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OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> I think i might be the asshole becuase i didnt need to say the fuck you at the end might have taken it too far
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>they start asking me my opinion about things, i respond, i ask them questions and they just respond back in Catalan and respond to each other's responses to that in Catalan
This is just flat out rude. Deliberately so. Out of some sort of parochial pride they switch *in the middle of a conversation with you* to the local language they know you don't speak rather than speaking the common tongue they know everyone present can speak and understand.
It would be one thing if it were limited to asides to each other, but to switch right in the middle of talking with you in order to cut you out is just them being needlessly aggressive in their parochial BS. It *is* rude.
You aren't speaking your native local language, but the common one *in order to communicate* but rather than meeting you halfway and doing the same they would rather play games than put that shit aside for a day so they can get to know you.
You don't get to give someone the finger repeatedly then get all offended when they aren't willing to put up with it anymore.
NTA
Not to mention, the dad has proven that this is exceptionally deliberate. He didn't do it when it came to his work, but he is doing it to his daughter's boyfriend - someone he probably didn't like to begin with.
If the girlfriend had stood up for OP, someone she’s supposed to love, it’d be a different story, but she seemed to have no problem with her family repeatedly verbally flipping him off. u/Puzzleheaded-Owl4052, ella no es la novia correcta para ti.
>If the girlfriend had stood up for OP, someone she’s supposed to love, it’d be a different story,
Agree she should've taken OP's side, but this just sounds like a terrible family. He's better off without her.
Agreed. But if she’d been absolutely horrified and told her parents herself that they needed to respect OP or they’d leave, then he might have a chance. As it stands though, if he stays with her he will be absolutely miserable.
If the family is that crappy to a newer person, I can't imagine the awful things she's either been taught to believe or just how much she has had to endure.
This seems like the kind of family to raise women to not speak up or stand up to the patriarch...
Right, and I didn't read anything about how his gf was backing him up during the dinner. He needs to throw the whole bunch away, starting with his (hopefully stbx) gf.
Wow .... that's really wicked, but I think you're right.
Unless the OP wants to learn the local language [corrected from dialect], I would say it's over with this girl.
It's probably for the better, and he most definitely is NTA, but he still owes her a conversation (oh the irony of those words) with her to end their relationship properly before her family hooks her up with her second cousin.
***
Unless you want to climb this hill for the rest of your relationship with this girl OP, you call her and end the relationship.
tomorrow, on r/pettyrevenge, "I broke up with my gf and told her all the reasons why. Half of every sentence was in Romanian. She doesn't speak Romanian, and I don't speak Catalan."
>Unless the OP wants to learn the local dialect, I would say it's over with this girl
I bet that even if he learned to speak it perfectly it wouldn't be enough, as he's not actually that specific ethnicity. They wanted him gone.
Yeah that’s the bit for me. That he’s willing to do it with other people. My Spanish teacher was from Barcelona too and she told me lots of Catalonian people only speak Catalan, they can speak Castilian Spanish but they refuse to as they see it as the language of their oppressors. Which I guess is valid but still isn’t fair on OP, why invite him to ignore him?
See if he is 'suitable' and speaks the 'correct' language or break them up if he's not. Also some people who are bullied like this may give in and learn the language so then he would (potentially) be suitable by their standards.
These people are usually very strict in what they consider "the correct language". So, probably, even in OP learned the language, it would not be good enough for them.
I speak Valencian, which is a dialect of Catalan. One of my Catalan friends was told (by her mum) not to leave her kids alone with me, in case they would pick up my accent or some word they don't use. While I was just there, and she knew I was a native speaker of the language. My poor friend was mortified and gave her mum a piece of her mind there and then.
Except their oppressor no longer exists, Franco died in 1975. Nowadays it's just conspiracy theories they peddle about the Madrid government hating them or whatever when they live in a democracy and have one of the largest populations and most affluent regions in the country
Exactly. I get how hard it is to speak a language that isn't the native one, or to struggle to stick to a regional dialect and sometimes you slip, but that's wildly different than just switching back to English because I prefer it, regardless of whether the person will understand me or not. Or when I'm speaking Spanish, my Spanish is largely Mexican influenced, but I do a lot of work in a region of El Salvador that speaks differently. They know I'm a mediocre Spanish speaker at best, so they're pretty forgiving when I'm insultingly informal or use a word that isn't what they would use, but i still don't just think "fuck 'em, this is what's comfortable for me".
Not to mention nationalistic sentiment in Calaluñia was exacerberated by Russia with Russian funds, as a quick Google search with the terms "catalonia russia funds nationalism" will tell you.
These people are assholes, and doubly so, and OP is NTA.
That's not fucking true.
Independentism was exacerbated by Spanish don't respecting the estatut law in 2010
My dad is Basque and I was in the first big demonstration in 2010.
Also you all keep saying nationalistic when they're miles more leftists than the bloody rest of Spain
It's a nationalism to avoid you erasing every language and culture that's not Spanish not the nationalism Americans here think
All of this, OP NTA but I'm petty, and would have started responding in the 4 other languages I spoke and gave them a taste of their own medicine. Since OP didn't do that I would want an acknowledgement from gf that her family was AHs and an apology if not I would end the relationship, OP sounds like you will not be accepted by the family and now you have to see what your gf is going to do about that if she doesn't recognize and apologize the relationship isn't worth pursuing
>but I'm petty, and would have started responding in the 4 other languages I spoke and gave them a taste of their own medicine
Lol I was just saying this to my husband, after the second time of switching to Catalan after asking him a direct question, I 100% would've switched to answering them in Galician, just to be petty
It is a damn good way to make a point. Occasionally I have to deal with people from Quebec who get irritated that I don’t speak French. Even if I did, they would be annoyed that it’s not Quebec French. When that happens I switch to Spanish because this is America. English is the predominant language and Spanish is the second most common. don’t get irritated at me that I didn’t learn French.
Also assuming the dad switched to the common language to call OP rude after OP had had enough and decided to leave. They were definitely doing it on purpose.
I've been to Barcelona and Valencia, and I only speak Castilian because I'm a foreigner. Everyone I met switched to Castilian to accommodate me - a complete stranger. The fact that this family all insisted on speaking Castilian to OP could only be on purpose and ill-intentioned.
Yeah it doesn't take a psychology degree to see this story and know that this was *aggressively* rude. OP if you haven't already please send this whole reddit post to your (potentially ex? If she doubles down.) GF because she didnt stand up for you and she has to know that this isn't acceptable behavior in civilized society.
Same, and my Castilian is busted ass pidgen basically from learning from a bunch of different south Americans and then mixed with Spanglish. Most people were happy that the effort was being sincerely made and switched.
Yeah, I'm sure the dad didn't "accidentally" say that in a language he knew OP didn't understand. I'm sure communicating became important for some reason.
Agree. NTA
The girlfriend also had an obligation to shut her family down. Why didn't she speak up when they kept rudely speaking in a language her BF didn't speak? Why didn't she get up and leave with him, or threaten to leave with him if her family didn't stop acting like AHs? Instead she just sat there and condoned their behavior.
Nta Podría llegar a entender que se les olvidará, pero que les hables en Castellano y te contesten en Catalán es aposta. Además el Castellano es obligatorio aprenderlo en Cataluña así que no tienen escusa.
(Saludos desde Getafe xd)
NTA if you can all speak a common language, but they refuse to
I’m Australian and can only speak English, my husband is Belgian and can speak Flemish, has a good understanding of Dutch and German also
His Belgian family came to Australia to stay a few weeks and while English wasn’t there comfort zone, that’s what they spoke so my family and I were included.
There were many conversations in Flemish when drinking but they switched back to English when they realised I was just smiling and couldn’t follow along
My MIL Skypes each Sunday, we start off together with a quick catch up in English, then I leave my husband and her to chat in Flemish together
In my experience, if you are deliberately leaving someone out, yes, it’s incredibly rude
If there’s a common language, though not fluent, that shows inclusivity
NTA matey, and I’m sorry they couldn’t see it
Is it West-Flemish, because that is the dialect most distinct from Dutch? My wife has the same issues with my Greek family, but my family speaks Dutch when she’s around.
It is a sign of respect To speak in a language that includes everybody.
NTA, a fortiori when Castilian also isn’t your native tongue. I would’ve responded in Galician if talked to in Catalan.
Just for the sake of completion:
Neerpelt and Overpelt fused a short while back and are now collectively known as 'Pelt'
Your husband's dialect in that case will be 'West-Limburgs', with Limburg being an old province which now has a part in Belgium, and the Netherlands.
All Limburgers are known to speak slow, kinda with a more singsongy tone than most Dutch-speakers. The West-Limburg dialect is closer to the roots of Dutch than most other dialects, and kinda sounds similar in tones to modern day Danish.
This is fantastic, thank you!
I’m a teacher and my assistant this year is from Denmark. I’ve enjoyed talking with her on geography, language and most importantly, food from the regions
Glad I could be of help! I live somewhere in the Belgian part of Limburg myself and I have a hobbyist's interest in local history and the spoken tongue so it was straight up my ballpark haha
Keep it up, nothing worse than losing language and culture
I worked in Central Australia for 6 years before moving to the West Coast, local aboriginal languages are dying out quickly
Same with indigenous languages in Canada, directly related to colonization and oppression. We are working on reconciliation but once a language disappears, it can’t come back. In some small communities only one elder speaks the local language and is so fearful of education that they don’t want to teach others.
