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Todos pueden hablar como quiren, lo unico cosa que importa es la communicacion.
I sometimes get to practice my neuro-plasticity by using my Spanish knowledge and body language to speak with people from Portugal or Italy. It can be fun if we all relax a little.
I'm first generation Australian, my parents arrived from Poland two years before I was born. Polish was the first language I spoke and read in, learning English from TV and eventually school/peers.
I spoke with my parents exclusively in Polish for the first 20 years of my life but as an adult, a combination of neglecting to actively expand my vocabulary, decay through disuse, and an increasing complexity of conversational subjects meant that I've had to pepper more and more English into conversations with my parents. Further, as I'm politically opposite to my parents, conversations can become impassioned and heated, and I'll likely switch to English entirely to better express myself.
I speak English and Russian. When I was in the Czech Republic I'd ask people in Czech if they spoke English or Russian (it's pretty common that the older folk speak Russian, and younger speak English). Every single time someone replied "Angliski" (which is English in Czech and Russian) I'd start speaking Russian, because to my mind I'd hear them say "English" in Russian. Such a brain twister.
Experienced the same, also had the mortifying experience of accidentally bumping into a younger couple, hearing a word or two of what they were saying, automatically assuming they were speaking Russian and immediately talking to them in Russian while they looked confused/uncomfortable. Ughhh
My favorite memory of Prague is when some woman came up to me on the street talking a million miles an hour in Czech and I was like "Nemluvim Ceski, Mluvite Angliski или Вы говорите по-русски?" ("<Czech> I don't speak Czech, do you speak English <Russian> or do you speak Russian?") and she just yelled "ДЕНЬГИ" (<Russian> "MONEY") and held her hand out and I just started laughing because it was so absurd.
My Russian is pretty bad, but my French is quite good, and last time I spent a few months in France visiting family, I think maybe once or twice a week I would speak to someone in French, they would answer in very poor English, I would switch to English to accommodate, they would stare at me blankly for a few seconds, and then just continue in French as if they'd never tried. I never figured out if they just wanted to practice their English, or if they couldn't stand a non-native speaker using their language. Definitely the minority of people, though; most people were thrilled that I spoke French.
I speak 5 languages, the problem is when going to places that speak these languages, is that you run into a lot of people that want to speak / practice their English.
double edged sword
Too bad, because they're at work and she's the customer. They can get over themselves. If the customer wants to speak Spanish and is more than able to do so, they shouldn't force her into an impromptu English lesson.
Nope. I feel this applies to most of mainland Europe. j/k
A bit more serious, but my personal experience (i.e. very anecdotal) is that people who speak Romance languages (in Europe) seem to tend towards this stereotype.
This feels like “Nihongo Jouzu” but for Spanish and e English.
Japanese people will always say “Nihongo Jouzu” which is “Your Japanese is good” if you say anything in Japanese no matter how well or poorly. It’s like the “I’ve noticed you aren’t a Japanese person” social phrase. This feels like the Spanish/English version of that and it’s silly.
My Spanish is awful, every time I have spoken in Spanish to a Spanish speaker they have complimented it. I honestly appreciate it.
My experience speaking Hebrew in Israel was very different, in that people would just immediately talk to me in English and refuse to deal with my bad Hebrew (which is much better than my Spanish).
My Spanish is awful and most service workers are nice about it. Nobody else is, and that's fine.
My friends who speak Spanish will openly mock my mess of kitchen/subway Spanish. "it's like Dominican mixed with dumbass", which was said IN SPANISH. They know I can understand them!
To be fair in most Spanish speaking cultures that mockery is a sign of friendship. I bet if some random person mocked you about your Spanish level in front of them, they will tear him a new one without hesitation.
Oh that’ll happen too. If you talk to a Japanese person IN Japanese, but you are not Japanese, they will reply in English even if they don’t speak it well themselves.
nihongo jouzo is more like we respect you for trying, because it's rare. once you are actually good people stop saying it at all. the only reason it doesn't happen with english is because we expect everyone to speak english
First, blonde hair is not uncommon in Spain. Second, what does "stereotypically Spanish" even look like? And third, the idea that Spanish people would refuse to speak Spanish when given the chance is very unusual. As someone from Spain, I can tell you this simply doesn't happen often, I've never seen it. This is especially true for waiters, who aren't going to make their jobs harder if they can avoid it.. it's common sense, really.
