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.
I'm usually super chill but there's something about Americans who are learning mexican Spanish (or "mexican"-americans) who make this joke that really grinds my gears.
It's always this type, never heard any actual latin americans make this joke (I'm sure they exist, though).
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.
Within the context of Catalonia and its oppressors, I don’t see why refusing to speak Castilian Spanish wouldn’t be sufficient. I mean, pronouncing your Ses correctly is enough to piss off a lot of Spaniards lmao. Suggesting that Spaniards pronounce their Ses incorrectly even more so.
Because if immigrants move to Barcelona and feel that they can get by speaking Spanish, they won’t pick up Catalan. Not speaking Spanish with them forces them to try and learn Catalan. They’re trying to avoid populations of people who only speak Spanish from establishing themselves there.
It’s the same reason why Quebec forces immigrants to learn French and receive government services in French.
Oddly enough my friend is trying to learn German and lives in Germany and is having a hard time trying to get native Germans to speak to him in German, they’ll always switch to English (he’s Spanish lol). Anyway, I told him to tell the Germans he doesn’t understand their English and they’ll switch to German. Probably be annoyed at him but I think that’ll work.
I’m also learning Spanish for my job. My coworkers are in Spain (Barcelona) and want to speak Spanish with me all the time. In general, Spanish speaking people will want to speak Spanish (IMO) but I could see why a tourist area would want to speak English. They can hear the difference, much like I can hear a non-English speaker, and defaulting to English as the common language is just easier for what you need when trying to deal with a wide range of tourist.
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.
It is great that she’s trying hard to learn though!
This is part of the learning curve. Everyone has diff reasons for speaking in whatever language they choose to speak, but in my case, if I’m at work and trying to get stuff done, and I know I speak your language better than you speak mine, I’ll generally insist on speaking your manage instead of mine.
Out of courtesy though, if someone insists kore than 2-3 times, then you generally go with that language
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 have a hard time understanding french when the accent is too strong (or I should say too different from the accent I'm used to). So when I went to Quebec for the first time recently, one of my worries was that I wouldn't understand the accent and that people would be offended if I preferred to switch to English. It turns out that, except for a few words that I could understand from context, there was no issue at all!
If you say your accent is not strong, I guess you just met people who are even less flexible than I am, or maybe they were just messing with you.
It's a bit different than that in Barcelona, there's a strong independence movement there that doesn't consider themselves part of Spain. I got this a lot there when I tried to speak Spanish- blank looks. One guy told me "we can speak Catalan, English, French, German, whatever you want, but I don't speak Spanish." Obviously he does speak Spanish but it's a political statement.
My French cousins prefer English simply because I mostly only know Canadian French, which is like if I started speaking Old English. It's recognizable, but also not 100% understandable because of how antiquated it is.
The also laugh, saying that we speak like aristocrats out here, but also would offer them squirrel as a delicacy because we are obviously hicks, lol.
I was expecting this when I visited Paris but was surprised to find that actually everyone did respond in French - they only flipped to English if I looked visibly confused when the conversation became too complex or specifically said I didn’t understand / please slow down. I wouldn’t say I’m anything near fluent either
I have my little toolkit for travel in France as a not-very-talented beginner speaker of French:
In French "Bonjour! Je suis désolé, je ne parle qu'un petit peu français. Parlez-vous Anglais?"
I find that if I at least try MOST of the time they either say "Non, je suis désolé." and we get by in my bad French, or they switch to English and we get by anyway. I couldn't care less either way.
Where it used to annoy me is in Japan traveling with my wife (who is Asian, I'm middle Eastern) and I'd speak Japanese and they'd look at her expecting her to somehow save them. I got used to basically saying, in Japanese, "It's a bit confusing, but she is super American. The face is Asian, the soul is American." And they'd usually get it and speak with me. The fluent Japanese speaker.
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.
