My brother is annoyed that I have learnt his wife's language

[poochuspoochus]

My brother got married yesterday and they have been together for seven years. I really love languages and although it wasn't a language I knew at all before I was introduced to his now wife I find it to be a really interesting one. So over the last seven years I have picked up enough to be able to speak quite well coversationally. I don't think he realised how much I had picked until yesterday as we are in sil's country for the wedding. He has sent me a message this morning saying it was a bit weird how I have attached myself to his wife's culture and he thinks I am obsessed with his family. Firstly why is he worrying about this the day after his wedding. Also I really wasn't making a big show of speaking the language just chatting to people normally. There's really no backstory to this as far as I'm aware. I really don't him to be upset but he's the one being weird isn't he?

Yeah, god forbid that professional singers don’t deliberately sing Happy Birthday in a tone-deaf drone in case it ‘makes people look at you’.

Funnily enough I experienced something similar at a wedding. The bride and groom had chosen ‘Bread of Heaven’ as one of the hymns as it was a favourite of the father of the bride. Just so happened there were 2 professional opera singers in the congregation who took the opportunity to let it rip, harmonies and all. It was quite a performance and nearly everyone stopped singing towards the end as we couldn’t hear ourselves. It was amusing to me, but I’m not sure everyone felt the same way!

I think it’s incredible that you’ve managed to pick the language up so well, it’s something I’ve always struggled with. However I know several multilingual people and they can just get languages that much easier - their brains are wired for it

I’d hazard a guess that he was embarrassed that you’ve learnt the language to a higher level than he has. Surely though it must have made the wedding easier and a good chunk of guests weren’t then expected to speak English to accommodate you all in their country 🤦🏼‍♀️

I’ve seen the idea of thunder-stealing mentioned quite a lot recently on various threads, particularly around weddings, and it often seems to be a sensitive point. To me, it’s not something that could objectively be reasonably ascribed to using a foreign language that you know, unless that language is being used to deliberately make another person feel bad, or laugh at or denigrate the non-speakers. If someone does something like turn up in an actual wedding gown or interrupt the speeches, then that would be an example to my mind of stealing someone’s thunder.

I don’t think the suggestion that the OP learnt the language in order to impress at the wedding holds up based on the info - didn’t she say she started learning it seven years ago when her brother and fiance first got together? That is, of course, unless they have been engaged all of that time (or I’ve misremembered after a long day!).

Well it can make for a lovely sound, but the risk a professional singer has to accept in that situation is that if other people don't actually think it's appropriate for the attention to shift to you, away from the birthday person or the bride and groom or whoever, then those people might not think very well of you for having chosen to do that on this particular occasion. Occupational hazard.

Is it a British thing? I’ve seen frankly lunatic examples of outrage at ‘thunder-stealing’ on Mn, as @UnintentionalArcher says — including things like getting married in the same year as someone else, getting married on a family member’s birthday (this had an OP athrill with outraged sadness that May 3rd would no longer be sacred to her, but to Dave and Lisa’s wedding anniversary, the grabby bastards), getting married on a family member’s wedding anniversary, some kind of cordon sanitaire around pregnancy announcements etc etc.

And yet there’s often a sense on Mn that ‘attention-seeking’ is the worst social sin of all.

Are you all so terribly starved for attention that you can’t bear one of the few allowable moments in the limelight (engagement, wedding day, pregnancy announcement) to deviate from you for a single second?

I think Brexit really has shrunk the horizons of too many people. Being part of the EU helped offset some insular traits.

Same, seems like emotional insecurity of being a monoglot.

How did your brother not know?! I can see how it might have come across as a big flourish on the day that you’d secretly learnt the language.

I think this attitude is very recent and I have never come across it in real life (I'm quite old).

OP, I'm dying to know what the language is 🙃

I would love it to be Xhosa, and for the OP to have all the different clicks down fluently.

I think there is a lot of space between tone deaf drone and actually harmonising a random happy birthday. Just singing it in tune would do the job nicely 😄

My mothers best friends husband seemed to have a great interest in and ability to learn languages, mastering Arabic in his 70's

It seems you have the same skills, congratulations!

