guess justified in 'defending' the primacy of English in
their Ontario workplace. Of course, I meet people in Montréal all the time who have to
speak English in meetings and stuff because they have one or two unilingual anglophone
co-workers. I find that to be extremely unacceptable.
The real question is does absolutely everybody at work or elsewhere who may be in your
earshot have the inalienable right to know what you and your compatriot are talking
about? |
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I don't think it was rude to drift back into French after exchanging pleasantries with the Iranian guy. If he has
chosen to live in a French-speaking society then it's really in his interests to learn the language. Of course,
you can't be fluent after 4 months but he has to start somewhere.
As for the workplace, that can be tricky because sometimes a company will have an official corporate
language. I remember my wife complaining to me that 2 of her co-workers spoke French to each other during
a night shift when only the three of them were present. This in the UK with an American company whose
corporate language was naturally English. Understandably she felt a bit left out. She did make the point that
she had no objections to them speaking in French during coffee breaks but she objected to not being privvy
to all information while on the job.
beano on 03 February 2014
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