A long time ago when I lived several years in
Western Europe, I learned (among many other things) that people there are
taught that when you're in a conversation with people and someone joins the
group who doesn't understand your native language, it's considered impolite to
continue speaking in that language. You will have to switch to the language the
newcomer can understand – even when you're saying something to another person
that doesn't concern the newcomer.
By today, that nonsense has already spread to my
country too. In the olden days when Estonia was ruled by the Russians, one
occasionally heard stories about Russians whinging about the Estonians
continuing to speak Estonian in their presence (although personally I never had
such an experience), but we couldn't care less about what the Russians liked or
disliked. However, when a suggestion comes from the north or the west, most
Estonians are only too eager to adjust their behaviour in accordance with it,
hoping thereby to become more "European". Lacking national pride
(furiously hate Russians as they may), they fail to realize this
"politeness" is simply a cover for the imperialist nations' habit for
treating the members of smaller nations as their inferiors. The overwhelming
majority of native speakers of major world languages such as English, Spanish
and Russian hold it for self-evident that they don't have to bother studying
foreign languages – everyone else have to study theirs.
In the book "Oracle Bones" by Peter
Hessler (an excellent book, by the way, heartily recommended), the author
explains how the so-called Chinese language consists in fact of several
"dialects" which are mutually unintelligible and could, from the
linguistical point of view, be considered separate languages, were it not that
they all share a common written language standard. In Mr. Hessler's words, the
situation in many regions in China is like if the English would have to learn
Dutch in order to be able to write.
Now, that's a brilliant analogy to make the
language situation in China easier to grasp for the foreigners. Surely every
native English speaker can imagine how horrible it would be if it were
impossible to write in English and they'd have to learn Dutch and do all their
writing in it, for their lives long.
However, had Mr. Hessler put it the other way
around: "the Dutch would have to learn English in order to be able to
write", I'm sure it would have left many of his readers raising their
eyebrows and asking: "Something wrong with that?"
Seriously, have you ever seen an
English-language movie where an Englishman tells the members of his family:
since we have a guest from (for example) France, we shall all speak French with
each other in order to be considerate of our guest? Even one? I don't think so.
It's always the foreigners who make it a point of speaking English for their
English guest's sake, who (of course) doesn't speak the local language and
never would. Foreign guests in England always speak English. They just do.
Of course, one reason to that is simply to spare
the viewers the inconvenience of listening to foreign speech and reading subtitles. It's
practical. However, it also reflects the prevailing attitude in the
English-speaking world. Like that British couple's story who have been going to
vacation in the same sea resort in Spain year after year, often buying fruits
in that little shop on the corner, and they tell their friends dismayedly how
the foreigners are so impolite: "Can you imagine that it's four summers already
that we've been going there, and the shop personnel still
hasn't bothered to learn English!"
Or look at that American guy who contacted me
after a discussion about Russia on a travel forum some years ago. He asked me
recommendations on what to see in Moscow. When I, after giving him some tips,
also recommended he learn to read the Russian characters, he casually brushed
if off on the grounds that he hadn't needed the local alphabet in any country
he had ever been. I just can't believe that attitude. I know only too well how
much you'll miss in Russia when you can't even read the alphabet, let alone
speak the language. Yet that English-speaking travel enthusiast wouldn't even
consider that for one second. Neither did I see any point in wasting my time
trying to convince that supremacist jerk.
To cut the long story short – may I suggest
you shut up with your sanctimonious rhetorics about being polite and speaking
the language everyone can understand, because what you really mean is you
expect other people to speak your native language, never the other way around.
By the virtue of your utter lack of respect for other ethnic groups, you
believe to be in the right of demanding that their members make your life
easier, while you have no obligations towards them apart from benevolently
acknowledging their efforts to master the divine language of yours which'll
take them a step closer to becoming proper human beings.
Logically, more knowledge should result in
more choice, more freedom, more power. It seems to be different in the
English-speaking world – the lazy and stupid hold themselves for superior and
think that the industrious and smart have to serve them. He who has made the
effort of studying foreign languages is expected to be considerate of the
bastard who wouldn't. That's rubbish.
Remember: if you are too haughty to bother
studying foreign languages, it doesn't create an obligation for the rest of the
humankind to converse in yours just so you can understand them. Your not understanding us is always your problem. Never try to make it our problem. If people
around you are talking to each other in a language you don't understand, don't
fucking dare to accuse them of impoliteness. Accuse yourself of imperialist
arrogance. Take a language corse and make at least a modest effort to
contribute your share to our mutual understanding. After you've acquired some basic level in a couple of
foreign languages, we can begin to discuss what is
polite and what isn't.
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