First of all, the double standard. Anyone who's been an ESOL learner in an English speaking country knows what I'm talking about. Even if your grammar and usage is perfectly understandable, a bunch of crackers will laugh at you behind your back for having the slightest accent. Even if you don't, you have to deal with the delightful "compliment" of "wow, you don't even sound like <your ethnic group>!" But Mark Zuckerberg muddles his way through a mandarin interview with a hideous accent and everyone starts being amazed at how "fluent" he is.

Second, the only reason this shit even exists is because so many fucking white people live in these places and don't even bother trying to learn the language. If that wasn't the case, people wouldn't go around assuming that white people don't speak the language. You know what happens when you don't speak perfect English in an Anglo country? People call you racial slurs and tell you to "go back to your country". Whitey gets monetization, PoC get racism.

Lastly, there's always an element of belittling the PoC involved. At best its a sort of "haha, you're stupid for assuming". You've also got the "I've cracked your secret code, deceitful yellow person," angle. The absolute worst are the smug assholes who try to correct PoC on their own fucking language as if all English speakers adhere perfectly to textbook usage.

During COVID these assholes became somehow even more insufferable because they couldn't sexpat to their favored destinations so they started harassing immigrant communities in their home towns. I saw one asshole absolutely butcher trying to order food in Japanese at a Japanese restaurant in the US. When the waitress asked him to order in English he actually had the nerve to ask her "so you're not actually Japanese, are you?" Like he just cracked a massive illuminati conspiracy.

[–] frick@hexbear.net 1 points 2 years ago

i saw an interview with some guy who worked for I think Olympus (the camera company) in some documentary about the corruption in the mid-2000s. Anyway he was a white guy who at least couldn't speak english, his interview was done in japanese. This guy should start a youtube channel where he goes to anglo countries and does "oh you thought i could speak the language but i actually can't!" content

[–] Dirt_Owl@hexbear.net 1 points 2 years ago

Yeah you hit the nail on the head. Shit is so arrogant.

[–] MasterShakeVoice@hexbear.net 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Is Vietnamese harder than, say, Polish?

[–] CliffordBigRedDog@hexbear.net 1 points 2 years ago

there really isnt an absolute ranking for language difficulty

a russian speaker or something will obviously find polish easier