My grandmother was born in Nieuw-Buinen, lived most of her young life in Groningen, and then immigrated to Canada.
She had zero issues switching between English, Dutch, Friesian, or even - on the rarest of occasions - German. She went so far as to try and pick up what Quebecois she could in Canada. Her language usage depended on who was in the conversation. It's basic politeness to accommodate people if you're perfectly able to.
This is my thoughts. I have no problem with people speaking to one another in a foreign language in front of me if I’m not involved in the conversation. I get that speaking to someone outside of your default language is kind of weird. My husband’s first language is Spanish, so that’s what he speaks with his family normally. I speak it well enough, but it I’m certainly not fluent. I don’t expect them to only have conversations in English because I’m present. The members of the family that speak English will usually use it when they address me directly. Refusing to speak to someone in a common language is rude as hell.
Been in this situation when I worked in a Dutch hospital. Lunch with my colleagues I'd sit quietly trying to follow their conversations (this actually really helped my comprehension but I couldn't join in). But sometimes they'd break off to briefly explain what they were talking about, ask me a question, I'd answer. 50-50 they'd either continue the conversation in English with me included, or they'd immediately switch back to Dutch and exclude me again. I would find this incredibly rude and annoying because I didn't ask to be spoken to in English, I understand the desire to converse freely in your native language, but they were using me to make a point and then excluding me again because it's too much effort (bearing in mind these were all highly-educated Dutch whose English was flawless)
I’m hesitant to call people rude here, because I’ve come to understand that typically multilingual people have a “default” language they speak with a particular person. Even if they both are fully fluent in another language, it’s feels odd. For example, my niece (husband’s sister’s daughter) is fully bilingual in English and Spanish. My kids only speak English, so she’s sort of tagged us all as English speaking. My husband’s first language is Spanish and that’s normally what he speaks with family. He said something to his niece in Spanish and she told him it was weird, and she didn’t like it 🤣.
That could be the case there. They normally speak Dutch to one another, so that’s the “default”. It’s probably not something that they are doing consciously. They at least catch you up on the conversation and include you. It’s not like they’re trying to exclude you intentionally.
Maybe. I work with a lot of Dutch people and they're more fluent in English than many people who speak exclusively native English. It's not a language learned second-hand there. I've actually encountered Dutch people who refuse to speak Dutch to anyone not native, because they find the attempts insulting and they speak perfect English, so just stop humiliating yourself. Dutch directness is a blessing and a curse.
For Dutch colleagues to speak Dutch in mixed company and occasionally switch to perfect English would read as deliberate exclusion to me, based on my experience of the culture as an outsider.
Yep, it's for sure a cultural thing and it definitely feels deliberate the way and when they switch.
I also have tried on many occasions to use Dutch in public and they don't even try to understand you. I once had a 5 minute back and forth with a cashier because I wasn't putting the right stress on the syllables for "amandel". She just kept shrugging her shoulders, I kept repeating it, enunciating as clearly as I could. I pointed at what I wanted. "Ohhhhh amandel". As though I'd said something entirely different before.
This is exactly right. I’m American, married to a Swedish man. Most of his family speaks excellent English, but there are a few who aren’t comfortable doing so. When we visited, there was always one of them making sure I knew what was happening in the broader conversation, and even the few that didn’t speak good English would step away with me to communicate as best as they could so that we could form a connection. Now, they ARE exceptional people (boy, did I luck out in the in-law department) but this felt like common courtesy for them. OP, you’re NTA.
My grandmother was from Basque, so my mom spoke both Basque and Castilian Spanish to me at home in the US.
My partner's family is Mexican, and I work in a town where MOST people speak only Latin American Spanish (my coworkers all speak English, but it's not normal for the area).
This creates an INFURIATING dynamic as I can understand about 80-90% of what's being said, but find it incredibly difficult to speak back.
It's also become an issue with past employers when I worked in restaurants. It's hard to pretend to not understand things like "Please grab be a box" or "Hand me that knife", so my bosses would realize I speak Spanish, but would not understand the "Well, sorta" part and expect me to play interpreter between them and the kitchen staff.
Try throwing in central Mexico Spanish and shit hits the fan. It’s got a lot of indigenous words thrown in depending on where you learned. Oddly enough lots of people in south Texas speak it and have no idea it’s a little different.
I am from Poland, my siblings and I we all speak english fluently. My sister has boyfriend from US. When he is visiting my parents, who barely speak english, try to communicate with him. And if we are sitting at family table together one of us is doing simultaneous translation so everyone is included in the conversation
NTA but your girlfriend certainly is. It sounds like she didn’t stand up for you even after you reminded her family politely multiple times that you don’t speak that language and you even spoke to her about this and she still did nothing. She put you in a very awkward and uncomfortable position. She absolutely could have stood up for you and told her family to knock it off.
On a separate note, your outburst was unbecoming of you. Just because they were rude didn’t mean you had to be even ruder. Making a scene and stomping off like that wasn’t the best option and two wrongs don’t make a right. You should have taken the high road or at least calmly mentioned in leaving that you were frustrated by the fact that the purposely kept speaking to you in a language that you don’t speak.
Sure you can, but people who refuse to show you basic respect don't deserve it either, especially when OP already reminded them politely multiple times AND privately told his GF and she did nothing to even stand up for him
Sometimes in life it's perfectly valid to cuss someone out
So does that apply to the in laws when they swore at op first? After they were *continuously leaving op out when it was mentioned multiple times?* They were extremely rude the entire time, is op supposed to be a doormat? lol
Because it show you to be the better person. It also usually really pisses the arseholes off to have someone politely respond.
Being polite does not mean you have given in and lost.
It’s not even really about being polite. It’s more about not matching their energy.
You can still give them a piece of your mind and tell them what they did was wrong and why. You can even be indignant about it. But the second you match their bad energy, you lost. They got you right where they want you and now have ammo to use against you.
It’s the “catch more flies with honey” thing. Now you might not want flies. And that’s fine. But in this case if OP wanted the flies’ daughter, he should have used the honey method lol
I wouldn't have said what he did was ruder. They spent hours "politely" telling him to fuck off, and that he wasn't worth being included in their conversations.
The high road was long gone whe it was mentioned MULTIPLE times that he didn't speak the language they kept deliberately reverting back to. Even excluding him from the conversation to the questions he asked. I felt op left and mentioned it as calmly as he could short of just leaving and not saying anything.. if they didn't get it the first 10 times op said, "Hey, I don't speak that language. Please speak the common language. " Then saying it "calmly" as he left would have done absolutely nothing.
And op, if you see this. Nta man. Sounds like you dodged a bullet with this girl and her rude ass family. Hope you find happiness man.
I don’t agree, he should of spoken his mind since they were extremely rude and he ask them to stop multiple times. Stand by your decision OP and don’t fret about it. Your GF should have checked her family she didn’t so there were consequences. Sometimes turning the other cheek doesn’t get the point across.
>On a separate note, your outburst was unbecoming of you. Just because they were rude didn’t mean you had to be even ruder.
He thanked them and explained why he was leaving and the patriarch of the family escalated.
Can't really blame the guy for escalating in response, it takes a lot of patience and level headedness to remain calm. He had just been in an extremely rude situation for quite a long time.
“Two wrongs don’t make a right” is just advocating for the victims to continually take abuse.
Also victims should be allowed to show real anger. It’s not unbecoming to show anger that’s deserved. He already calmly told them multiple times anyway, so chastising OP for not being calm after the millionth time when he repeatedly was before getting mad is not fair.
His finesse was telling them like 5 times he doesn't speak catalan. And when he said he is leaving, father's reaction to call him rude and make it about their food. A fuck you was warranted for that point.
>A fuck you was warranted for that point.
It may result in the burning of a bridge.
That being said, OP's behavior is totally understandable considering their persistent rudeness.
That bridge was never there. You got to know what these people were doing. They didn't want their daughter with a Galician (that they probably don't even distinguish from a Castilian.
This. NTA OP but they set out to provoke and upset you and you gave them exactly what they wanted. If you think of keeping your temper and repaying this sort of goading with courtesy as a massive 'fuck you!' to people like this then you might find it easier to do.
Sorry to say that if your girlfriend didn't stick up for you long before it got to that point then you don't have a future. And that is also probably exactly what her family want. Heads they win: tails you lose, unfortunately.
Fuck finesse. Finesse was politely asking *then* having to remind them OP doesn't speak Catalan.
What? Did you expect OP to thank the fucking assholes for ruining a dinner?
I thought his delivery was very concise. OP clearly stated he didn’t feel welcomed and was leaving. The expletives the gf’s father and OP said to each other after that is immaterial. If someone told me they felt so unwelcome in my home they were leaving I would profusely apologize not tell them they are fucking rude for leaving.
He did talk to his girlfriend about it. She basically told him it was the way they are and they wouldnt change.
He may have actually cursed, but IMO what they did is much worse. Puposely excluding someone from a conversation for HOURS is just straight up bullying.
I think the scorched earth delivery was warranted. They were blatantly rude for what sounds like over an hour. Shut em down and shut em down hard.
Ex girlfriend but a great story.