I just watched a quick YouTube video on how to pronounce the clicks.
It's very cool

I”d love to know the language you learned! My boyfriend of 3.5 years is Iranian and I really need to try and learn more. Good for you as I appreciate the effort it takes but I do also believe you must have worked hard to speak conversationally at a social function where accents and slang would have been spoken widely. I am still at the stage where it has to be very slow and clear.

Edited to add: I think your brother was wrong to say what he did but was probably very embarrassed at not dedicating time to it. (And we do get lazy when the other half of the duo speaks excellent English)

I also love learning different languages, and also would like to know which language she speaks. He sounds jealous or expects her to speak only English in this country.

There's some incredibly weird posts on this thread.

God forbid OP enjoying learning, or wanting to find out more about other cultures. If anything she brother is insecure because his own lack of effort is being shown up. It's polite to speak to people in their own language.

Not everything is 'attention seeking', sometimes people just want more out of life 😎

Omg your brother is a Grade A twat. YADNBU.

I scan read the thread title and thought it said he was annoyed because you HADN'T learnt the language and I immediately thought how unreasonable he was being for that..now I read it properly and see he is annoyed because you HAVE learnt the language and I think he is more unreasonable than ever now!!

OP I think its really lovely that you learned the language and surely shows how much you've embraced your SIL that you've put the effort in to learn her language. Not RTFT but I agree with some of the first replies that the REAL issue is that its shown up how little he's tried himself to learn his DWs language.

I do wonder if he's had a little raised eyebrow as in "well your sister made the effort" from either DW or the in laws and is taking it out on you and tried to make out that you're "obsessed" rather than just taken a healthy interest and made a bit of effort with your family, after all if they have kids your future DNs may be bilingual too.

So yeah YANU, he's just a bit embarrassed. Xx

I can speak 2 other languages. (Apart from English.) I don't expect you to believe that though.

And I do not care. 😃

I just find someone learning their brother's wife's language - and not sharing the fact they are doing so with anyone - to show off at the (brother's) wedding odd, attention-seeking, and thunder stealing.

I'm entitled to my opinion. However much it might annoy you and some others. We don't all have to share the same opinion, and I don't deserve to be berated and talked down to because I DARE to have a different view to the majority on the thread.

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Hello, sorry for the late update but I was posting in my small amount of downtime yesterday. I'm afraid I'm going to keep the language to myself just so I can give an update without people from the wedding recognising us. I wish it was Xhosa!

Db responded to my message yesterday only saying 'okay, see you later' as there was another post wedding celebration yesterday evening. When we arrived he just gave me a hug but he didn't say anything.
We managed to have a chat later and it was all a bit garbled but basically someone had said something to him saying if they have children me and his wife can speak to each other in the language so the baby will pick it up. He got himself in tailspin that he wouldn't be able to communicate with his children and would be crap dad. It didn't make a whole lot of sense because they live in the uk and would be around a lot more English speakers. Also he feels bad that he hasn't managed to learn. He apologised for the message. I said sorry if it looked like I was trying to show him up. He said it didn't but although he knew I had dabbled over the years he had no idea I would be able to converse so easily with people. I was still pretty baffled but glad to have made up.

Me, my family and our parents are heading back to the uk today so didn't expect to see them but they asked to meet us for coffee this morning. The lovely news is that two days before the wedding they found out they are expecting. I don't know if this was a bit of a surprise but I think this explains the tailspin!

Tbis is lovely OP. Why don't you offer to help him learn too?? He might appreciate it he can do it in secret then surprise his wife!!

Congratulations poochuspoochus on learning your SiL‘s mother tongue. People do not realize how hard it is to live in a foreign country where others do not speak their mother tongue. You are going to be such a good friend for your SiL.
Moreover, you will be able to benefit from feeling included in their family get togethers not having to wait for translations minutes after the laughter of the joke has died down.
Your DB has had plenty of time to learn first hand from his private, one to one, personal teacher.