So many white people have this intense fantasy scenario where someone is talking shit about them while speaking another language. I think a lot of the “oh, you speak so fluently” videos appeal to that.
One of my chuddiest blood relatives, a lanyard-wearing middle manager, has a deep fixation on his coworkers “speaking foreign gibberish” around him. I don’t talk or hang around him anymore for good reason, but when I did, almost every conversation was about his most recent transcendent wine tasting experience, or his latest authentic foreign vacation where an authentic rug merchant sold him an authentic exotic rug while authentically haggling with him while offering him authentic homemade tea in his authentic quaint foreign dwelling, or him being really mad at his subordinates for “speaking foreign gibberish” in a way that makes him feel like they’re talking about him… which maybe they are because he’s a piece of shit.
his latest authentic foreign vacation where an authentic rug merchant sold him an authentic exotic rug while authentically haggling with him while offering him authentic homemade tea in his authentic quaint foreign dwelling,
It’s impressive how exactly similar the discourse you quickly sketched out in your original comment is to what I hear in from cretins coming back from airplane holidays.
Usually combined with insane stuff like “they live so simply”, “they have so little but they’re so happy”, “they really know how to relax”, “they’re so welcoming and authentic”, etc.
I guess “wine cave liberals” are universal across the empire
They like to muse about “simple” lives but are terrified of even the chance of ever having to live one like that. They get very defensive about their colonial treats, don’t they?
A related sort of colonial is when people get super defensive about how their food is perceived and then invoke the magic of curry and how great the curry is in their decaying imperial core… which may possibly be true but even by their own admission it is because of former imperial subjects relocating to the imperial core to make curry for the jellied eels and beans-on-toast people.
I actually had this experience once, but it was pretty light shit talking, and was a miracle they happened to use words I understood. Nobody was impressed, but we all laughed.
in my experience people are happy you try and learn their language (unless they’re Icelandic, Icelandic people often feel that the language is so small outside influence would destroy it)
One of the more annoying aspects of living in Japan was when people would assume I couldn’t speak Japanese and would desperately try to speak English, which they very clearly hadn’t used in absolute ages, and basically refuse to speak in Japanese no matter what. There were plenty of people that once I spoke Japanese to them you could see the relief and just went with it. Generally people were happy that I spoke Japanese.
So many white people have this intense fantasy scenario where someone is talking shit about them while speaking another language. I think a lot of the “oh, you speak so fluently” videos appeal to that.
One of my chuddiest blood relatives, a lanyard-wearing middle manager, has a deep fixation on his coworkers “speaking foreign gibberish” around him. I don’t talk or hang around him anymore for good reason, but when I did, almost every conversation was about his most recent transcendent wine tasting experience, or his latest authentic foreign vacation where an authentic rug merchant sold him an authentic exotic rug while authentically haggling with him while offering him authentic homemade tea in his authentic quaint foreign dwelling, or him being really mad at his subordinates for “speaking foreign gibberish” in a way that makes him feel like they’re talking about him… which maybe they are because he’s a piece of shit.
Real
energy
Plot twist: that relative really likes the American Psycho film in the worst possible blue curtain way.
When I rant about “wine cave liberals” I say so because I’ve spent too many years painfully close to Napa Valley.
It’s impressive how exactly similar the discourse you quickly sketched out in your original comment is to what I hear in
from cretins coming back from airplane holidays.
Usually combined with insane stuff like “they live so simply”, “they have so little but they’re so happy”, “they really know how to relax”, “they’re so welcoming and authentic”, etc.
I guess “wine cave liberals” are universal across the empire
They like to muse about “simple” lives but are terrified of even the chance of ever having to live one like that. They get very defensive about their colonial treats, don’t they?
Yup. “They have so little”, motherfucker that’s because we took it all
A related sort of colonial
is when 
people get super defensive about how their food is perceived and then invoke the magic of curry and how great the curry is in their decaying imperial core… which may possibly be true but even by their own admission it is because of former imperial subjects relocating to the imperial core to make curry for the jellied eels and beans-on-toast people. 
I actually had this experience once, but it was pretty light shit talking, and was a miracle they happened to use words I understood. Nobody was impressed, but we all laughed.
in my experience people are happy you try and learn their language (unless they’re Icelandic, Icelandic people often feel that the language is so small outside influence would destroy it)
One of the more annoying aspects of living in Japan was when people would assume I couldn’t speak Japanese and would desperately try to speak English, which they very clearly hadn’t used in absolute ages, and basically refuse to speak in Japanese no matter what. There were plenty of people that once I spoke Japanese to them you could see the relief and just went with it. Generally people were happy that I spoke Japanese.
learning someone’s language is to my mind the ultimate mark of respect. It’s a lot of work and you took it to reach out to them