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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

I think I've just experienced what it's like in England..

999 replies

Builtthiscityonsausagerolls · 25/11/2021 21:29

To not be a native English speaker.

My natural first language is Welsh. I went to an English university and obviously have a native proficiency in English but when chatting im more comfortable in Welsh.

So... I'm on a train in the Midlands with a friend. Had a chatty conversation with the conducter in English, guy sitting across from us very friendly. The we switched to Welsh and the difference in attitude was immediate. Felt very hostile. Very hard to explain, but as soon as we switched languages it became almost threatening?

I'm used to speaking Welsh in maybe more border towns (mainly chester) where its quite common, but thinking about it not in 'deep' England :) 😀

We keep going over it, but the change in attitude was definitely when we changed language. Is this really the experienced of non-English speakers? The hostility really was quite overt

OP posts:
MrsSkylerWhite · 25/11/2021 22:35

If I had been chatting happily to two people on a train and they suddenly switched to a language I didn’t understand, I’d feel uncomfortable too. I think that was rude. Why did you need to do that?

ChargingBuck · 25/11/2021 22:36

@LizzieSiddal

I really don’t understand why people would feel upset about what language someone is speaking in on a train.

Absolutely baffling.

Me neither @LizzieSiddal.

A native UK tongue, especially. PP seem to think OP owed this guy the privilege of continuing to speak his own language, purely because she'd been polite enough to acknowledge his presence, in English.

Total paranoia to say you'd assume you were now the topic of OP & her friend's private Welsh chat, too.

AmberLynn1536 · 25/11/2021 22:37

What did he do to feel threatened?

Onceuponatimethen · 25/11/2021 22:37

Yanbu op - I’m a fluent English speaker born here but I notice this if I chat to my df in his home language. Really interesting change of attitude from people

BuddhaAtSea · 25/11/2021 22:38

Jesus Christ, do you guys really think the OP is rude for speaking in another language? The entitlement of some people is astounding. Or is it something else going on here?!

OP, in answer to your question, yes, I have experienced what you are saying. It’s even worse if you have a foreign accent but actually speak in English. I would just ignore.

ChargingBuck · 25/11/2021 22:39

@KikoLemons

It;s actually horrible to sit next to or opposite people jabbering away in a language you don't understand. No escape, You're sharing a small space, it's deliberately exclusive, it's just noise. When people are speaking their own language - and I know from years of living abroad as well as from the UK, you don't engage with people in the same way. There's a sense of being in a bubble. There have been a lot of studies done about this sort of thing if you're interested
It's not deliberately exclusive, it's just people, speaking to each other. They don't owe some stranger a translation.

If you spent years abroad & felt this way, the onus was on you to learn enough of the native tongue to feel included, & be able to make polite conversation back.

elbea · 25/11/2021 22:40

@LittleDandelionClock I’m also from Chester but hear people speak Welsh, it’s not really that odd to hear people in town talking Welsh.

There are a few welsh speakers in our group of friends and Welsh is their first language. They often revert back to Welsh, especially when they’ve had a drink. We all work in the farming community though so I think maybe it’s more common for people from very rural backgrounds in North Wales.

MrsSkylerWhite · 25/11/2021 22:40

BuddhaAtSea

Jesus Christ, do you guys really think the OP is rude for speaking in another language? The entitlement of some people is astounding. Or is it something else going on here?!“

To me, that they were having a conversation in the same language then two participants switched makes a big difference.

SilentPanic · 25/11/2021 22:41

This is an attitude I've only ever experienced with monolingual English speakers. It's not rude. And you have to be a particular kind of egotist to think that people choose to speak to one another in a particular language because they must be talking about you. You're really not that interesting. Grin

Gobeithio i ti fwynhau dy drip, OP!