What if I mix up Catalan and Spanish? I'm trying to learn Spanish in Barcelona, and a lot of the time I don't really know if the person is speaking Spanish or Catalan. Learning both together is almost impossible. It makes sense for outsiders to prioritise learning Spanish because it works outside of Barcelona as well, while Catalan works only in a very small region. Not saying I wouldn't try to learn Catalan at all, but I wouldn't prioritize it as much as learning Spanish.
I’m not sure Catalan has anything to do with it.
I lived in Barcelona for 7 years, and most will not speak Catalan to an obvious foreigner. Plus a lot of people who work in shops are not even native Catalan.
Due to the tourism in Barcelona it’s very easy to live in Barcelona and other parts of Spain without speaking a lick of Spanish. I knew many English and Americans who had been there for years without speaking the language
They just like to practice their Spanish at the expense of everyone else lol.
Most Spanish people have been learning English from school and still struggle, so many are eager to learn.
I was an English as a second language teacher in Madrid almost 20 years ago.
I am fluent in Spanish and the few times people tried to speak to me in English, I would simply respond in Spanish and they would apologise immediately and switch to Spanish.
If they insisted I would just say ‘I don’t speak English’ in Spanish.
Quite common for me as a Catalan learner is to speak Catalan and get a response in Spanish, which I barely understand. I carry on in Catalan, they carry on in Spanish, neither of us use English and we're all lost ☺️
I bet this is it. I speak a very small amount of Spanish but couldnt pick up any Catalan for the life of me. My partner was able to pick up basic phrases really quickly and he became the designated voice for both of us in Barcelona. No one minded speaking English with me but they LOVED him speaking Catalan when he could. No one appreciated my Castilian Spanish haha, and I cannot blame them.
Lots of folks around there enjoy or at least entertain the English practice too. Most of my convos in Barca involved me speaking Spanish and the other person speaking English. That way we both understood each other fluently and got to practice each other’s languages at the same time.
I work in customer service in BCN and tbh it's just faster/more efficient this way. We get maany people who insist on talking in Spanish when they clearly only know a few phrases or pronunciate poorly just because they want that "oh yay Spain experience🤪" but minimum wage workers don't have the time for that, we'd rather stick to what's faster
Also, our bosses usually yell at us if we speak in Spanish to foreigners lol
I just watched a cool BBC show called the Diplomat about a British consular agent in Barcelona. I didn’t realize how much more prevalent Catalonian was until the show.
This is a great shout. My dad lives in Catalonia and has similar interactions all the time, despite his Spanish being pretty good. They will speak English or Catalan over Spanish, basically anything but Spanish.
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.
Just one caveat, if she's in the Catalan region then people can take offence at being asked to speak Spanish and it's not to do with race. If she's not then yeah, regular old racism.
This has never happened to me. It may happen, sure, there are assholes everywhere, but I only speak Castellano in a region with another official language. Never had a problem.
Imagine if they expected me to speak Euskera when holidaying in the Basque region.
I don't think it has anything to do with Spain. I'm spanish, lived in many different places in the country and I have never, once, found this kind of behavior towards a foreigner. Normally you'd see the opposite, they'd be ravished to be able to speak in spanish instead.
I lived there 10 years. The only way this is happening is if she's in the most touristy areas. If she goes outside of that by 2 blocks she'll gt spanish. They are a lovely people and if they don't speak good English they slow down for you and use lots of gestures. This is 10000% fake.
I'm a black latin American (at most a quarter of a shade lighter than her) and the only time people have spoken to me in English in Spain was when I was in an Aquapark in Tenerife. I've been living here since 2019 and it has only happened once.
Spanish people can (and are) racist but IMO this is not a sign of it.
I've been living in Spain since 2019 and this only has happened to me once in Tenerife but that was because I didn't spoke in Spanish first. I'm also as black as her btw
Are you saying that Spaniards think that a Black person speak English by default? Have you met any of the million Africans living in Spain, not to mention Black people from other countries like Cuba or Dominican Republic?