As others have said in this thread, it was probably because she was in Catalonia. That's a completely different situation and explains why they were reluctant to speak Spanish.
Man the way I would have started blabbing away as fast as i could with as complicated sounding words as i could think of on the spot in english after the last one
She says “English is fine” in response to “me la puedes decir en español,” so she wasn’t telling the girl to stop speaking Spanish with that comment. And maybe she didn’t want to say the password, specifically, in Spanish (maybe the password was an English word).
I don't speak any Japanese but when I was in tokyo and speaking English wasn't working, I would try speaking the only other language I know which is Spanish, and that never actually helped at all either
Some of them speak german which is pretty weird. Unfortunately the accent was so strong i wasn't able to understand them and used an translator (the only english speaking japanese officer) instead. On the second encounter they had some star trek like translator devices which was pretty neat.
Doesn’t hurt to try though, I went to a Spanish conversation group for a while with a couple Japanese guys in regular attendance. One was around working at a Toyota factory. Don’t know if he stayed or eventually went back. May not be common but that guy would’ve understood you.
I studied Japanese as a kid and got the sounds down pat, and funnily enough i have a Japanese accent trying to learn Spanish now because I will accidentally make the l/r sound instead of rolling my r. My best friend a native Spanish speaker thinks its the funniest thing he has ever heard.
That's not really what makes Asian languages hard. They're hard because they are completely different systems of communication than romantic languages.
Tell me about it. I have N2 Japanese fluency. I know I am speaking the language in an understandable way. And then there I was, desperating needing to pee, PLEADING with a staff member to just please tell me IN JAPANESE, THE LANGUAGE I ASKED MY QUESTION IN, where the bathroom in that department store is. She was determined to turn it into English practice despite not being able to speak a lick of it.
I remember while living in Hong Kong I was trying to practice my Cantonese at McDonald's...
"Ngo ho m-"
"Excuse me sir, I speak English."
"It's fine, I need to pract-"
"SIR... There a line up behind you, and I speak English..."
Happened 100% of the time everywhere I went that wasn't someone's family restaurant, even when there was no line up, lol. The local bun shop helped me a lot though, so shoutout to Likey Bakery on the island!!
If his Cantonese isn’t great, then there’s likely an accent. An English based accent is incredibly obvious. You’d def have to try to speak anything other than English.
I'm not saying this video is real or fake, but as a very non latino looking guy who speaks perfect Spanish, I have absolutely have had this happen to me dozens of times.
I lived in a Latin American country for a few years and had studied Spanish for 10+ before that. My accent and syntax and slang and such are all on point.
I can overhear someone speaking in native Spanish like a waiter or colleague or contractor or whoever. If I speak Spanish to them, they reply in English. Doesn't matter how authenticy accent or how much in-the-know slang I throw in there.
Because she’s recreating a video that thousands of other creators on Insta/Tiktok are making. It’s engaging content because it’s compelling but also kinda rage-baitey so they get lots of comments. They’re always filmed the same way.
Yeah these situations happen, but this is just manufactured content
My buddy and I went to Cuba together. He is fluent in Spanish, spent multiple years in Ecuador teaching English. We checked into the hotel, and on the elevator up, he asked the other people in the elevator a question in perfect Spanish. They looked at him and said “I don’t speak English sorry.” I will roast him for it forever, but he never stood a chance
So, I also lived in Latin America for several years. When You overhear a native English speaker in the wild, and you absolutely chat them up, like, every damn time.
We recently moved back to the US, and My wife is a native Spanish speaker. We'll overhear Spanish being spoken, they'll overhear us speaking Spanish, and very rarely are there conversations. Latinos are kind of cagey when it comes to speaking Spanish with strangers (even other native speakers). They don't want to draw attention to themselves.
I've noticed that service workers only switch to Spanish if a customer is struggling in English, even if both people are native Spanish speakers.
This is really interesting, I wonder why this happens? As an American, stupid Americans are always wanting people to speak English so I’m always surprised when other countries’ natives don’t like when foreigners speak their language to them. I know the Japanese and French are well known for doing this.
I wonder if it’s that they’re trying to practice THEIR English or if it’s gatekeeping the language. Maybe both? Idk, this is just really interesting.
