One of my chuddiest blood relatives, a lanyard-wearing middle manager, has a deep fixation on his coworkers “speaking foreign gibberish” around him. I don’t talk or hang around him anymore for good reason, but when I did, almost every conversation was about his most recent transcendent wine tasting experience, or his latest authentic foreign vacation where an authentic rug merchant sold him an authentic exotic rug while authentically haggling with him while offering him authentic homemade tea in his authentic quaint foreign dwelling, or him being really mad at his subordinates for “speaking foreign gibberish” in a way that makes him feel like they’re talking about him… which maybe they are because he’s a piece of shit.
his latest authentic foreign vacation where an authentic rug merchant sold him an authentic exotic rug while authentically haggling with him while offering him authentic homemade tea in his authentic quaint foreign dwelling,
When I rant about “wine cave liberals” I say so because I’ve spent too many years painfully close to Napa Valley.
in my experience people are happy you try and learn their language (unless they’re Icelandic, Icelandic people often feel that the language is so small outside influence would destroy it)
One of the more annoying aspects of living in Japan was when people would assume I couldn’t speak Japanese and would desperately try to speak English, which they very clearly hadn’t used in absolute ages, and basically refuse to speak in Japanese no matter what. There were plenty of people that once I spoke Japanese to them you could see the relief and just went with it. Generally people were happy that I spoke Japanese.
