Language Etiquette

21 Jun 2003 By

Suppose you know someone whose native language is not English. They are perfectly fluent in English.

Is it offensive to address them in their native language? Does it make a difference if you don’t really know their native language very well or if you’re conversational in it?

This is someone you know, in a casual social setting. Not, say, a customer service interaction. You’re not assuming they don’t know English. You’re not even starting a whole conversation in another language. You might just substitute words and phrases here and there.

I ask because I find myself inclined to do that. It doesn’t usually make it out of my mouth, but the foreign words tend to pop into my head more when I know whomever I’m speaking to knows them, too. Is it silly to do that when you could be having a perfectly normal conversation in English?

I leave you with Adam Sandler’s Severe Beating of a High School Spanish Teacher.

  • http://www.davetepper.net Dave

    If you can speak halfway fluently in their language, then engaging them in their native tongue would be very charming and much appreciated. If all you know is a few words and phrases and there’s no other reason for you to speak their language, it might come across as trying to show off and failing miserably.

  • http://www.ireneQ.com irene

    Well, if you take someone like me – I’m from Malaysia (in South-East Asia), where the national language is Malay. But I’m actually much more comfortable speaking English because it so happens that I grew up speaking English at home, and I now use that language in all my professional dealings etc. So if the other person didn’t know Malay very well, and knew that I could speak English proficiently, I’d be wondering why on earth s/he didn’t simply use English to communicate with me. It would be so much more simple!

    But, if this person was trying to converse in Malay because s/he wanted to *learn* the language, I’d be more than happy to oblige.

    Not sure if that answers your question!

  • http://deridere.blogspot.com Kimberley

    Don’t spanish people sometimes speak in Spanglish? You could do that, I’m sure, but not knowing Spanish, I wouldn’t know. I’ve had people come up to me and start conversing in German, half of which I’ve got the gist of, the other half just went straight over my head. I mean, do I look German to you?

  • http://www.dawnpennington.com dawn

    When you catch yourself peppering your English with phrases of a different language, you might want to insert a comment that you love their language and are trying to learn it. That would be an entree into using it more liberally, and if you do it with an eagerness to learn more, I’d suspect they’d love to help. :)

  • http://www.swirlspice.com Erica

    Okay, that’s pretty much what I was thinking. Obviously trying to show off what you (don’t) know is a bad idea. Using the language in an effort to learn it is okay.

  • http://www.srah.net/weblog srah

    My boyfriend doesn’t like speaking Spanish to me, and it always annoyed me when people in France spoke English to me, because I felt insulted, like they didn’t think I was good enough to communicate in French.

    Of course, there’s a difference between breaking out in the language and popping words here and there, and it probably depends on the person you’re talking to. Personally, I would love to find someone to speak Franglais to. Give it a shot!