[Jamie89]

Originally Posted by Ammi

..personally I would take it as a bit of a free lesson in that language and be very interested in it/learning some of it myself...there's no greater way to learn a language than to be among it/have it spoken around you...as a nation, I don't think that enough emphasis and time is placed on learning languages at school/primary school ages I mean, but thankfully that's changing now as Modern Foreign Languages are being given more time than they ever have, right from Reception age..

I started learning Cantonese recently so I always perk up around Chinese people (hoping they're speaking it) to test myself if I can understand anything lol.

I love languages and seeing how different people communicate etc. But I agree with what some people are saying about how if their intentions are rude or exclusionary, then that's obviously bad. I think sometimes though it's just a 'home comforts' thing. One of my friends studied Spanish at uni and lived in Spain for 3 years (and could speak fluent Spanish) but sometimes when he'd meet an English speaking person he'd talk in English with them, just because he so rarely had the opportunity to do it, and it was like a 'warm fuzzy feeling' sort of thing for him, rather than it being because he didn't like being in Spain, or didn't want other people to understand him or anything. There's a natural, instinctive 'fear of the unknown' that I think is innate to all of us, which is probably why it makes us feel uncomfortable sometimes when we can't understand what people are saying, but realistically I think it's rarely done with sinister intentions.