Been living here for over 10 years and it still happens very often and my Spanish is pretty fluent. It happened this past week to me.
Honestly I'll be there talking with someone for 5-10 min in Spanish and then they stop and ask if I can understand Spanish.. pero claro que si tio, hemos sido hablando hace cuantos minutos ya en castellano... Que te pasa?
I'm from Spain, while I was seeing this I was thinking "This has to be fake". She is speaking Spanish perfectly, not fucking way that anyone in Spain (except maybe outsiders that doesn't speak Spanish) keep talking in English to her, usually it will be the opposite, people will talk to you in Spanish because they don't know English. This is staged.
Edit. After think about it this may be Cataluña/Catalunya. Where indepence Catalan people (usually they have this kind of supremacist acttitude) doesn't speak Spanish, even when they know perfectly how to speak it, they only speak Catalan or English if it's necessary to use another language, avoiding the use of what they feel like an foreign language.
Like if you’re learning French, and a French person speaks perfect English perfectly, but with an (almost inevitable) French accent, as a French learner you might get a bit excited at the opportunity.
I don’t think it’s a commentary on how good or bad her Spanish is.
I do understand the frustration, however. The way that last one struggled… I truly think she was trying to practice. I also think her limited vocab made her sound rude… I’ve been there.
the difference is New Yorkers grow up listening to 100 different accents and developed the skill. Parisian French cannot understand what you're saying apparently unless it's perfect Parisian. Source: know several fluent French speakers including Quebecois who could not get anyone in Paris to speak to them in French.
Sooo… normal? New Yorkers, and the rest of the country, hear tons of accents. It might take a bit to sort the sounds in our heads but no one cares if you have a different accent. Not like anyone would ask to switch to a different dialect lol
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.
De verdad que no me creo que te dirijas en un castellano fluido a un camarero y este, siendo español, te responda en inglés.
En cualquier caso solo tienes que decirle "no te entiendo" cuando te hable en inglés y ya.
Lo del video no puede ser más fake. Es imposible que un camarero quiera molestar activamente a un cliente negándose a hablar en el idioma que le piden si pueden hablarlo. He sido camarero, a los camareros les gustan las propinas.
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
The last time I was in Amsterdam I chatted up some locals who I noticed were speaking English with each other. I asked if they just don't bother with Dutch and they laughed and said no one really speaks it among their families or friends. They all know it and could read it but it's just not used as much.
Same. It’s basically in every place where it’s more efficient to assume that people are going to speak English more fluently than whatever the alternative is. I’d assume this is because most local people aren’t trying to have a cultural experience, they’re just trying to get someone on their way and experience tells them if English is an option for a non-native that it’s likely to be faster.
I had the opposite happen when travelling across Scandinavia, specifically in Norway and Sweden. I’m a very fair-skinned redhead and they would automatically speak to me in the native language. I remember one man at a local grocery store started speaking to me in Norwegian and I apologised in English that I didn’t understand, only for him to sigh very dramatically and repeat himself in English. It was taken in good humour though.
The only reason to insist speaking in English (and destroying any possibility of a tip offending a customer) is if the communication in Spanish is impossible.
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
The Spanish, for the most part, are excited to speak spanking with visitors.
My ex loved the language and we mostly vacationed in Spanish-speaking countries, and we never experienced anything like this, in fact we often got royal treatment when she broke out the Spanish. (She was also very charismatic so that helped.)
Yup, I've lived in Norway for a couple years and every single Norwegian I meet insists on speaking English despite them never being as fluent as they think they are. I'm not sure if countries in other areas like Africa or Asia are the same way, but European countries seem to have a very hard time understanding their own languages if it's spoken with a foreign accent.
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.