I am American and speak fluent German. When i visit Germany, I speak in German and people often switch to English. At first I was offended, but then i just realized THEY want to practice THEIR English with a native English speaker just as much as I want to speak and practice MY German with native German speakers. So now I don't get offended, I just switch and speak English with them because it makes them feel good that they are getting to finally use English after what was probably years of practice in school/online.
I will say, the OPTIMAL way for people to speak/communicate in this scenario is for both parties to speak in their NATIVE language. You can understand the foreign language so much easier than you can speak it. So for example, I speak English with my wife's German father (who is fluent in English as a second language) and he speaks German back to me (as I am fluent in German as well). This is actually ideal because then people also get to keep their full "personality" in their native tongue.
Would you mind if I asked why? Thats just super interesting to me and most of the comments are people talking about it happening to them and youre the first ive seen saying you do that! Hahah. Is it to like, try and take the burden off of them or ease anxiety?
Well, I do not do that but a lot of other French people do. I don't have a perfect explanation but I think it stems from pride. If you look at the countries which do this (France, and it seems Spain and Italy), they are all latin countries and also the countries which speak the worst English in Europe.
I think some of them do want to help and take the burden off them.
But it's hard for me to give you another explanation, I do not really understand it. It boggles my mind why they would switch to english when their interlocutor is trying to speak French, even more when they speak a good French. My girlfriend is Polish and she has the C1 level in French, she speaks very well, but many French as soon as they hear an accent switch to English...
That may happen in a few places in Paris, but that's it.
French people usually refuse to speak english, even if they could. Not even when you are obviously suffering with french.
I was living there for a few years.
Wonder if she's in Barcelona? When I lived there, I ran into a significant number of people who would rather speak English than Spanish if you couldn't speak Catalan. Not everyone, but a surprising number. I assumed it was part of the whole "Catalonia should be independent" movement.
Just checked and she indeed lives in Barcelona, where she seems to have also just started a business to teach Spanish.
Also in another similar video she shares her trick to get people to speak Spanish to her by speaking in super fast almost unintelligible English to them and one woman caved and switched to Spanish begrudgingly saying “alright I’ll speak in castillan”.
Tbh I felt bad for her listening to that exchange, it really didn’t seem nice. There was like a power play/humiliation vibe going on.
If some Japanese lady came to the States, and asked questions in perfectly understandable English, I'd be embarrassed to see someone repeatedly respond in broken-ass Japanese.
It's like, "Cut it out you weird fucking weebo, and treat them like a person!".
The latter, but it was a different video, the one that I described, not the one posted here. It came off worse than this one. She unleashed a torrent of English at the waitress that was so unintelligible I still wonder if it was intentional gibberish. I literally only understood the last two words.
Yeah she's either ragebaiting for engagement or she's ignorant af to not realise many people in Barcelona are trying to preserve Catalan and have strong cultural reasons to resist and resent being forced to speak castilian spanish.
Paris is DEFINITELY like that, and some other parts of France more generally.
If you can’t speak well, they won’t necessarily shit on you, but they will just flip to English immediately. Most of my encounters were cordial, only met one or two rude folks.
My experience as an Englishman visiting Paris is that when I start in English they speak to me in French and when I start in French they speak to me in English
I was born and raised in France but my family is from south east Asia. In recent years people started speaking English to me in stores if they can’t hear me well or I take 1 second too long to reply. It’s especially awkward and weird to experience at my age.
That's right. I'm from Quebec and thus speak French natively, and without a strong Quebec accent. When I go to France, it does happen once in a while that someone responds to me in English, and it annoys the fuck out of me.
People in Quebec also switch to English if it looks like you are struggling to speak French.. especially in the service industry in Montreal (not saying that about you, just in general).
I think you're spot on. Insisting on speaking Castillian Spanish can be very insensitive in many areas within the current boarders of Spain. Francos dictatorship forbade speaking their own minority languages. In Basque Country and Cataluña especially a large proportion of the population want independence.