BeardieWeirdie · 25/11/2021 22:42

I live in Snowdonia and a trip to Chester for shopping or a night out is a jolly change of scene. I’ve been with Welsh speaking friends who of course will speak to each other when in Chester. My young daughter will sit on the train reading her Welsh book aloud. I very rarely go but have definitely heard other Welsh speakers in shops and cafes. I can only assume that the Chester dwellers here who claim they have never heard any Welsh don’t understand the language to know what it is when it is spoken around them.

Ohsugarhoneyicetea · 25/11/2021 22:43

Maybe he was a xenophobe, or maybe he felt affronted you didn't carry on making an effort. Entitled assholes everywhere.

DrWhoNowww · 25/11/2021 22:44

So some random man opposite you didn’t smile at you for the length of your train journey and you think it might be because you were talking Welsh?

Bloody hell, I hope not smiling on public transport isn’t a hostile action, I must be offending dozens of people each week.

Do you think it’s possible you are a touch paranoid OP? Have you had previous experiences that maybe coloured your perception this time? Because honestly from what you’ve said I cant see an issue.

Were you expecting anti-welsh sentiment in the Midlands? I’d have thought it unlikely given most of the Midlands seems to spend their holidays in mid wales so you’d assume they at least have a tolerance for the welsh, who knows though.

EileenGC · 25/11/2021 22:45

@MrsSkylerWhite

BuddhaAtSea

Jesus Christ, do you guys really think the OP is rude for speaking in another language? The entitlement of some people is astounding. Or is it something else going on here?!“

To me, that they were having a conversation in the same language then two participants switched makes a big difference.

Except that is not what happened. Did you even bother reading the OP properly?
Walkaround · 25/11/2021 22:45

The OP still hasn’t explained how someone they never even interracted with managed to communicate friendliness and then hostility? Or why they even noticed him in the first place? If he smiled because of something that was said in English to the conductor that he overheard and found entertaining, why would he keep smiling at the end of that conversation? It’s not as if eavesdropping on a conversation in a foreign language you don’t understand is particularly entertaining, so you’d feel a bit of a twat smiling away at it, anyway, just in case offence was taken that you no longer had anything to smile about.

tencent · 25/11/2021 22:45

If I had been chatting happily to two people on a train and they suddenly switched to a language I didn’t understand, I’d feel uncomfortable too. I think that was rude. Why did you need to do that? @ MrsSkylerWhite - because it is their native language! It is the language they feel most comfortable speaking to each other, so it is a natural occurrence. Do you speak more than one language? I do, Welsh as it happens and there are some friends I converse with in Welsh and to use English feels forced and odd. I would make myself do it if there were other friends present who did not understand Welsh, but not for a stranger on a train.

WomanStanleyWoman · 25/11/2021 22:45

@Builtthiscityonsausagerolls

We didn't speak to him. We spoke to the conductor. He sat across from us, friendly smile. When conductor moved on We continued our conversation in Welsh. On a train in Birmingham. Just us two. When we switched from English to Welsh there was a notable hostility. Most responses agree that this is fine. I find it baffling that I'm being rude to a stranger by speaking my native language to my friend.
I don’t think you were being rude if you hadn’t actually spoken to them (i.e. you weren’t suddenly excluding him). But if you didn’t speak to him before or after - if it was literally just a brief smile when you spoke to the conductor - maybe you’re overthinking it when it comes to any hostility.

Of course, you were there and I wasn’t - it could be that he does indeed have a problem with the Welsh, or the non-English in general.

SoniaFouler · 25/11/2021 22:46

@Builtthiscityonsausagerolls

We didn't speak to him. We spoke to the conductor. He sat across from us, friendly smile. When conductor moved on We continued our conversation in Welsh. On a train in Birmingham. Just us two. When we switched from English to Welsh there was a notable hostility. Most responses agree that this is fine. I find it baffling that I'm being rude to a stranger by speaking my native language to my friend.
OP, you worded it clumsily in your first post hence the majority YABU that you excluded someone. In your OP, you said:

So... I'm on a train in the Midlands with a friend. Had a chatty conversation with the conducter in English, guy sitting across from us very friendly. The we switched to Welsh and the difference in attitude was immediate

Which reads like the conductor was the guy sitting across from you, very friendly.

