A woman has not been loving her life as overseas — and it’s apparently all because of how she says locals have been treating her. The woman posted on the U.K.-based forum Mumsnet that she is from the U.K. and lives in another country where she has been for “many years.”
Adding that Overseas woman can “speak the local language fluently, although accent-ridden and dialect-filled,” she said she feels like a physical misfit, because I am “tall and blond (the wrong sort of tall, the wrong kind of blond); here is everyone small and dark.” And few ever speak to her in their native tongue.
I’m sick and tired of the shop assistants, etc, who will insist on speaking English to me after I’ve asked them a question in perfect local. Obviously, there is no need to change language,” she said. “I understand they’re all excited to show off their English or whatever, want good customer service, but it just makes me feel more and more like I’m being reminded that I’m foreign and need to get back in my box.
“I have asked people a few times if they’re talking to me in English because I must look foreign, and that’s shut them up, but my partner (a local) told me that’s rude,” the Overseas woman added.
Whenever she asked if she’d be in the wrong to suggest that the locals “openly tell me to go back to my home country,” the Overseas woman was awarded with pushback from other Mumsnet users.
“One helpful commenter wrote, “Don’t get so personal. Just give it up. And definitely not worth a place in your head.” Another said: “You keep speaking the local language, but please don’t stop being polite.]. Just smile and stick with it.”
Yet another Overseas person chimed in to say, “Yes, it’s a bit like that. One way to look at it: If you don’t care what the locals think and just carry on with your business speaking as you naturally would then they can’t really begrudge you.” Meanwhile still others offered some advice. Don’t decipher each word like a connoisseur If you speak the local language fluently Other people should have no reason to reply in perfect English.”
“Yes: Keep on replying in their language and perhaps be polite enough to tell them that they are speaking excellent English indeed,” the commenter continued.