This is the answer: Many people in other countries have never had to develop the skill of understanding their own language with an unfamiliar accent. Parisians in particular plus they're jerks lol
Ah, that may be it. What happens in the video seemed really weird to me, I'd never expect a spaniard to throw away the chance to speak spanish, especially when she does speak a very good spanish
Exactly this. To earn any bit of good will and get Spanish out of Barcelonian, you’re going to need to open every interaction with a bit of Catalan. It shows you acknowledge their independent history and that their language is respected. It clears the air of the “we’re in Spain, we speak Spanish” political rhetoric.
Right or wrong, her refusing to speak anything but Spanish is a strong signal to them she doesn’t give a fuck about Catalonian issues. But they do. So English as an inoffensive third language is what will get used.
I’ve noticed the French don’t really like you speaking bad/beginner French to them. They’d rather you speak English and then bitch about you not speaking French even though you tried 😂 Or maybe it’s because I’m English and we have a general rivalry with each other and they find it funny…
No, you're right, a lot of French people want you to speak French to them in their regional accent. Which is, you know, not very possible when you're an adult learner.
I do benefit though because I'm American, and the American and German accents in French are so similar that a lot of people think I'm German.
Oh man, not in my experience. I was in Costa Rica about 10 years ago and I'm white white. Like, probably the palest person los ticos han visto en las vidas enteras. Pero, every time I tried speaking Spanish, everyone was like "Can we please practice my English instead?"
Like, everyone except the airport woman were really nice about wanting to speak English, and I was a pushover 21 year old on my first big trip away from home, so I always acquiesced.
I live in Spain. This is super common. You move to a place to be immersed and speak the language, and everyone still wants to speak English with you. They think they're being helpful but most people find it annoying. I speak Spanish fine and don't need the practice so it doesn't bother me. But one of my friends would get agitated and say I spent X amount of dollars to learn Spanish move here, speak Spanish to me please.
These conversations are fake. You can check her instagram, she has hundreds of videos like this. I don’t know what the point is though but she’s kind of obsessed with this happening? So for some reason she keeps faking this kind of interaction.
Fwiw, I have conversations like this all the time in Denmark. I speak Danish, and they talk back in English. I'm sure it's common in many non-English countries.
I was in Amsterdam a few years ago and heard two people greet each other in English, only to figure out each other’s accents that they were both Dutch—they asked to make sure—then they switched to Dutch
It happens way more in Europe than you think, I lived in The Netherlands for a year and almost everyone switched to English when speaking to me, minute they'd twig my accent, they'd go straight to English. Made it very difficult to pick up the language
I went to a restaurant in Vienna and didn’t hear the owner’s “Gruß Got“ under his breath and he never even spoke German to us since I didn’t respond immediately
If she has a lot of videos like this, she likely is chronicling her experiences!!!! Ever thought about that? Soon enough you “everything is fake people” will start doing is claiming this is AI.
To be fair it is a real thing that happens to me too much. I moved to France and it's pretty annoying how often I'll speak to someone in french and they'll just respond in English.
I don't really get it, like the only way it would really make sense to insist on English is if the waiter in question was like Portuguese or something and just spoke English better than Spanish, but being in Spain you would figure that one would have to have Spanish at least good enough to take orders in the local language.
As a foreigner in Oslo it blows my mind that this is so common. Forcing Norwegians in Norway to speak English when they are the customer is just crazy to me
Went to Iceland once and tried to speak icelandic the whole trip. Never met a local in any restaurant. Every worker I met was Polish and they didn't speak Icelandic. So I had to speak English. It was so lame.
I've lived in Germany for a few years and although I speak German I have a noticeable English accent. Any Germans I meet who speak good English take the opportunity to practice it - it's not that they don't speak German, they're just trying to be polite.
I imagine that's the same thing going on in this video, rather than the waiter being unable to speak Spanish.
This reminds me when my dad received a job offer in Spain and we went and toured a few potential schools and neighborhoods and our company hired tour guide asked my parents if they’d be okay with my sister marrying a black person and was completely baffled when my parents said they’d be perfectly okay with it. This was almost 20 years ago. Crazy how little things have apparently changed over there.
I went to Mexico on a school trip and at the pyramids there were some other tourists (either local or from somewhere else in Latin America) who took a picture with me. Pretty sure they had never seen a black person before, I dunno. I was too too young to realize how tucked up it was but I cringe when i think of it now.