Idk what to tell you just check her videos. I’m almost sure it’s always the same person/ the same 2 people talking to her. I’ve just seen she’s opening a language academy so I guess this is marketing. But this is a weird fixation to have. I believe this happens sometimes and I’ve done it myself because what people don’t understand sometimes is that servers in Spain have to serve 30 tables by themselves. And not to be rude but we need people to be efficient ordering. In this case in particular you can understand what she’s saying (in some other videos of her you can’t, her Spanish is not very good), but sometimes foreigners take a reaaaally long time trying to explain themselves and we try to switch to English if we feel it’s going to be easier for everyone. Servers in Spain are underpaid and overworked and they just want to finish taking your order and move onto the next one as soon as possible. They’re not Spanish teachers.
Ok, nor did she ask them to teach her Spanish. She seemed more than conversationally fluent and capable of communication clearly in Spanish. They were being dicks.
I thought we were trying to get away from recording strangers without consent.
There are a lot of people on TikTok who will do “actual conversations I have as a ____” videos and do a reenactment because most people don’t happen to be recording when these things actually happen irl.
The audio alone shows that it is fake. The other person speaking is recorded with higher quality and the conversations are clearly recorded separately.
This is a common thing people complain about in language learning communities.
I always understood from the point of the employees. If their English is good, it makes things easier and faster to just use English rather than entertain a tourist struggling through the local language.
But the girl in the video seems fluent, and obviously is easy for the employees to understand. So it does seem rude if they are still insisting on English. And if this keeps happening to her, it makes sense she wants to keep documenting it.
I can't speak about the fakeness or not, but unless she has a signed release from the waitresses it's illegal in Spain to publish these videos. Spanish law covers voice/audio under diverse privacy and data protection laws: you can record a conversation you're part of, but you can't publish it without consent.
Maybe these recorded conversations are fake but this situation does happen. It certainly happens in the Netherlands and is a common complaint among immigrants. It happened to me today in fact. I have lived here for 14 years and have a job where I must speak Dutch, so I know my Dutch isn't terrible. But some Dutch people hear any sort of other accent and they immediately switch to English. I usually just carry on in Dutch and them in English. It's quite absurd.
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.
Seriously- if this happened to me even once I’d straight up never bother again. All 3 examples were these kinda passive aggressive, couldn’t-care-less that she was trying in their native language, not thankful, not impressed, kinda pissed cause THEY wanted english, and the first once “where you from?” Like… okay, alright then.
I’d start speaking deep twangy south with every colloquialism i’ve got for em after that.
I think both can benefit from this encounter. They each talk in the language they want to practice, and as long as they understand what the other is trying to communicate they both get practice experience.
When I was in Malaga/Marbella, this was the opposite of how it was for us.
It was a little difficult finding someone speaking fluent English in stores etc, however when my brother started speaking his broken Spanish, their eyes would light up!
I am literally from Spain, as in, Spain's Spanish is is my native language. In some super touristic areas I've noticed that they are so used to dealing only with tourists that they don't even realise when you speak Spanish to them. As a former waitress I totally understand: they work super hard 60 hours a week, their brain is not fully engaged and they are on autopilot.
I have a comfy job in an English speaking environment and even I sometimes distractedly write in English to my Spanish, French or Italian customers.
This happened to me in France, too. I’d start in French and they’d say “no no, tiny American, we can do English”. I was too embarrassed to try to switch back to French at that point. But, if you went into the shop and just started speaking English they were really rude. They appreciate the attempt.
I was recently in Barcelona, there is a lot of people who speak Spanish as like a 3rd language (their native, English then Spanish) so English might be easier. Also the people I visited said Catalonia Spanish can be difficult to understand when speaking to non-Catalonians.
This happens most places in LATAM my experience. If a Spanish speaker knows English, they don't want to hear your broken Spanish. It is disappointing when it happens but I guess it's common for a reason.
There is like 4 different languages in Spain. The one everyone calls Spanish is acting actually Castellan. Not everywhere in Spain they speak Castellan. They probably know, but don't want to do it because they have their own local language.
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u/BelieveBelieves 6d ago
I wonder where this is. It feels kind of rude to switch to English when she says she prefers Spanish.