Was I being unsociable and/or unreasonable?

[ReadTheFiles]

I saw an advert for Italian night classes, I was interested so messaged my small group of friends to ask if they wanted to join me in learning Italian. Most said they would so great, started arranging things.

One friend who is bilingual (she’s duel nationality) asked why we’d pay to learn Italian when she could just teach us her language at her home and she’d cook for us and it will be a weekly get together.

a few issues with this … whenever we’ve gone to her house with the intention of doing something in the past we have never got anything done as she spends the entire evening cooking.

I am very unlikely to ever visit her country so it seems pointless to me to learn that language. It’s also not a language used widely unless you’re actually from that specific country.

unfortunately my other friends have decided to do this instead. I’m going ahead with Italian. It hasn’t gone down well. AIBU? To be transparent, I don’t “need” to learn Italian either, I just like the sound of the language and will be going there on holiday next year

So the language she speaks isn't Italian? I can see why you still want to do your night classes, as that's the language you want to learn a little of!

But I think the weekly meet ups at your friend's place with others and food sounds great, can you do both?

Can you do both? Weekly get together with your friends sounds good, as does evening classes - win win!

Neither sounds unreasonable, tbh.

A night of catching up with friends plus food sounds great, although I doubt it can be kept to a regular weekly arrangement going forward, and also I expect not much language learning will actually take place.

If you're interested in learning Italian, not at all unreasonable or unsociable to go ahead with the course.

I don't think you're being unreasonable at all. Hopefully your arrangements for Italian classes with friends isn't too far advanced and you haven't paid for them already. I do think you should continue with the classes yourself as this is something you want to do. Good luck with your learning.

One's not a substitute for the other! So if you like meeting up with them then do both. If she's doing all the cooking plus teaching though (even if not much teaching is done), what does she get in return? Does she want paying?

I'd go to both things. You know she won't actually teach you any of her language anyway so just view it as a regulat dinner party.

You want to learn a particular language, and presumably in a more structured way than being taught by someone who isn't a language teacher, so obviously YANBU. But your friends aren't BU either, eg I wouldn't describe it as 'unfortunate' that they prefer your bilingual friend's suggestion. It's just their choice. And it was a nice offer by your bilingual friend which is saving your friends money.

If you want to learn Italian more formally but still catch up with your friends, you could do both, but YANBU if you don't fancy doing both.

Agree with others, just do both, as you know her thing will just turn into a generic dinner party anyway.

I think if someone's serious about learning a language it's not a good idea to have a friend teach them anyway, for the specific reason that lessons are more likely to be unstructured and just become a social hangout rather than maintaining focus on the language.

I had a friend who wanted to learn Spanish, so another friend who's Spanish offered to teach her for a cheap price. But the lessons weren't very good because they did often just descend into general chit chat, and my friend felt she wasn't learning much but felt awkward stopping the lessons as it was a friend.

No she doesn’t want paying, she just loves cooking for people and she is an amazing cook - she’ll literally cook 5 different dishes at once whilst also making sweet treats for the kids and savouries for the elderly neighbours bless her

Is this friend even able to teach language?

Lots of people seem to think that if you can do something then you can also teach it. This is not necessarily so. Especially if it's something you've never had actual lessons in yourself. Structuring lessons, measuring progress, all while keeping it challenging and interesting is a skill set all of its own.

Go to both

I agree with the others. They are two different things. You can carry on with your lessons to learn the language you are interested in, and still accept her invite for dinner and a chat. It sounds as if they others were not particularly interested in Italian evening classes to be honest, they just wanted to be friendly and sociable. It's not really an obvious thing to do with a group of friends! Your other friend is being a little odd saying "why go to classes when you can come to mine" but you may as well go along with it if you have time! Every week is a lot to do both though, so hopefully she doesn't mind if you don't come every time.

The other friends aren’t going to be going every week either, they will soon lose interest and as they won’t be paying for it, it will soon tail off. Whereas with your formal lessons you are committing to go every week as you’ve paid for the course