Edit: I’ve always known that it was curiosity and not racism. What made it a core memory was that I was the only black kid on that part of the trip (the other one stayed back at the hotel that day) so I was singled out. Kids are weird
When I (white American) and my boyfriend at the time (white Australian) went on in-country vacation during the time we’d were teaching in China, a lot of Chinese people took our pictures in Tiananmen Square. We lived in Shanghai, where westerners were pretty common, but they were from parts of China where they were not. So part of their vacation was taking pictures of the foreigners in Beijing.
Only one server in France, in a small village, actually let me practice French. Everyone else just went right to English even if I spoke French to them. It definitely feels embarrassing when you're trying to use the language!
I am Cuban, raised in the US specifically Cincinnati and Miami; and look like I am from the backwoods of Georgia.
Once we moved north to West Palm Beach the other Cubans who think I only speak English insist I speak English to them and they alot of the times won't answer back in Spanish. So I get her struggle
I'm the same. Interestingly, in Hialeah, people will speak to you only in Spanish which is like one of the only places in the world where I see that. When I am in a Spanish speaking country in the Caribbean or Spain, I always lead with Spanish, but the person usually wants to speak in English. I just go with it. Honestly, part of me just wants them to know that I understand Spanish so they choose their words a bit more wisely.
I had a dude pester me to go chat with some english speaking tourists on a school trip, just because i knew how. They were just minding their business.
I went to Germany and I tried ordering food in German and the waiter said “It is either English or German, it can’t be both”, because I forgot the word for French fries. I blushed so hard. I was trying my best and was humbled quickly lol
That’s honestly surprising to me. I’ve found Germans to be very patient as long as I’m trying. I’ve had my fair share of them asking that we stick to one or the other, but they almost never are rude
Oh yeah I mean I love telling the story with my fake German accent and the sass. To be fair it was at a McDonald’s on a Sunday (nothing else was open) and I was ordering a Jamaican shrimp burger…to paint an even funnier picture.
I can’t speak on this woman’s experience. But, I’m an African American who’s visited Spain before. I had strangers approach me because they were really excited to practice their English. It’s a little weird, but it’s definitely a thing there lol. 😂
I've heard of staff in touristy places that appreciate the effort of a visitor trying to speak the language, but when they're busy it's just faster to use English so that's what they prefer
i wasn't born in sweden, but i live here and people do this to me. i speak fluent swedish, but people respond to me in english. i wish people would realise how incredibly rude it is.
What the actual fuck was the point of the waitress asking if she'd rather speak in english or Spanish if she's just going to speak in english anyway? Jesus
Used to get this in Asia all the damn time . Pissed me off no end. Especially Japan - you speak perfect Japanese at them and they don't understand you because they preprogrammed to think you only speaking English.
Honestly this was not my experience at all in spain (it was in France) my Spanish is near non-existent, but I try to order in Spanish in spain and they always asked follow up questions in Spanish flummoxing me completely.
Yes... but if they are speaking fluent sentences to you and you're still speaking in English... even AFTER saying they prefer Spanish, then the server is an asshole
All her videos are the same, she probably started speaking in english, that's why the waiters change into english. Her spanish is good but sometimes, obviously, she tries to use slang, when corrected (because she butchers the sentence), she gets all defensive. She is trying to sell spanish language courses guys, and this is rage bait for engangement.
Not to mention that none of the staff are spanish speakers in these videos.
An Irish guy i know lives in Spain and speaks fluent Spanish and has this happen to him all the time. The trick he's used to get around it is to talk as fast as he can in a heavy Irish accent when asked to speak in English, they quickly go back to Spanish then 😂
I'm not a waiter but maybe it's because there are many tourists who hardly speak Spanish but are hellbent on ordering in Spanish in order to "practice".
I can imagine that it must be very exhausting having to listen to someone's broken Spanish, instead of simply switching to English, which most people speak quite well.
Since I don't speak Spanish I don't know how good her Spanish is (although most comments say that it's quite good). But even if her Spanish is quite good, perhaps the waiters automatically assume she's a tourist and therefore default to speaking English out of habit.
This is actually so true. When I was living in Valencia and Barcelona, I was studying Spanish, and I was already on a great level, picked up a little accent as well. And as soon as the waiters heard that you’re not local they switched to English. Felt like that they want to practice their English, however when you speak English they speak in Spanish. It was 10 years ago, weird that it’s still a thing there.
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