I wasn’t. Or, it wasn’t meant to be, it was genuine concern. But it’s still pretty awkward, it went sort of like this:
OMG, is she all right? She looks really ill.
I think she’s just drunk.
Should we check if she can get home safely, or is that weird?
Oh, wait, they’re kissing…
Yeah, he seems nice, he’s taking care of her. OK, I guess she’ll be all right.
It wasn’t meant to be rude, but we we’re giving a running commentary of what was happening. It’s just…better done without the other person knowing, y’know? So you think you’ll make use of your secret language, and you end up with egg on your face. Because it turns out your super secret language has over 200 million speakers. :smack:
But it is a bit selfish, no? Because not everything (even in English) is something you should understand or know what is going on. Especially in the locker room (as opposed to a business meeting or a staff meeting, or a project), it seems people are just doing social chit-chat.
Is it hindering your ability to finish your assigned work (by yourself)? Is it hindering your ability to finish a group project or reach a business or work decision with them? No? Then why would you care?
Judging by the way most people seem to react you must have some sort of super power to be impervious to the thought that it is all about you.
My aunt goes nuts when I say something in Dutch to my sister or SO. And it’s always the lamest thing, like “did you switch the lights off upstairs?” or something. But jeez, you’d think we’re all obsessed with saying she is a fatty behind her back or something. :rolleyes:
I think it’s because social chit-chat, just the normal background conversation around us at all times, is the social communal stew in which we’re all simmering; largely unaware. But we’re soaking up little bits here and there: who works on what project, where the good restaurants are.
And if that background noise is altered so that you’re no longer receiving, it feels weird.
I’m in the UK, and it’s the rule where I work that everyone speaks English. It’s a rule that gets ignored a fair bit, but the existence of it means that if any bullying occurs by deliberately leaving people out of conversations, or gossiping behind their back, there is a clear rule to point to when dealing with it.
I’d say it’s always reasonable to limit language use to the native language(s), and it will have the useful side effect of forcing people to learn to communicate effectively in that language.
It’s the same reason why hearing someone’s cell phone conversation can be so annoying. The person’s talking just seems like loud noise since you can’t comprehend the full conversation.
I get in trouble in my class (which is entirely in French) when I speak English (my mother tongue) to my other classmates whose first language is also English. It sucks.
Though on the other side, I speak only French with everyone at my workplace. Though most of those people’s mother tongue is French, and there is nobody else whose first language is English, so it works out wonderfully.
And there’s the variant that I’ve encountered - a group of coworkers all having a conversation in English that suddenly switches to another language which not everyone speaks.That *is *rude.
From personal experience she might not be wrong on either account. I used to have coworkers who spoke Portuguese so they could talk shit about the white people* who worked there, assuming that none of us could understand them. Spanish is close enough to get the gist, so I at least did. They knocked it off around me, at least, once they realized that I wasn’t clueless about what they were saying.
I thought it was extremely rude considering they spoke English as well as you or I as well. It’s probably different when the speaker hadn’t grown up bilingual and speaks another language better, but I haven’t encountered that myself.
FTR the Portuguese people in southern MA are mostly from islands like Bermuda, the Azores & Cape Verde, not Portugal, so they tend to look like this and not this, and often don’t identify as white (my grandfather and great-grandparents certainly didn’t)
I deal with this at my office all the time. I only speak English. (And a little German). I have lots of co-workers who speak English and Spanish. They talk to each other in Spanish quite often.
I have no problem with them chatting socially, although I do find it somewhat rude if they don’t switch to English at least to say hi.
Many of them speak Spanish to each other when discussing work. This annoys me even more, because it restricts the flow of information. I get involved with lots of peoples issues…I can often help them with their if they share, and knowing what they are working on can help me take care of other items.
I think I’ve told this before…but when I was in college, I remember walking up to a friend of mine from Brazil. She was talking to a friend of hers. By the time I got there, my friend was talking in English, and her friend was talking in Portuguese. I asked my friend why…she explained that she switched to English so I wasn’t left out.
Two of the people who work in my building ended up in this area because they were in the same foreign-exchange program, and both fell in love with locals and stuck around. They always stop and chat for a minute or two when they pass because… hey, there’s not a lot of Russian speakers in Kentucky.
I think it’s great. Talking to the one who works in my department, they apparently have very little in common, and don’t even like each other all that much, but they both still stop and chat just because it makes them happy to speak in their native language.
The only time it DOES bother me, is when this guy is trying to pretend he totally has that number right in front of him… his accent (which is normally noticeable, but not not at all difficult to understand) gets thicker and thicker…
Actually, come to think of it, that’s not such a bad strategy…
But, why? I don’t care or want to know what the others are doing that is not work-related. Why should I be privy to their personal conversations? Ignorance is bliss in this case.
I can see in social situations, where they don’t switch to a common language and keep using a language some may not speak. That is rude, and is something I avoid in group situations.
The last few years I worked/lived a few miles from the Mexican border. I met few people who weren’t bilingual. While I did hear coworkers say several times that THEY thought it rude to speak Spanish around folks who couldn’t speak it, it never bothered me when people did. It’s not an inside joke, it’s just another way of expressing yourself.
I was thinking about this recently. I’ve noticed my coworkers sometimes having private conversations in Spanish, while being excellent English speakers. When it’s obvious it’s “Good morning, how’s it going?” stuff, it doesn’t bother me. When it’s in the breakroom, it doesn’t bother me. When everyone is on the clock and non-Spanish speakers are around, I feel it’s done deliberately to exclude people. In my case, it’s the particular people involved. It’s very clique-y.
And it’s totally not a prejudice against Spanish on my part because I studied it for years and used to be fluent. It’s mostly forgotten now, but I can still pick up enough… and I keep my Spanish knowledge quiet. I figure if they’re just falling into Spanish unconsciously and chit chatting about the weather, I can tune it out. This particular group, I feel that it might be to my advantage to appear more ignorant than I am.
I agree it isn’t rude on the bus. I also wouldn’t think it rude in a locker room with people I don’t know. But work is more like a social situation. There are probably plenty of situations at work where it wouldn’t be rude to speak another language. But why not just avoid being rude altogether?
And it’s not like it’s some huge sacrifice. There were times when I really wanted to speak Dutch or English for a minute. Just briefly, because I really missed it in a homesick way. But most of the time speaking Portuguese wasn’t a sacrifice, and it was definitely of less importance than the rudeness of saying things that exclude certain people.
It’s something that is considered courteous everywhere I’ve ever been. Like when you go on holiday and you learn please & thank you in the local language. People love it! Because it shows respect to make the effort to communicate.
Because it’s not rude in the first place. We have lots of folks who speak Hindi and Mandarin in our office, and it’s not uncommon to see groups walking down the hall speaking in that language. If I’m not involved in the conversation I can’t see how it is rude at all. There’s no reason I need to be included in that conversation.
Is that really what people are complaining about? There’s a difference between having a conversation in another language, and suddenly switching to your native language when whitey walks in the room, which is what often happens.
