to feel excluded by the use of a foreign language by family members?

[DonkeyDaddy]

My wife is bilingual. Her mother has come to stay and whilst I was sat in the kitchen sending an email and my wife was folding some clothes up, my mother-in-law walked in and started talking to my wife in their native tongue, in which they continued to chat. They are both fluent in both languages and could have flipped between the two at will. There was nobody else present other than the three of us.

I felt excluded and not especially well treated. Am I being unreasonable to object? Or am I just being sensitive (or insensitive to them)?

Mandarin and Cantonese share some vocabulary but the grammar is totally different and the pronunciation is different. They aren't mutually intelligible but people say they overlap the way Spanish and Italian do. (I don't speak Mandarin or Spanish so I don't really know).
MILs DP is a Mandarin speaker who knows no Cantonese or English. MIL speaks Mandarin as her 4th language and they seem to manage fine but no-one else in the family speaks Mandarin.
MIL picked up Mandarin when she lived in Australia and as she was only there a year I'm guessing that speaking 2 Chinese dialects already helped (although she's very clever and very talkative)

Hardly jumped on MsMischief ! I said I didn't understand it, you explained. Job done.

If people are worried they might be talking about you in another language, they can easily do that behind your back

You said you didn't understand why I 'wouldn't bother' to learn my MIL's language. I had at no point said I couldn't be bothered so I thought you assuming it was rude. Other people picked up on it too, implying I was refusing to learn it because it's not a major world language or because it's a non European language. It's spoken by less than 1% of the population where MIL is from and varies from area to area with only some overlap between the dialects. The equivalent would be an Italian woman who speaks English learning Gaelic to communicate with her Gaelic speaking MIL who also speaks English and Italian. Except Gaelic is a written language with resources available for those who want to learn.

I think yabu. I grew up with this so seems normal to me. The only way round it is to learn the language yourself which is what I did. You can't really expect your wife to stop talking to her mother!

Has the OP not been back? This would make a GREAT article...

Whilst I can understand how you feel, I think you are being a bit unreasonable to expect them to chat in English all the time. It would probably feel strange to them to not talk in the language in which they've talked to each other all their life, and they were just chatting rather than excluding you from a long conversation over dinner, for example. Your wife probably enjoys being able to speak her mother tongue sometimes.

My dad, although he's been in the UK for most of his adult life, is originally from another country. We weren't brought up bilingual - the only things my dad really taught us to say were hello, goodbye, the numbers up to ten and "I like olives". When we went to his home country as children and stayed with his mum, they would chat to each other in their mother tongue, even though she spoke fluent English. My sister and I couldn't understand what was being said. The same applied at extended family gatherings, which are probably boring enough for children even if you do speak the language. At about 13 I did try to learn his language but found it very difficult (parents don't necessarily make good teachers) and I've since learned a little in adulthood, though now regret I didn't spend some time in the country learning it properly.

When travelling in the past I did meet a few Swedish people who would speak English amongst themselves, saying that it wasn't polite to speak Swedish if they were in a group of English people, but that's a slightly different situation.

My DH doesn't speak my language either. He's sort of passively interested in my country and culture - will happily tag along on trips or listen to me talk about it - but has never shown any initiative that I can remember.

It used to bother me a little, because for me trying to understand his background was so important. It came across as not caring. He just says he's "bad at languages" and bases that on old school experiences, but obviously he just hasn't seen the need to really try, imo. We've been together for 14 years now and I know him to be very caring and loving and intelligent and generally a great person to share a life with. So like he happily accepts a wife who will talk whatever language she pleases in her own home, I've accepted that he's chosen not to learn mine (or any other), apart from a couple of phrases. It doesn't actually affect our lives, after all. Still, if one day he decided otherwise and even made a bit of an effort, I'd probably cry out of sheer happiness.

I'm surprised by some of the comments here that indicate you are BU. I don't think you are at all. As someone who has lived on 3 different continents including currently, there is a well accepted code of etiquette when in the company of mixed language speakers. Basically everyone talks in the most commonly spoken language of the people present whenever possible. In your case both your wife and MIL are fluent in English so they were being rude and exclusionary to not speak English infront of you.

On the other hand, my friend cannot converse much at all with her MIL who only speaks Vietnamese, she finds this to be very peaceful and relaxing though!

The well accepted code of etiquette I'd say would be speaking my own language when I fucking well feel like it and to my own family members as I wish.