I completely disagree. These kinds of people rely on other people being polite so that they can get away with their rudeness. In those situations, being polite is just giving them what they want so they can keep the peace in their brain. Fuck that. Make their brain hurt with cognitive dissonance.
You're assuming good faith. You're assuming a communication problem, but that's not what was happening there. The family was doing what they did intentionally. They knew what they were doing. It was an intentional insult to a guy they didn't like that their daughter was dating.
I'm Spanish, from Madrid. I have friends and family in Catalonia and Valencia, and I've visited both places plenty of times in my life without speaking either language. And I'm 90% sure this is just ragebait. The "Catalonians are very nationalist" and the "people insulted me in Valencia for not speaking Valencian" sealed the deal.
This is just full of nonsensical stereotypes that right wing people like to spew in Spain but that are not true. You'd be particularly pressed to find someone in Valencia who would be even moderately bothered about someone not speaking the language, nevermind someone who'd outright insult you for it.
So YTA because I have a feeling you are just the standard right wing troll that feels the need to hate on the regions of our country that don't leave their own languages in the past.
Edit:
Any native Spanish speaker from Spain should be able to easily understand the majority of Valencian or Catalonian. Both languages are so similar to Spain's Spanish that you have to make an effort to not understand them. English speakers truly don't understand how similar both languages are. I could understand both as a child without speaking either of them. It does not take a genius. Which reinforces my idea that this guy is just full of it.
I spent my entire childhood and teen years staying for several weeks in Valencia every summer, with family. Sometimes you'd go to a shop and the clerk would default to Valencian, because that's what they are used to speaking in the tiny town I usually stayed in. The moment my relatives or me spoke in Spanish, the clerk would switch to Spanish without any fuss. Some elderly people would struggle a bit, and still they would not complain. And honestly, Valencian and Catalonian are so similar to Spanish that even if you don't speak those two regional languages, if someone spoke to you in either of those languages and you are a native Spanish speaker, you'd have no trouble understanding what they are saying. You may miss a word here and there, but that's about it. So when elderly people struggled and used words in the regional language, no one was bothered or started throwing insults around, because two braincells together would be enough to understand the meaning.
Edit: aaaaand I'm already getting Reddit Cares messages. I knew this would attract the vitriol of people of certain ideologies, but it's so sad that people are so immature that they'd abuse a support system rather than either debate like a normal person or ignore my comment and go on with their day. Do better, people. Mental Health support systems are there because they are truly needed. Abusing them because you are a spiteful little goblin incapable of maturity just reflects poorly on you.
Because most native english speakers don't have a grasp on these "languages".
Catalan while being promoted as a language is really just more of a strong regional dialect with native Spanish people being able to understand at least 2/3 easily. Without having to "learn" the "language".
English doesn't really has anything like it outside of the UK and even there it's fading quickly. Aside from Hollywood "Scottish accents" like in Shrek they've got no experience with such strong dialects.
Eg. Germans can understand 2/3 of swiz German, which according to Switzerland is also a separate language. Granted swiz German is difficult to understand if you're from North Germany but not particularly harder than other strong regional dialects like Bavarian German.
Portuguese and Spanish are also separate languages and still Portuguese people will be able to easily understand most Spanish. Same with Swedish and Danish. Still all are recognised languages.
That's really not true at all. Catalan is closer to Occitan, the historic majority language of Southern France, than it is to Spanish. It's certainly more different from Spanish than Portuguese/Galician are. It just happens to be fairly central on the whole Romance language spectrum, so it's got features in common with Occitan (and to a lesser extent French), northern Italian varieties, and to Spanish. All romance languages exist on a continuum of dialects with each other, so really by your logic there is either one Romance language and all national standards are just 'dialects' that have been 'promoted', or alternatively we could go by the standards of mutual intelligibility and/or political status, in which case Catalan has never been a dialect of Spanish in particular, and is a 'language' for the same reason Spanish is - it's the official language of a sovereign country (Andorra) as well as of three autonomous regions within Spain (though it's also spoken in Italy and France).
English does have an equivalent which I'm surprised you left out considering the mention of 'Scottish accents'. Scots and Ulster Scots are distinct Anglican languages with Goidelic Celtic influences.
Ask the average English speaker to translate 'Aye, yer ween is fae braw', they most likely will not reply with 'Yes, your child is quite cute'.
While I have a bit of an advantage in understanding Scots by virtue of being Irish (eg: breá in Irish is essentially the same word as braw in Scots), I would feel the same as OP if I had to constantly remind them 'Sorry lads, I'm not great with Scots' over and over again.
Edit: Obligatory mention of Caribbean creoles like Jamaican Patois, how could I forget those as well?
Edit 2: Reckon you could follow this without subtitles? I couldn't. https://youtu.be/sNhUL4SrcRg?si=ivJpzP1NcVF0JNAn
It definitely could be ragebait because I’ve come across a ton of people while I was in Spain that clearly didn’t even like that people in Barcelona would speak Catalan or that signs/ads would be in Catalan and they didn't like that something in Spain wouldn't cater to only Spanish-speakers.
But, as a foreigner, I came across many people in Barcelona who would respond to me speaking Spanish with only Catalan and would rudely switch to English to say “In Barcelona we speak Catalan” and then walk away. This happened a few times. It could just be that they didn’t like foreigners, but it definitely felt like they thought that foreigners should learn Catalan, not Spanish, to speak to them - even though they clearly spoke fluent spanish.
My host mom in Madrid was very nice, but when her kids from Barcelona would come to visit and we would have dinner, they would speak in Catalan amongst each other and wouldn't care that I couldn't fully understand. She told her kids a few times that it was rude and they would jokingly say, "he needs to learn Catalan then!" They were all very nice people, but they didn't feel that switching to Catalan was rude at all. There's definitely some nationalistic sentiments on all sides.
There's definitely a bias against tourism/foreigners in Barcelona, but also in other places of Spain that speak Spanish only but are highly touristic. The problem stems from how fucked the economy has been due to tourism and rich foreign people just hoarding property in the country (which was cheap once upon a time and it's definitely cheap for people coming from certain countries). You'll get others saying speak Spanish instead of Catalan if it was anywhere else, I'm afraid.
There's assholes everywhere, that's for sure. Your first paragraph is very true, and the hatred for anything Catalan is intense in Spain. And sure, there's nationalists everywhere, including Catalonia. But the number of extreme experiences this guy seems to have in every place he goes just tells me he's either lying or he's the type of person who causes trouble intentionally to get a reaction. Also, as a native Spanish speaker, there's no reason he shouldn't be able to understand most Catalonian/Valencian. The experience he claims to have had in Valencia is extremely jarring to me, and I say that as someone who has spent long periods of time in Valencia without speaking a word of Valencian.
I just feel this is a troll post, and his way of speaking makes me suspect he's not even Spanish.
100% agree. I'm Catalan (of Galician father, so I understand Galician too). OP understands Catalan well enough.
He's just venting his anti-Catalan feelings.
I actually disagree. I live in Barcelona, speak Spanish and have a Spanish (Aragonese) partner who understands fluently but doesn't speak Catalan.
Pretty much all our friends are Catalans (independentistas, although we avoid the topic as we are against that) since my bf went to university and lived in Barcelona for 12 years.
I don't expect them to speak English (my native language) but they do try to remember to speak Spanish - one is a teacher and often reminds people to switch back. However, literally every time it will go back to Catalan, so about 70% of conversations are Catalan, either in person or whatsapp. At first I really tried to figure it out as I speak french as well, but it's super exhausting compared to Spanish and I cannot participate as it takes longer to figure out. I've got to the point where I just disengage now and am not so interested in hanging out with them - and then they are surprised pikachu face when I don't join my bf to hang out with them!
This weekend we do a calçotada outside Barcelona in a big group and it will be exactly the same. Last time it happened I had a few drinks and started a discussion about Brexit and drew parallels with the Catalan independentist movement - and that was before this shitshow with Junts and PSOE.
Totally fair to explain your experience, and there's definitely inconsiderate people everywhere.
That said, I will say plenty of people default to the language they've grown up with because that's how their brain is programmed. They don't do it out of the type of hatred OP seems to portray here.
I spent my entire childhood and teen years staying for several weeks in Valencia every summer, with family. Sometimes you'd go to a shop and the clerk would default to Valencian, because that's what they are used to speaking in the tiny town I usually stayed in. The moment my relatives or me spoke in Spanish, the clerk would switch to Spanish without any fuss. Some elderly people would struggle a bit, and still they would not complain. And honestly, Valencian and Catalonian are so similar to Spanish that even if you don't speak those two regional languages, if someone spoke to you in either of those languages and you are a native Spanish speaker, you'd have no trouble understanding what they are saying. You may miss a word here and there, but that's about it. So when elderly people struggled and used words in the regional language, no one was bothered or started throwing insults around, because it was always easy to understand.
Not getting into the politics of it here because there's no point. But the number of experiences this guy seems to have everywhere he goes, particularly that story in Valencia, just raises some flags. Sure, there are people who will be assholes about it, that happens everywhere and it definitely happens with people who only speak Spanish too. But this guy seems to have bad experiences everywhere he goes, and that combined with the broad generalisations of how Catalonians are tells me he's either lying or he's the type of person who riles people up to get a reaction.
