I’ve hears stories of some Americans telling other people who are speaking a non-English language “This is America, speak English!” even if the conversation has nothing to do with them. Why do they do this?
because racist people are stupid and ignorant
True.
Also, there is a psychological effect of people either feeling excluded from a conversation, or suspicious that they are being secretly insulted when they can’t understand it.
Happens in every country and in every nation. This isn’t a strictly American issue
Yep, went to france to learn french, was questioned (by an idiot) why I didn’t knew (spoke) french well.
They exist in all countries.
Edit: learn, not kearn…
Don’t you DARE speak French in France unless you’re a native speaker!
That country is the reverse complaint put forth in this thread.
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Same.
Of course, the first phrase I made absolutely certain I could rattle off was “excuse me I don’t speak French well”. Deliver that with a smile and they can be pretty damn forgiving.
I love hearing other languages in the US. It reminds me of the lofty ideals that were taught to me as a child. The Great Melting Pot, Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses, E Pluribus Unum and all that.
I hate that there is a significant portion of the population here that violently believes that English is the only language here.
It’s good old-fashioned xenophobia and is by no means unique to Americans or English-speakers even in the modern era. Anyone who has spent enough time in certain parts of France, Italy, or Belgium has probably encountered it at some point.
It’s everywhere but it is probably most prevalent in countries with a strong nationalist core and, in my opinion, ironically occurs most often in countries that have really fucked around with having an empire in the last century or so.
It’s called xenophobia, the fear and dislike of anything foreign. Some people believe that if your group isn’t dominant it will be dominated, and peaceful coexistence isn’t possible between different groups.
These people are afraid that, if the English language isn’t forced onto other people, one day other people will force a foreign language onto them.
Not everyone disliking something is necessarily phobic towards it. That’s just one possoble explanation.
It would greatly benefit your argument to provide another possible explanation.
They could simply
A) dislike X
B) hate/despise X
C) came to the logical conclusion, that X is bad/wrong/shouldn’t be/whatever
D) genereally mistrusting against X due to a careful nature
E) have had traumatic experience with X (e.g. Being raped/attacked by a member of a specific ethnicity) and hence totally overreacting to an otherwise harmless stimulus, even forgetting the rules of civil behaviour
Those all don’t mean there’s the medical condition of a phobia for X.
A real xenophobic has an irrational fear of anything unknown/alien. Doesn’t mean the person just hates e.g. Mexicans for no real reason. It might even like them once they get to know the better, which often just won’t happen as phobics tend to avoid the cause their phobia instead of treating it.
I just dislike the lax use of medical terms until they’re bereft of any real meaning.
So, a person who yanks “speak English!” to someone, could have many reasons to do. None are neither polite nor politically correct. While the asshole is probably just the uneducated asswipe, the phobic could be helped and probably even feels bad afterwards for being so compulsive and insulting.
Xenophobia isn’t a medical term. All the examples you listed are xenophobia.
It’s literally in the term. But yeah sure, it’s easier to just smack the same label on everything. Whatever makes you happy.
Some words just have more than one definition is all. It’s not about me, it’s about the dictionary.
We have this reputation here in Quebec to be generally angry at people who are not speaking French when visiting. I’ve never experienced nor was witness of it, but I believe it when I hear people say they’ve had issues with some of us Quebs too. We have our fair share of idiots, like most nations.
If they’re anything like my mother, they automatically assume anyone speaking in any language other than English within earshot of her is shit-talking her, specifically. The thought that someone might be saying something mean-spirited about her is just too much for her tiny brain to handle. If you think she’s a bitch, she needs to know. It reeks of desperation and the need to be liked by all people at all times while also doing nothing to bridge that gap yourself.
I do not give 2 shits about people speaking foreign languages out in the ether for the most part. Having said that, there are 2 instances I can think of that grind my gears.
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You order an Uber, and the guy who’s driving is on the phone with someone, and is speaking another language with them the whole time. This is more just for the fact that this is shitty customer service for someone who works on tips to an extent. For whatever reason, this seems to only be an issue with foreign speaking people. My guess is maybe they’re talking to family back home? I certainly don’t tip those people who are doing it, but I don’t care enough to call them out on it either.
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As a poker player, they have rules about speaking English only at the table. This prevents collusion. I will absolutely call people out for English only at the table especially when there is a live hand going on.
For the first point really no matter what language they are using on the phone it’s bad service regardless. There already have been enough studies that says talking on a phone do still distract you from driving and makes it more dangerous.
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We’re British imperialists at the end if the day. We traveled across the seas to a new continent and destroyed it for… So little benefit
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Probably because most Americans can’t speak any other language… because our education system is awful… because those in power prefer a stupid populace because they’re easier to control.
I took 5 years of spanish and I dont speak it. It has nothing to do with the schools, its that I dont need to learn any other languages. Literally I have traveled all around the world and have never needed to know anything but english. I get its annoying to other countries, but is just the reality.
Xenophobia.
Some people are shit
As a kid I worked fast food for a few years, and there was an “English only” on the line where customers could hear. One of our managers was Mexican, and actually enforced this pretty strongly. He once told us about when he went to a Subway and the staff was speaking what he suspected was Hindi, and explained to us all that yeah, it matters sense, you tend to get upset when you can’t understand people. They could be saying anything, making fun of you without your knowing, or whatever.
I tend to just ignore other languages (I’m in Chicagoland, there’s plenty of them) and an of the opinion that lack of exposure is one of the root causes of ethnic (and of other kinds of) intolerance. A lot of Americans live in their little rural bubbles where everything is samey and familiar, dealing with their little isolated lives, away from anyone noticably different than themselves. They’re tribalistic and comfortable there, and don’t like outsiders or change. They vote Republican because “people from the city” are bad, and they’re Democrats.
It’s not a new problem. The root philosophy in the fucking Bible is that “city people are immoral” because its all passed down by oral tradition, and its oldest stories are descended from periods when its creators were nomadic herders. Hospitality for them vs. urban hospitality are very different, and of course anecdotes get mutated through centuries of the telephone game.
TL;DR, lots of people need to meet more kinda of people and it’s been a problem since forever.
Fear… At the bottom of it is always fear
I find the type of people that get angry at those that don’t speak English, usually have not a single interesting thing about them so they use English as an excuse to feel superior. It’s funny because the type to get angry at another language, rarely can speak English better than a 4th grade level.
Exactly! I have a friend who said a similar thing to his daughter, who came to him crying because her friends said she was not American enough because she wasn’t white. My friend said “you’re top of the class, excellent at sports, well spoken, well educated and very friendly and polite. They try to attack you for the sake of doing it, they try to find something bad about you, and they get nothing. So what do they resort to? Skin color!” (and yeah, I know this is about language, but it’s pretty much in line with your comment.)
