Whenever I’ve been around a group of people from another country and they know I don’t speak their language, they’ve always been nice and tried their best to speak English so I wouldn’t feel left out.
The guy you’re about to hear from definitely DID NOT have that kind of experience…and he wasn’t happy about it!
Read his story below and see if you think he was out of line for how he reacted.
Start now!
“I am from Galicia a region in Spain that speaks a language that is very similar to Portuguese and my girlfriend is from Barcelona, which is in Catalonia. She speaks Catalan.
We live in Madrid and study here in university. Everyone in Spain speaks Spanish (except for foreigners) pretty much on a native level from education, media, and exposure.
There is no such thing as a Spaniard who only speaks Basque, Catalan or whatever unless they’re 90+ years old from some small village and even then they would still know the basics of Castilian Spanish. I know I’m going to get some comments about this.
There’s a problem…
Ok so here’s the conflict, people from Catalonia are often very nationalistic and will sometimes refuse to speak Castilian. I was in Valencia and some woman said “SPEAK PROPERLY SPEAK VALENCIAN” (a dialect of Catalan) when I asked her for directions in Castilian Spanish.
My girlfriend invited me over to her parent’s house in Barcelona. They talked amongst themselves for a bit in Catalan, I understood like maybe half or 2/3s of it. They greet me in Catalan and I say in Castilian I don’t speak Catalan, I’m from Galicia. They say something in Catalan to each other which I think was negative.
He was feeling left out.
We eat dinner, her sisters and their husbands are there, and are discussing things in Castilian and they would often say things to each other in Catalan which I thought was rude but I let it go.
They kept switching to Catalan during our conversation and I politely reminded them like 5 times I don’t speak Catalan. They would go back to Castilian but then switch back to Catalan.
I go outside to take a breath of fresh air, girlfriend joins me, and I ask her what the **** is her family’s problem, why do they keep excluding me from the conversation and she says they don’t like speaking Castilian.
He wasn’t having it.
I told her that’s nonsense, I heard her dad speak in Castilian to someone in Peru during his zoom meeting (he took a 30 minute zoom call while I was there and the mom was preparing food) and not once did he switch to Catalan.
We join back and they start asking me my opinion about things, i respond, i ask them questions and they just respond back in Catalan and respond to each other’s responses to that in Catalan and I just had enough.
I said, “I’m leaving now, the food was good but I just can’t stand the rudeness, I told you so many times I do not speak Catalan. I don’t feel welcome so I’m going, goodbye” and the father says “how rude, we prepared such a good meal for you and you are leaving it unfinished, we spent hours on this”.
He put his foot down.
They made an entire goose and like 5 side dishes. I said “I told you i don’t speak Catalan, why should I be here when you can’t even respect me enough to speak in a common language? I never spoke to you in Galician, Portuguese English or Romanian, **** you ********”.
I grabbed my stuff and left. 15 missed calls from GF last night, stayed at friend’s parent’s home nearby.
Haven’t talked in a day, I don’t know what to do now.”
Reddit users shared their thoughts.
One person said this is RUDE.
Another individual said he’s NTA.
This person said his GF is an *******.
One Reddit user isn’t buying what this guy is selling…
Hmmm, that’s a tricky one.
If you thought that was an interesting story, check this one out about a man who created a points system for his inheritance, and a family friend ends up getting almost all of it.
Source: https://twistedsifter.com/2024/04/his-girlfriends-family-made-him-feel-left-out-at-a-dinner-so-he-decided-it-was-time-to-get-out-of-there/