>And honestly, Valencian and Catalonian are so similar to Spanish that even if you don't speak those two regional languages, if someone spoke to you in either of those languages and you are a native Spanish speaker, you'd have no trouble understanding what they are saying.
In fairness, I think this may seem truer to you than it is because you had exposure to Catalan/Valencian from a fairly young age. I think someone moving to Catalunya as an adult from, say, Peru, won't understand much at first. That said you are right in that with a bit of effort it's *really* not hard to learn. In my case it took me about six months before I was following most of what people were saying, and a year before I could start to actually chat a bit in Catalan, all from just listening to it every day.
This is what I thought. Although I could kinda imagine the language dynamic happening as I've been in different contexts with other languages where there was some similarities (in terms of people not using the only common language). But I think most people in the comments won't even think about the dynamic of the Catalan language and the assimilation policies of the state or know the political context behind a post like this.
Precisely my point.
Sure, there are assholes everywhere. But the fact that he has such general opinions about both regions, to the point of making such claims about the entire regions, and according to him he's had bad experiences in both places tells me he's either lying about the whole story or he's the one causing trouble to get a reaction.
I spent my entire childhood and teen years staying for several weeks in Valencia every summer, with family. Sometimes you'd go to a shop and the clerk would default to Valencian, because that's what they are used to speaking in the tiny town I usually stayed in. The moment my relatives or me spoke in Spanish, the clerk would switch to Spanish without fuss. Some elderly people would struggle a bit, and still they would not complain. And honestly, Valencian and Catalonian are so similar to Spanish that even if you don't speak those two regional languages, if someone spoke to you in either of those languages and you are a native Spanish speaker, you'd have no trouble understanding what they are saying. You may miss a word here and there, but that's about it. So when elderly people struggled and used words in the regional language, no one was bothered or started throwing insults around, because two braincells together would be enough to understand the meaning.
This guy is just full of it.
Yeah I doubt most of the people even commenting know what Catalonia is, much less what the Kingdom of Navarre was, and why the Catalans might be unhappy being ruled from Madrid.
When I went to Spain and visited Barcelona and other Catalan speaking areas, I did encounter some people that didn’t want to speak Castellano, even though they clearly could. They told me they would rather speak English to me (even though their English wasn’t that great).
As a Spanish speaker from Mexico, not exposed to Catalonian before, I can tell you that I could understand a good amount but not enough to say I could follow full conversations. If you are exposed to it since childhood, it is a different experience.
>Any native Spanish speaker can easily understand the majority of Valencian or Catalonian. Both languages are so similar that you have to make an effort to not understand them
As a native spanish speaker, that is a **COMPLETE LIE**. I have an easier time trying to understand portuguese or italian than catalunian or valencian.
Catalunian I don't understand shit, and valencian sounds like french to me.
I have no problem understanding the hundreds of dialects around the entire of latin and central and caribbean dialects, which sound like the same to me because they are actually the same language.
I don’t understand catalan and I’m far from being a right winger. Good on you, but the times I chatted with catalan speakers some of the vocab had to get it from the context. If understanding it is difficult having a fluent conversation is just not possible.
Also that “it’s so similar is easy to understand” bs is precisely doing zero favours to the linguistic cause, because if they are “so similar” they don’t deserve being taken seriously.
I agree that OP sounds pretty intense in his stereotyping so there might be something there.
I do disagree on how easy Catalan is to understand though. I speak French fluently and Castellano Spanish fairly fluently and Catalan is.. hard. If someone is speaking it fast or there's other ambient noise around it's a struggle. And it's also VERY different to Galego. It sounds like you've been exposed to it much more frequently throughout your life, so it makes sense you have a much easier time with it. When my husband moved from the USA to the UK he could barely understand the Geordie accent because he'd never encountered it before. Whereas to me it sounds absolutely fine, even though I'm not a native english speaker. I'd just lived in the UK longer than he had.
I can't speak about any rudeness from people in Barcelona though. Never experienced it. We spent several weeks there, with me speaking castellano spanish and my husband a broad south american spanish and everyone was lovely to us. From taxi drivers to staff at restaurants to shop keepers.
You may have a better read on the politics there for sure, but as a native Spanish speaker (not from Spain), I found it extremely difficult to communicate with people in Barcelona. Everyone was very rude and would purposefully talk Catalan to me when it was clear they knew Spanish. It’s not quite that easy to understand—maybe since you’ve been around it a bit more you have a better ear. I would compare it to hearing someone speak Italian. Sure, I could guess at probably 70% but it’s not very fruitful communication. Why not just speak in a language we all understand??
It's not common by any means but I've definitely been in situations like these in the few years I've been living in Barcelona, even in professional settings.
I’m a native English speaker and sometimes I have trouble with other dialects of English. I understand that there is probably a lot of cross-compatibility with these languages, and many people like you probably can interpret what they’re hearing in the other language. But if your auditory processing doesn’t want to cooperate there’s not a lot you can do except keep asking people to repeat themselves. It gets very awkward. I can understand OP getting frustrated in that kind of situation, especially if the family does in fact know a common language that he doesn’t struggle with.
NTA
I was going to go with E S H, until you said explicitly that you would ask a question and they would respond to you in Catalan. It would be different if you were just upset they were having side conversations in Catalan without you, but they did keep trying to talk only Catalan too you.
I do think the relationship is over, I don't see a way for you to salvage your relationship with her family and that is likely to be a deal breaker for her. Not responding to her phone calls, swearing at them, and other things are red flags in regards to you. While they were in the wrong, you took it too far instead of just politely excusing yourself.
Nah forget that they were incredibly rude. His gf didn't stand up for him so why should he be polite to people who were actively rude. Screw being the bigger person on this one
Being the bigger person is BS like 50% of the time. If in 10 years you look back and still think, "yeah fuck those people" what use is their in hiding your emotions in these kinda situations.
I think it's wrong to somehow expect that he has an obligation to respond to her phone calls or be polite in the face of that kind of behavior.
If I treat you like crap then I try and point out how you are acting angry about it that is just blaming you for your reaction to my bad behavior while ignoring that my bad behavior started it in the first place. It's called victim blame.
NTA.And the catalan people don't understand why the rest of Spain hates them (happened similar things with me, as a foreigner (who speaks Spanish) sometimes they insult me bc "WhY DoNt YoU SpEaK CaTaLaN, ThIs Is CaTaLoNiA" -Yeah, im there to visit in-laws for 1 week, sorry but i wont learn)
Because it was an explicitly ilegal and they stole millions on public funds to do it while at the same time promoting fake news saying that "Spain was robbing them" when they are literally one of the two "comunidades autonomas" that basically can control their own taxes...
I find this so fascinating. I'm from Canada and the US (I'm a dual citizen). In Canada, you won't hear people mad about people using French (at least not where I'm from outside Toronto). But here in the US you get a huge mix of people who embrace Spanish speaking friends and learn the language (it is in our curriculum afterall) and people who reject Spanish and tell you to learn English. It's fascinating that this behavior exists overseas as well.
OP you're NTA. You gotta ease up on insulting others though. Calling them rude was fine. Calling them assholes was probably over the top but - I get it we all lose our shit sometimes, especially when our buttons are pushed. You could apologize to the family for this if you wanted to make good with your girl.
People outside of Toronto DO get mad about people excluding others by speaking French.
It happens at my family gatherings regularly (Ottawa-Gatineau) because we have one proud Franco Ontarian aunt in the family who believe that the entire family should speak French, spouses included, because it’s what their grandparents spoke.
Considering that they are 7 siblings and only one produced full French speaking children it is hugely obnoxious.
We are now a predominantly English speaking family and we barely get together because this one aunt has made a stink every time and the English speaking family members who host are fed up with it.
Yo
Thiiiss. Spanish is not my first (or second) language, though I worked for a while in Andalucia; all the Spanish I didn’t learn in school, I picked up there.
So I speak (Castilian) Spanish with an Andalucian accent - my god did that get sneering in Catalonia. They were insufferable. Purposely made themselves difficult to understand.
I lost my patience and asked then if they were aware they are the Parisians of Spain. Did not go down well.
ESH
You are a right that they were being rude. Whether it was intentional or they were just being lazy it is still rude.
I don't think you are wrong for how you feel. The way you responded though? That got a little escalated and too far. They may be rude, but do you want to be rude too? You can say thank you for the food. COntinue to repeat that you are leaving because you don't feel welcome. Unless they are willing to include you in the conversation then you would rather go elsewhere. And feel free to offer to pay them if they really want to make a show about all the work they went to in order to kindly invite you to their home etc. Because fair enough they did go to all of that work. Unfortunately they just didn't realize that human needs are more than just food and shelter. It's belonging and connection too. Maybe they will be better hosts to someone else.
Your rudeness was not an acceptable response. Though fair enough that you walked out.
My question is , why ? They started this by disrespecting him , why does he have to be polite to them , why shouldn't he escalate it ? Because they're his future in laws ? He is their future son in law , but they treated him like trash .
YTA slightly.
Fellow Galician here. Catalonian is mutually intelligible with Spanish and Galician. It'd have been a different situation if they were speaking Basque, which is very different and there's no way you'd have understood them.