Of course the OP's wife wasn't being rude speaking to her mother in her own language.

But I've only lived in 4 different countries. Maybe continents get to pull rank.

I think we should get a load of those expats who ship out to Malaga for the winter over.....and ask them if they speak Spanish in front of Spanish people despite being Brits.

They would, quite rightly, laugh in our faces and say "what do you think?"

I guess, as other posters have said, the YANBUs must be monolingual themselves. Bless.

I would love the OP to come back and tell us how he intends to communicate round the dinner table with his wife and children both present though. Perhaps they all do Esperanto or something.

Or more likely he insists they all speak his language.

Yabu. They communicate best together 'n their forSt language.

This happens all the time in our family when we are with in laws. I found it hard at first, but actually immersion is the best way to take on a new language...I learned the second language very quickly. :)

DH speaks French to his family. It doesn't bother me except when MIL switches to French after starting a conversation with DH and me in English then switches to French at the point I say something not entirely in agreement with her.

But that's because she is deliberately cutting me off which is rude. (I do understand French well enough to get what she goes in to say about me without DH needing to translate although I'm not sure she realises).

OP's example happens here a lot and doesn't bother me at all.

presumably it isn't 'foreign' to them.
learn it. why not?

but some languages are difficult to learn when you are older, being in UK it is fairly easy to access french german spanish mandarin urdu arabic lessons but very hard to access lessons in hungarian, bulgarian, bantu, flemish, aborginal australian etc,

also it is often difficult to pick up language from a DP as they prefer to speak in common language as time together too short to spend learning the language

I enjoyed german at school but it took about 10 times more effort to get C at "O" level in German than A in maths and physics, I am not good at picking up accents etc possibly because i'm tone deaf and rubbish at music I would have no idea if someone played wrong note, also have lived in scotland for almost 20 years and still can't say the "ch" sound in loch properly i really can't hear any difference between loch and lock but i know there is one

Hmm unless you learn the language at fluent level it wont help much. If you learn 'a little bit' you will misunderstand things and get offended lol. And if you try to participate they will have to slow down and speak in very simple way in order to include you.

I always feel a little uncomfortable speaking to DW in English in front of my non-English-speaking in-laws.

I'm another one in the YABU camp. DH is bilingual, but I am trying to learn his first language. MiL and DSiL both speak excellent English but when they stayed with us for 7 weeks they spoke in their native language a lot of the time -Afrikaans. It was good for me and didn't bother me in the slightest. They often laugh at me when I attempt to speak their language but it's affectionate if that makes sense. They say it's funny to hear a white British woman speaking in slang Afrikaans as they do, My accent is quite good, apparently!

I just think it is part of being in a cross-cultural relationship. Learn the culture, respect it etc and try to learn at least a little of your partner's language.

Ok, so an English woman lives in Paris with her French husband. English MIL comes to visit but should speak French to her own daughter while the husband is in the room reading the paper? Really?

English expats in Spain visiting other English expats switch to Spanish while at the hairdresser because the hairdresser does not speak English?

OP: if it bothers you, learn their language. If you cannot devote the time and effort then accept you will not understand (through your own choice).

I speak fluent English as do my children, I still speak to them in welsh as its our 'natural' language of communication, I do it without even thinking about it and I do it when there are non-welsh speakers (like their dad) around.
I think the OP is being unreasonable to expect them to speak something un-natural to them just to make him feel better.

What SuiGeneris just said.

Somehow it never seems to apply to English speakers, does it?

cory Well, you know, those furriners, it's like they naturally have this magic ability to switch into English, innit?

And English isn't a furrin language to anyone, right?

I haven't read the whole thread but I don't think YABU. My wider family are Welsh speaking, my immediate family don't speak Welsh. We all live in Wales and so my Welsh language family are speaking the mother tongue of the country we live in. I don't object to that. The thing I have a problem with is purposefully excluding someone by talking in a language they don't understand. It is the same as if they were whispering in my opinion.

Just looked it up, it seems that OP's wife is British Chinese (Hong Kong). From looking at his wife's posts, I would guess the m-i-l moved her over 30+ years ago from Hong Kong.

I assume that the wife is a native English speaker and the mother-in-law fluent but still has an accent.

When I was at university I shared a flat with a British-born Chinese girl. When her mother came over, they spoke Cantonese together. I would have been had they spoken English together...