MilkTooth · 25/11/2021 22:46

@Waspsarearseholes

Blimey. It's rude to speak in your mother tongue to a friend because a perfectly strange English man on a train won't be able to understand your conversation? Bloody hell. The entitlement of English speakers is remarkable. There is a difference between indifference/disinterest and active hostility, which the OP is describing. It is in no way rude to speak the language you and the one other person you're with share.
This.

OP, what you experienced with the paranoia and suspicion of a certain kind of monoglot English speaker. Depressingly common, alas, as some responses to this thread show.

ChargingBuck · 25/11/2021 22:46

[quote LittleDandelionClock]@ChargingBuck

Not any more they don't. You're wrong.[/quote]
What - have they all taken a vow of silence since 2019, when I was last there?
Mae hynny'n drasig!

TiddlesTheTiger · 25/11/2021 22:46

@LittleDandelionClock

Oh and yeah, it was rude (IMO) to switch to Welsh just like that, when you started off speaking English . Why switch? Confused
He was just a stranger on a train, but he was maybe hoping to chat you both up.

It's normal, tho, to tune out other train passengers.

ChargingBuck · 25/11/2021 22:48

@WestendVBroadway

I don't actually have a problem with you speaking to your friend in your mutual native language. However what you experienced sounds similar to what me and DH experienced while holidaying in Wales. We entered a pub where 90% of people were conversing in English. As soon as the customers and staff heard our English accents they all switched to speaking Welsh. Well why shouldn't they, we were in Wales? However we felt a similar hostility to how you felt. It was patently obviously that they wished to exclude us as they had been speaking English when we got there.
Did they, aye?
LuluBlakey1 · 25/11/2021 22:50

My friend's son, from Newcastle, is at Durham University- he's a fresher- and has had many rude comments from snobby private school students from the south of England like 'Could you speak in English please- we can't understand a word you're saying'. They have been refused entries to social events in a particularly snobby college by these students who were 'on the door'. Two of his friends have left their halls of residence and moved back home because of the bullying over their accents. It doesn't have to be a foreign language you speak to experience rudeness in England, just a local accent will do it for some.

DdraigGoch · 25/11/2021 22:50

Noswaith dda!

You often hear people speak Welsh in Chester.
It's the closest city to North Wales... parts of Chester City are literally in Wales (the football ground for example)
Not that many people in that end of North Wales speak Welsh though (that said, I've got older relations near Wrexham who are among the few who do). Any Welsh you hear spoken in Chester is likely to be someone from west of the Clwyd visiting for the day.

A (Welsh-speaking) colleague's brother was in Anglesey listening to an Englishman ranting about people "coming over here and not learning the language". The Welshman's response was "yes, we've had that problem for years..." The Englishman didn't realise what he meant.

DdraigGoch · 25/11/2021 22:52

@Rno3gfr

I’m a Welsh speaker but English is the lannguage I use the most. However, when I’m with a friend who also speaks Welsh sometimes we don’t even realise then we’ve switched languages, we sort of switch back and forth a lot. I don’t really understand why it’s rude for people to switch back to their preferred language? You wouldn’t say that about two French people using their preferred language.
People would.
ChargingBuck · 25/11/2021 22:54

@BlueTouchPaper

guy sitting across from us very friendly

He was being very friendly and you cut him out. There was no need to switch languages. It's rude in company you've been friendly with.

How may more times?

Women don't owe random men friendliness.
Having a private conversation with a pal on a train is not rude.
Speaking Welsh is not unusual.

If OP wanted to converse in Swahili, she's at perfect liberty to do so without being scolded by a bunch of people for not checking if that's ok with English monoglots.