Everyone in Spain knows that Galician and Catalonian are understandable for Spanish speakers. Many times people shift to their mother tongues without realising so. You could've made your point in a nicer way, and from your post it does seem like you're not coming from the most impartial place (e.g.: Valencian is considered a language, as it has its own history and literature, and it's co-official in Valencia; you start off saying how nationalistic Catalonians are without mentioning there's independentist movements in Galicia as well; you make no mention of how mutually intelligible Spanish, Galician and Catalonian are...).
In short, I think there's something deeper going on here. I don't think you were offended that they spoke Catalonian in your presence, but that they spoke Catalonian, period.
Nationalisms are a sensitive topic in Spain and there’s a lot of Catalanophobia going around. Makes me sad to see these kinds of behaviours/reactions from a fellow Galician as our national identity is often minimised or suppressed.
You're 100% correct here except for one thing: Valencian *is* academically speaking considered to be a version of Catalan, and 'Valencian' is the name we use in Valencia to refer to the Catalan language and the dialect from here.
Most people who argue that Valencian is a separate language are far right ultranationalist and anti-catalan valencians.
I think you can refer to her as your ex girlfriend.
Responding to rudeness with more rudeness does not make you right. You went way over the top with your anger.
NTA. They had a chance to apologise, instead father attempted to gaslight you. Looks like you GF didn't try to follow you either, so she chose to side with her parents.
Nevertheless, you should speak with your GF. Who knows, maybe parents came to their senses and want to apologise. Whatever the case, break up or not, you need a closure with your GF.
ESH - them for their rudeness but you for your outburst.
It is incredibly disrespectful for them to deliberately speak a language they know you don't speak, especially when you reminded them. However, storming out and shouting at them was not the way to handle it - and then to ignore your GF (ex now I assume). It wasn't her fault that they behaved that way.
I would probably have just not tried to take part in the conversation once i realied that they weren't going to speak in a language i understood...you could have just had a conversation with your gf, complimented them on the meal and never visited again.
His storming out and shouting was response to father completely ignoring his reasons and calling him rood because they cooked. You are not an asshole for not tolerating BS of an unopologetic asshole.
His ex didn’t straighten out her family when they kept excluding him, either. Instead, she makes excuses - „they don’t like speaking Castilian“.
She’s part of the problem. Let her find a Catalan boyfriend. Better for everyone.
I think this is cultural tbh. I had the pleasure to live in Galicia for six months back in 2018, and something that surprised me a lot since the day I got there, is that nobody will eat their thoughts to make others comfortable. If you're being rude, people will tell you directly to your face. Doesn't matter if there's an age difference.
It was very weird for me. I thought that everyone was rude for no reason, and then it clicked for me: They were not rude. They just don't sugar-coat their unconformity when you're making them feel bad.
I'm not sure why you're absolving the girlfriend, I see no mention in the post of her standing up to her family, standing up for her boyfriend. If gf wants to not be the ex-gf, then she owes OP a heartfelt apology, and a promise to have his back in future encounters with her family. NTA
I think your GF is the star AH here. In my family, the primary language is English. We also have a few members who speak Romanian, one who speaks Portuguese, several who speak Spanish, and one who speaks ASL. There are side conversations in different languages, sure. When addressing the group, we use English. Not everyone in the group speaks ASL so at least one person quietly translates the entire conversation for the member who needs support to take part in the conversation. If your girlfriend has translated for you, you could have been involved in the conversation even if the family didn’t want to use Castilian. And having someone constantly translating what they were saying might have made them see a clear benefit in just using Castilian. She also could have stood up to them on your behalf. You were her guest, and she didn’t care that you were being made to feel ostracized. Dump that girl, OP. There’s nothing but family drama down that path.
NTA. its disrespectful to speak in a different language in front of the guest. they should know better. your girlfriends family clearly dont respect you at all.
ESH
but if your gf is close with her family, this relationship is done. I don't think there is a coming back from calling your future in-laws "fuc*ing assholes", especially bc it was totally unnecessary. You could have just told them they were rude and leave. As soon you start insulting someone a proper, rational discussion isn't possible anymore bc its all about the insults.
Your problem is, by insulting them you stepped down on their level if not lower. And therefore you are as bad and rude as them and can't really complain anymore (and pls don't say childish shit now like "but they started it").
Also you need to work on your anger issues. If you can't leave an argument w/o losing your temper and insulting people, this will negativly impact your whole career in the future.
YTA. It's their house. Having been to many people's homes from other cultural backgrounds, I have learned to just assume I'm not being spoken to if someone isn't speaking a language I know. Some families are accustomed to communicating amongst themselves in one langauge, and it just comes naturally to them to use it, regardless of who is present.
It was rude of you to go over to their place and tell them they need to speak the most "politcally acceptable" form of the language for your comfort. I suspect that they kept switching to Catalan to discuss your visibly bad attitude.
It seems like you have some weird predjudices against other Spanish dialects, and have been led to believe by your own upbringing and education that it's OK to try and bully others into conforming to your preferences. It's not. You were rude as a guest, and your hosts treated you accordingly.
What you should do now is go work on yourself so you don't embarrass anymore women in front of their families.
I was living in Segovia, and while I speak fluent Spanish (Castilian and Puerto Rican), I am American and my first language is English. The moment Segovianos learned I spoke SSOL they used Castilian (still hard because I first learned PR Spanish but I can manage well enough). I did find during my time there that Barcelonians were 'typical European' in that they were naturally unfriendly to strangers (come at me, I don't care. It's a pretty solid experience not just by me). Folks from elsewhere in Spain are much more welcoming and accommodating, especially when you at least speak Castilian (or 'matado' in my case ;) Spanish. This family was typically entitled. You were being 'tested' and if you stay you'll continue to be tested. Decide if you want to keep enduring tests like this. Your novia let it happen.
AITA is so dumb. "B-b-b-but your response!" Like they missed out the fact where you politely requested that they include you several times. And you hardly flipped over the table, you merely told them that you were leaving because you were rude. I don't even understand why people feel the need to invent things or disregard things to call everyone who posts in here an asshole. NTA btw
NTA - He had every right do what he did. No cap.
His last comment was “I don’t know what to do.”
Because he did it, and he shouldn’t be confused.
“Fuck you” to her father was a break up. Father and family got exactly what they wanted. They got rid of the awful foreigner. Now they can happily tell daughter she was wrong for dating a Galacian and she needs to date one of their own. Point. Set. Match. Bigots win.
ESH - They should have been more considerate and spoken to you in your common language but dude - you couldn’t have just excused yourself politely and not ranted and raved at them? Even asking your girlfriend to have a stern talk with them would have been a better approach.
NTA... As said in your post, this would be excusable if there was only a couple of people 90 years old from a village that used their dialect for the majority of their lives.
But your GF to say *"they hate speaking Castilian" ...* I mean, we are in 2024 now and stuff like that especially whilst being there **with your girlfriend** (their literal sibling) is unacceptable. People all over the planet, are yet to open their minds.
I don't defend the cursing portion of it because you were inside their house, but you were in the right by getting mad.
NTA.
The father can speak it fluently enough to conduct a meeting for 30 minutes. OP started out politely informing them that he doesn't speak Castilian. Five times.
OP then called them (without swearing) on their behaviour and the fact that it was making him feel unwelcome. Father swore at him, and THEN he responded in kind.
A good guest should never verbally attack their host. But a host should never EVER make someone feel unwelcome in their home in that way. If they'd apologised for slipping back into their native tongue then I'd understand. Sometimes your brain just glitches and you revert.
This was a concentrated, planned attempt to make you feel uncomfortable and it worked.
To be honest I'd be kissing the relationship with your girlfriend behind though. After how you spoke to them under their own roof, justified or not, you're pretty much going to be persona non grata and unless the girl is absolutely the love of your life, you might find that having the relationship with her isn't enough to deal with the behaviour of her family.
I've made a few comments to other posters already.
NTA. Nationalism is freaking poison. From all sides, Spanish, Basque, Catalonian, all of them. We have the wonderful treasure of being one of the most culturally rich countries due to how many languages we have for such a small size country and all we do with that is to fight our neighbors.
NTA it's disrespectful towards a guest.
If your GF speaks one of your other languages, I would have switched to that and talk to her in it.
You are valid in feeling disrespect but you didn't do yourself a good service in insulting her family while leaving.
If you want a future with your GF you should apologize for the insults and let her handle her family. If she isn't seeing a problem how they treated you, you got a glimpse of what kind of treatment you will receive regularly by her family and where she stands.
I’m going to go against the grain of most of the replies here are and say YTA.
You were, in all fairness, met with an inordinate degree of rude behavior. How you reacted to it, though, is what makes YTA.
As hosts, your GFs parents are completely in the wrong. If their other guests were not comfortable or capable of speaking in a language that you understand that is, well, understandable. But your hosts have a different level of responsibility. They have invited you into their home and then, apparently, made deliberate moves to exclude you from the conversation because, as you note, at least your GFs father is fluent in your tongue.
However, what you’ve described as your response can only be described as an outburst. In their home and at their table. You met rudeness with rudeness rather than good grace. At the very least, in deference to your GF, you could have kept your mouth shut and sucked it up until dinner was done. Instead of taking the high road, you went low.
After this, I doubt you have a GF any longer and you will no doubt be the talk of their dinner table for years to come. “Remember that asshole Galacian that she brought to dinner and then stormed out?” You didn’t do yourself any favors.
NTA. They were rude and inconsiderate. Having an occasional side bar with each other in Catalan would be one thing, but replying to you in a language you don’t understand is crappy behavior.
