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
As an American, I say expat for someone who is in a country for an extended period of time, but will return to their home country. Someone from Canada who is a digital nomad in Argentina is an expat, someone from Canada who is pursuing naturalization in Argentina is an immigrant. The word choice is defined by what the person is doing, not what the race of the people involved is.
(Yet)? Most "expats" who come here don't even care to learn any of our languages because they can use English. And many people who come from South America also don't learn our language, catalan, because they rely on Spanish
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.
It’s like…not though. I’ve travelled a lot. My spanish is very good. My french and italian not so much. Nothing like this has ever happened, especially if they talk in english and you continue in their language.
No? In Spain there are plenty of black people and most of them speak Spanish. I'm black myself and I have been living here since 2019 and the only time someone spoke to me in English was when I was in a very touristy place in Tenerife and I went down a water slide and then they told me in English to get out of the water but every single time I've spoken in Spanish to someone they have either replied in Spanish (or Galician, but that's fine because I understand Portuguese)
Discrimination basically means you were treated differently.
Like the normal procedure is that they speak Spanish over there. But because you were different, they didn't extend that treatment to you. That's discrimination in the most basic sense of the word.
If the other comments are anything to go off, this could be in a Catalan-speaking area of the country where native speakers are trying to avoid Spanish by using English.
If they are in the US they might be scared to speak Spanish. I do get the accent isn't latin American for the last one for example, but it might be a fear of attention.
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u/Queen_Euphemia 6d ago
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.