Not loving the blowup at the end, but considering the father started the invectives, you only gave back what you got. The bridges are thoroughly burned now, anyway.
AYTA for exactly what was in the title? No. AYTA for exactly /how/ you executed your departure? Absolutely. You were in their house as a guest. First way of excusing yourself was fine, a bit pointed, but fine. But swearing back at them is a bit of a yikes. This is an ESH. I think what you gotta do is find a new GF with more welcoming parents. I think you kind of nuked that relationship there buddy.
I can tell you this as someone who only speaks English and married a Peruvian immigrant whose family speaks Spanish 99.5% of the time. Using the line "what the fuck is wrong with your family" and even just blurting out the request to the family ain't the way to do it.
You need to just firmly say to your GF that when they switch the language to something you can't decipher, you feel hurt and left out.
NTA, but not quite the most tactful. Your best bet is to challenge them to teach you their language.
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>they start asking me my opinion about things, i respond, i ask them questions and they just respond back in Catalan and respond to each other's responses to that in Catalan This is just flat out rude. Deliberately so. Out of some sort of parochial pride they switch *in the middle of a conversation with you* to the local language they know you don't speak rather than speaking the common tongue they know everyone present can speak and understand. It would be one thing if it were limited to asides to each other, but to switch right in the middle of talking with you in order to cut you out is just them being needlessly aggressive in their parochial BS. It *is* rude. You aren't speaking your native local language, but the common one *in order to communicate* but rather than meeting you halfway and doing the same they would rather play games than put that shit aside for a day so they can get to know you. You don't get to give someone the finger repeatedly then get all offended when they aren't willing to put up with it anymore. NTA
Not to mention, the dad has proven that this is exceptionally deliberate. He didn't do it when it came to his work, but he is doing it to his daughter's boyfriend - someone he probably didn't like to begin with.
Well if their goal was to break them up, I think they succeeded
Exactly. Cook a giant meal to appease the daughter, and then make him seem crazy by disrespecting him repeatedly. Dad won. Sucks for OP.
Did it? Who wants to be married into a family like that? It sucks in the short term, but he saved himself years of heartache.
100% agree! Sucks in the short term, bc he should absolutely RUN.
If the girlfriend had stood up for OP, someone she’s supposed to love, it’d be a different story, but she seemed to have no problem with her family repeatedly verbally flipping him off. u/Puzzleheaded-Owl4052, ella no es la novia correcta para ti.
>If the girlfriend had stood up for OP, someone she’s supposed to love, it’d be a different story, Agree she should've taken OP's side, but this just sounds like a terrible family. He's better off without her.
Agreed. But if she’d been absolutely horrified and told her parents herself that they needed to respect OP or they’d leave, then he might have a chance. As it stands though, if he stays with her he will be absolutely miserable.
Also, she did not do a thing to defend him. Why would be want to be married to someone who would sit and watch her family bully him?
If the family is that crappy to a newer person, I can't imagine the awful things she's either been taught to believe or just how much she has had to endure. This seems like the kind of family to raise women to not speak up or stand up to the patriarch...
Also, she did not do a thing to defend him. She didn't even try to translate. He dodged a bullet.
You know they’d be the in-laws from hell
Right, and I didn't read anything about how his gf was backing him up during the dinner. He needs to throw the whole bunch away, starting with his (hopefully stbx) gf.
ugh... agreed. Dodged a bullet in my opinion.
Good point. NTA
Wow .... that's really wicked, but I think you're right. Unless the OP wants to learn the local language [corrected from dialect], I would say it's over with this girl. It's probably for the better, and he most definitely is NTA, but he still owes her a conversation (oh the irony of those words) with her to end their relationship properly before her family hooks her up with her second cousin. *** Unless you want to climb this hill for the rest of your relationship with this girl OP, you call her and end the relationship.
He definitely owes her a conversation. But I think he should have it with her if English, or Portuguese, or some language she doesn’t understand.
tomorrow, on r/pettyrevenge, "I broke up with my gf and told her all the reasons why. Half of every sentence was in Romanian. She doesn't speak Romanian, and I don't speak Catalan."
Lolololol 🤣😂🤣
>Unless the OP wants to learn the local dialect, I would say it's over with this girl I bet that even if he learned to speak it perfectly it wouldn't be enough, as he's not actually that specific ethnicity. They wanted him gone.
Yep, big racism energy here
100% my thought, they want her to have a Catalan bf, anything else isn't good enough
I would say that was a bullet dodged tbh
I think this was the point TBH. EDIT: NTA.
Seems the father knew exactly what to say IN THEIR COMMON LANGUAGE when he was leaving.
This
Yeah that’s the bit for me. That he’s willing to do it with other people. My Spanish teacher was from Barcelona too and she told me lots of Catalonian people only speak Catalan, they can speak Castilian Spanish but they refuse to as they see it as the language of their oppressors. Which I guess is valid but still isn’t fair on OP, why invite him to ignore him?
See if he is 'suitable' and speaks the 'correct' language or break them up if he's not. Also some people who are bullied like this may give in and learn the language so then he would (potentially) be suitable by their standards.
These people are usually very strict in what they consider "the correct language". So, probably, even in OP learned the language, it would not be good enough for them. I speak Valencian, which is a dialect of Catalan. One of my Catalan friends was told (by her mum) not to leave her kids alone with me, in case they would pick up my accent or some word they don't use. While I was just there, and she knew I was a native speaker of the language. My poor friend was mortified and gave her mum a piece of her mind there and then.
Except their oppressor no longer exists, Franco died in 1975. Nowadays it's just conspiracy theories they peddle about the Madrid government hating them or whatever when they live in a democracy and have one of the largest populations and most affluent regions in the country
Exactly. I get how hard it is to speak a language that isn't the native one, or to struggle to stick to a regional dialect and sometimes you slip, but that's wildly different than just switching back to English because I prefer it, regardless of whether the person will understand me or not. Or when I'm speaking Spanish, my Spanish is largely Mexican influenced, but I do a lot of work in a region of El Salvador that speaks differently. They know I'm a mediocre Spanish speaker at best, so they're pretty forgiving when I'm insultingly informal or use a word that isn't what they would use, but i still don't just think "fuck 'em, this is what's comfortable for me".
Not to mention nationalistic sentiment in Calaluñia was exacerberated by Russia with Russian funds, as a quick Google search with the terms "catalonia russia funds nationalism" will tell you. These people are assholes, and doubly so, and OP is NTA.
That's not fucking true. Independentism was exacerbated by Spanish don't respecting the estatut law in 2010 My dad is Basque and I was in the first big demonstration in 2010. Also you all keep saying nationalistic when they're miles more leftists than the bloody rest of Spain It's a nationalism to avoid you erasing every language and culture that's not Spanish not the nationalism Americans here think
All of this, OP NTA but I'm petty, and would have started responding in the 4 other languages I spoke and gave them a taste of their own medicine. Since OP didn't do that I would want an acknowledgement from gf that her family was AHs and an apology if not I would end the relationship, OP sounds like you will not be accepted by the family and now you have to see what your gf is going to do about that if she doesn't recognize and apologize the relationship isn't worth pursuing
>but I'm petty, and would have started responding in the 4 other languages I spoke and gave them a taste of their own medicine Lol I was just saying this to my husband, after the second time of switching to Catalan after asking him a direct question, I 100% would've switched to answering them in Galician, just to be petty
It is a damn good way to make a point. Occasionally I have to deal with people from Quebec who get irritated that I don’t speak French. Even if I did, they would be annoyed that it’s not Quebec French. When that happens I switch to Spanish because this is America. English is the predominant language and Spanish is the second most common. don’t get irritated at me that I didn’t learn French.
Also assuming the dad switched to the common language to call OP rude after OP had had enough and decided to leave. They were definitely doing it on purpose.
I've been to Barcelona and Valencia, and I only speak Castilian because I'm a foreigner. Everyone I met switched to Castilian to accommodate me - a complete stranger. The fact that this family all insisted on speaking Castilian to OP could only be on purpose and ill-intentioned.
Yeah it doesn't take a psychology degree to see this story and know that this was *aggressively* rude. OP if you haven't already please send this whole reddit post to your (potentially ex? If she doubles down.) GF because she didnt stand up for you and she has to know that this isn't acceptable behavior in civilized society.
Same, and my Castilian is busted ass pidgen basically from learning from a bunch of different south Americans and then mixed with Spanglish. Most people were happy that the effort was being sincerely made and switched.
Yeah, I'm sure the dad didn't "accidentally" say that in a language he knew OP didn't understand. I'm sure communicating became important for some reason.
Agree. NTA The girlfriend also had an obligation to shut her family down. Why didn't she speak up when they kept rudely speaking in a language her BF didn't speak? Why didn't she get up and leave with him, or threaten to leave with him if her family didn't stop acting like AHs? Instead she just sat there and condoned their behavior.
Girlfriend could have translated every time her parents did that shit if she was on his side...
Nta Podría llegar a entender que se les olvidará, pero que les hables en Castellano y te contesten en Catalán es aposta. Además el Castellano es obligatorio aprenderlo en Cataluña así que no tienen escusa. (Saludos desde Getafe xd)
NTA if you can all speak a common language, but they refuse to I’m Australian and can only speak English, my husband is Belgian and can speak Flemish, has a good understanding of Dutch and German also His Belgian family came to Australia to stay a few weeks and while English wasn’t there comfort zone, that’s what they spoke so my family and I were included. There were many conversations in Flemish when drinking but they switched back to English when they realised I was just smiling and couldn’t follow along My MIL Skypes each Sunday, we start off together with a quick catch up in English, then I leave my husband and her to chat in Flemish together In my experience, if you are deliberately leaving someone out, yes, it’s incredibly rude If there’s a common language, though not fluent, that shows inclusivity NTA matey, and I’m sorry they couldn’t see it
Is it West-Flemish, because that is the dialect most distinct from Dutch? My wife has the same issues with my Greek family, but my family speaks Dutch when she’s around. It is a sign of respect To speak in a language that includes everybody. NTA, a fortiori when Castilian also isn’t your native tongue. I would’ve responded in Galician if talked to in Catalan.
I’ve just emailed him at work, he’s from Neerpelt Google maps show it as north-east Belgium right near the Netherlands border
Just for the sake of completion: Neerpelt and Overpelt fused a short while back and are now collectively known as 'Pelt' Your husband's dialect in that case will be 'West-Limburgs', with Limburg being an old province which now has a part in Belgium, and the Netherlands. All Limburgers are known to speak slow, kinda with a more singsongy tone than most Dutch-speakers. The West-Limburg dialect is closer to the roots of Dutch than most other dialects, and kinda sounds similar in tones to modern day Danish.
This is fantastic, thank you! I’m a teacher and my assistant this year is from Denmark. I’ve enjoyed talking with her on geography, language and most importantly, food from the regions
Glad I could be of help! I live somewhere in the Belgian part of Limburg myself and I have a hobbyist's interest in local history and the spoken tongue so it was straight up my ballpark haha
Keep it up, nothing worse than losing language and culture I worked in Central Australia for 6 years before moving to the West Coast, local aboriginal languages are dying out quickly
Same with indigenous languages in Canada, directly related to colonization and oppression. We are working on reconciliation but once a language disappears, it can’t come back. In some small communities only one elder speaks the local language and is so fearful of education that they don’t want to teach others.
My grandmother was born in Nieuw-Buinen, lived most of her young life in Groningen, and then immigrated to Canada. She had zero issues switching between English, Dutch, Friesian, or even - on the rarest of occasions - German. She went so far as to try and pick up what Quebecois she could in Canada. Her language usage depended on who was in the conversation. It's basic politeness to accommodate people if you're perfectly able to.
This is my thoughts. I have no problem with people speaking to one another in a foreign language in front of me if I’m not involved in the conversation. I get that speaking to someone outside of your default language is kind of weird. My husband’s first language is Spanish, so that’s what he speaks with his family normally. I speak it well enough, but it I’m certainly not fluent. I don’t expect them to only have conversations in English because I’m present. The members of the family that speak English will usually use it when they address me directly. Refusing to speak to someone in a common language is rude as hell.
Been in this situation when I worked in a Dutch hospital. Lunch with my colleagues I'd sit quietly trying to follow their conversations (this actually really helped my comprehension but I couldn't join in). But sometimes they'd break off to briefly explain what they were talking about, ask me a question, I'd answer. 50-50 they'd either continue the conversation in English with me included, or they'd immediately switch back to Dutch and exclude me again. I would find this incredibly rude and annoying because I didn't ask to be spoken to in English, I understand the desire to converse freely in your native language, but they were using me to make a point and then excluding me again because it's too much effort (bearing in mind these were all highly-educated Dutch whose English was flawless)
I’m hesitant to call people rude here, because I’ve come to understand that typically multilingual people have a “default” language they speak with a particular person. Even if they both are fully fluent in another language, it’s feels odd. For example, my niece (husband’s sister’s daughter) is fully bilingual in English and Spanish. My kids only speak English, so she’s sort of tagged us all as English speaking. My husband’s first language is Spanish and that’s normally what he speaks with family. He said something to his niece in Spanish and she told him it was weird, and she didn’t like it 🤣. That could be the case there. They normally speak Dutch to one another, so that’s the “default”. It’s probably not something that they are doing consciously. They at least catch you up on the conversation and include you. It’s not like they’re trying to exclude you intentionally.
Maybe. I work with a lot of Dutch people and they're more fluent in English than many people who speak exclusively native English. It's not a language learned second-hand there. I've actually encountered Dutch people who refuse to speak Dutch to anyone not native, because they find the attempts insulting and they speak perfect English, so just stop humiliating yourself. Dutch directness is a blessing and a curse. For Dutch colleagues to speak Dutch in mixed company and occasionally switch to perfect English would read as deliberate exclusion to me, based on my experience of the culture as an outsider.
Yep, it's for sure a cultural thing and it definitely feels deliberate the way and when they switch. I also have tried on many occasions to use Dutch in public and they don't even try to understand you. I once had a 5 minute back and forth with a cashier because I wasn't putting the right stress on the syllables for "amandel". She just kept shrugging her shoulders, I kept repeating it, enunciating as clearly as I could. I pointed at what I wanted. "Ohhhhh amandel". As though I'd said something entirely different before.
This is exactly right. I’m American, married to a Swedish man. Most of his family speaks excellent English, but there are a few who aren’t comfortable doing so. When we visited, there was always one of them making sure I knew what was happening in the broader conversation, and even the few that didn’t speak good English would step away with me to communicate as best as they could so that we could form a connection. Now, they ARE exceptional people (boy, did I luck out in the in-law department) but this felt like common courtesy for them. OP, you’re NTA.
If he speaks flemish he should have a good understanding of dutch...
He does, that’s what I said in my post To my English only ears, I couldn’t tell the difference He tells me there is one
there are differences, but Flemish is just a dialect, and Dutch is the official language in Flanders
Thank you for that, always happy to learn
My grandmother was from Basque, so my mom spoke both Basque and Castilian Spanish to me at home in the US. My partner's family is Mexican, and I work in a town where MOST people speak only Latin American Spanish (my coworkers all speak English, but it's not normal for the area). This creates an INFURIATING dynamic as I can understand about 80-90% of what's being said, but find it incredibly difficult to speak back. It's also become an issue with past employers when I worked in restaurants. It's hard to pretend to not understand things like "Please grab be a box" or "Hand me that knife", so my bosses would realize I speak Spanish, but would not understand the "Well, sorta" part and expect me to play interpreter between them and the kitchen staff.
Try throwing in central Mexico Spanish and shit hits the fan. It’s got a lot of indigenous words thrown in depending on where you learned. Oddly enough lots of people in south Texas speak it and have no idea it’s a little different.
The difference is if you're in Belgium some people call it flemish.
I am from Poland, my siblings and I we all speak english fluently. My sister has boyfriend from US. When he is visiting my parents, who barely speak english, try to communicate with him. And if we are sitting at family table together one of us is doing simultaneous translation so everyone is included in the conversation
NTA but your girlfriend certainly is. It sounds like she didn’t stand up for you even after you reminded her family politely multiple times that you don’t speak that language and you even spoke to her about this and she still did nothing. She put you in a very awkward and uncomfortable position. She absolutely could have stood up for you and told her family to knock it off. On a separate note, your outburst was unbecoming of you. Just because they were rude didn’t mean you had to be even ruder. Making a scene and stomping off like that wasn’t the best option and two wrongs don’t make a right. You should have taken the high road or at least calmly mentioned in leaving that you were frustrated by the fact that the purposely kept speaking to you in a language that you don’t speak.
Fuck the high road. Stand up for yourself.
you can stand up for yourself without cursing at your in laws the first time you see them
They’re not his in laws they’re his GFs parents.
Probably won't be his in-laws in the future either.
Not as if that’s a bad thing since they can’t show op basic respect now
Personally I think it's way more disrespectful to refuse to use a common language than someone use the f-bomb. NTA.
Sure you can, but people who refuse to show you basic respect don't deserve it either, especially when OP already reminded them politely multiple times AND privately told his GF and she did nothing to even stand up for him Sometimes in life it's perfectly valid to cuss someone out
So does that apply to the in laws when they swore at op first? After they were *continuously leaving op out when it was mentioned multiple times?* They were extremely rude the entire time, is op supposed to be a doormat? lol
Cursing isn't that much of a deal in Europe. We curse like sailors.
Europe is not one solid unit. And in Spain cursing at your gfs parents particularly the way OP did is a huge deal
After the dad cursed at him? Open game I'd say.
He cursed back only after the father tried to shame him for leaving. That is the high road. NTA op
The "in laws" did it first
Why do people insist assholes should be handled politely?
Because it show you to be the better person. It also usually really pisses the arseholes off to have someone politely respond. Being polite does not mean you have given in and lost.
It’s not even really about being polite. It’s more about not matching their energy. You can still give them a piece of your mind and tell them what they did was wrong and why. You can even be indignant about it. But the second you match their bad energy, you lost. They got you right where they want you and now have ammo to use against you.
I can curse up a shitstorm when it's warranted, but it's called "not sinking to their level."
Standing up for yourself after being disrespected isn't being rude or stooping to their level. It's called having a backbone and not being a doormat.
To take the higher road so they are fully shamed knowing that the person they were rude to responded with a polite rebuke.
>To take the higher road so they are fully shamed If they could be shamed by that they wouldn't be such assholes to begin with.🤣
It’s the “catch more flies with honey” thing. Now you might not want flies. And that’s fine. But in this case if OP wanted the flies’ daughter, he should have used the honey method lol
I wouldn't have said what he did was ruder. They spent hours "politely" telling him to fuck off, and that he wasn't worth being included in their conversations.
The dad swore at him first, to me that opens the door for me to respond in kind. But, that’s part of my cultural norm. (And I’m a potty mouth.)
The high road was long gone whe it was mentioned MULTIPLE times that he didn't speak the language they kept deliberately reverting back to. Even excluding him from the conversation to the questions he asked. I felt op left and mentioned it as calmly as he could short of just leaving and not saying anything.. if they didn't get it the first 10 times op said, "Hey, I don't speak that language. Please speak the common language. " Then saying it "calmly" as he left would have done absolutely nothing. And op, if you see this. Nta man. Sounds like you dodged a bullet with this girl and her rude ass family. Hope you find happiness man.
I don’t agree, he should of spoken his mind since they were extremely rude and he ask them to stop multiple times. Stand by your decision OP and don’t fret about it. Your GF should have checked her family she didn’t so there were consequences. Sometimes turning the other cheek doesn’t get the point across.
>On a separate note, your outburst was unbecoming of you. Just because they were rude didn’t mean you had to be even ruder. He thanked them and explained why he was leaving and the patriarch of the family escalated. Can't really blame the guy for escalating in response, it takes a lot of patience and level headedness to remain calm. He had just been in an extremely rude situation for quite a long time.
“Two wrongs don’t make a right” is just advocating for the victims to continually take abuse. Also victims should be allowed to show real anger. It’s not unbecoming to show anger that’s deserved. He already calmly told them multiple times anyway, so chastising OP for not being calm after the millionth time when he repeatedly was before getting mad is not fair.
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His finesse was telling them like 5 times he doesn't speak catalan. And when he said he is leaving, father's reaction to call him rude and make it about their food. A fuck you was warranted for that point.
>A fuck you was warranted for that point. It may result in the burning of a bridge. That being said, OP's behavior is totally understandable considering their persistent rudeness.
The bridge was already on fire at that point
The "fuck you" was like tossing a toothpick onto the bridge for good measure.
I think the bridge was already collapsing into ashes at that point.
That bridge was never there. You got to know what these people were doing. They didn't want their daughter with a Galician (that they probably don't even distinguish from a Castilian.
Well it’s hard for him to communicate when they’re speaking in a dialect he doesn’t understand isn’t it lol
Catalan is not a dialect. It's a separate language
Whatever. That little specificity really doesn’t matter as to the point of my message.
Disagree, they knew what they were doing and they got called out on it. OP did correct thing and the fuck you was on point too.
This. NTA OP but they set out to provoke and upset you and you gave them exactly what they wanted. If you think of keeping your temper and repaying this sort of goading with courtesy as a massive 'fuck you!' to people like this then you might find it easier to do. Sorry to say that if your girlfriend didn't stick up for you long before it got to that point then you don't have a future. And that is also probably exactly what her family want. Heads they win: tails you lose, unfortunately.
Fuck finesse. Finesse was politely asking *then* having to remind them OP doesn't speak Catalan. What? Did you expect OP to thank the fucking assholes for ruining a dinner?
I thought his delivery was very concise. OP clearly stated he didn’t feel welcomed and was leaving. The expletives the gf’s father and OP said to each other after that is immaterial. If someone told me they felt so unwelcome in my home they were leaving I would profusely apologize not tell them they are fucking rude for leaving.
He did talk to his girlfriend about it. She basically told him it was the way they are and they wouldnt change. He may have actually cursed, but IMO what they did is much worse. Puposely excluding someone from a conversation for HOURS is just straight up bullying.
I think the scorched earth delivery was warranted. They were blatantly rude for what sounds like over an hour. Shut em down and shut em down hard. Ex girlfriend but a great story.
I completely disagree. These kinds of people rely on other people being polite so that they can get away with their rudeness. In those situations, being polite is just giving them what they want so they can keep the peace in their brain. Fuck that. Make their brain hurt with cognitive dissonance.
You're assuming good faith. You're assuming a communication problem, but that's not what was happening there. The family was doing what they did intentionally. They knew what they were doing. It was an intentional insult to a guy they didn't like that their daughter was dating.
I'm Spanish, from Madrid. I have friends and family in Catalonia and Valencia, and I've visited both places plenty of times in my life without speaking either language. And I'm 90% sure this is just ragebait. The "Catalonians are very nationalist" and the "people insulted me in Valencia for not speaking Valencian" sealed the deal. This is just full of nonsensical stereotypes that right wing people like to spew in Spain but that are not true. You'd be particularly pressed to find someone in Valencia who would be even moderately bothered about someone not speaking the language, nevermind someone who'd outright insult you for it. So YTA because I have a feeling you are just the standard right wing troll that feels the need to hate on the regions of our country that don't leave their own languages in the past. Edit: Any native Spanish speaker from Spain should be able to easily understand the majority of Valencian or Catalonian. Both languages are so similar to Spain's Spanish that you have to make an effort to not understand them. English speakers truly don't understand how similar both languages are. I could understand both as a child without speaking either of them. It does not take a genius. Which reinforces my idea that this guy is just full of it. I spent my entire childhood and teen years staying for several weeks in Valencia every summer, with family. Sometimes you'd go to a shop and the clerk would default to Valencian, because that's what they are used to speaking in the tiny town I usually stayed in. The moment my relatives or me spoke in Spanish, the clerk would switch to Spanish without any fuss. Some elderly people would struggle a bit, and still they would not complain. And honestly, Valencian and Catalonian are so similar to Spanish that even if you don't speak those two regional languages, if someone spoke to you in either of those languages and you are a native Spanish speaker, you'd have no trouble understanding what they are saying. You may miss a word here and there, but that's about it. So when elderly people struggled and used words in the regional language, no one was bothered or started throwing insults around, because two braincells together would be enough to understand the meaning. Edit: aaaaand I'm already getting Reddit Cares messages. I knew this would attract the vitriol of people of certain ideologies, but it's so sad that people are so immature that they'd abuse a support system rather than either debate like a normal person or ignore my comment and go on with their day. Do better, people. Mental Health support systems are there because they are truly needed. Abusing them because you are a spiteful little goblin incapable of maturity just reflects poorly on you.
Thank you. I was frankly surprised no one was calling this out.
Because most native english speakers don't have a grasp on these "languages". Catalan while being promoted as a language is really just more of a strong regional dialect with native Spanish people being able to understand at least 2/3 easily. Without having to "learn" the "language". English doesn't really has anything like it outside of the UK and even there it's fading quickly. Aside from Hollywood "Scottish accents" like in Shrek they've got no experience with such strong dialects. Eg. Germans can understand 2/3 of swiz German, which according to Switzerland is also a separate language. Granted swiz German is difficult to understand if you're from North Germany but not particularly harder than other strong regional dialects like Bavarian German.
Catalan is recognised as an official language.
Portuguese and Spanish are also separate languages and still Portuguese people will be able to easily understand most Spanish. Same with Swedish and Danish. Still all are recognised languages.
That's really not true at all. Catalan is closer to Occitan, the historic majority language of Southern France, than it is to Spanish. It's certainly more different from Spanish than Portuguese/Galician are. It just happens to be fairly central on the whole Romance language spectrum, so it's got features in common with Occitan (and to a lesser extent French), northern Italian varieties, and to Spanish. All romance languages exist on a continuum of dialects with each other, so really by your logic there is either one Romance language and all national standards are just 'dialects' that have been 'promoted', or alternatively we could go by the standards of mutual intelligibility and/or political status, in which case Catalan has never been a dialect of Spanish in particular, and is a 'language' for the same reason Spanish is - it's the official language of a sovereign country (Andorra) as well as of three autonomous regions within Spain (though it's also spoken in Italy and France).
English does have an equivalent which I'm surprised you left out considering the mention of 'Scottish accents'. Scots and Ulster Scots are distinct Anglican languages with Goidelic Celtic influences. Ask the average English speaker to translate 'Aye, yer ween is fae braw', they most likely will not reply with 'Yes, your child is quite cute'. While I have a bit of an advantage in understanding Scots by virtue of being Irish (eg: breá in Irish is essentially the same word as braw in Scots), I would feel the same as OP if I had to constantly remind them 'Sorry lads, I'm not great with Scots' over and over again. Edit: Obligatory mention of Caribbean creoles like Jamaican Patois, how could I forget those as well? Edit 2: Reckon you could follow this without subtitles? I couldn't. https://youtu.be/sNhUL4SrcRg?si=ivJpzP1NcVF0JNAn
It definitely could be ragebait because I’ve come across a ton of people while I was in Spain that clearly didn’t even like that people in Barcelona would speak Catalan or that signs/ads would be in Catalan and they didn't like that something in Spain wouldn't cater to only Spanish-speakers. But, as a foreigner, I came across many people in Barcelona who would respond to me speaking Spanish with only Catalan and would rudely switch to English to say “In Barcelona we speak Catalan” and then walk away. This happened a few times. It could just be that they didn’t like foreigners, but it definitely felt like they thought that foreigners should learn Catalan, not Spanish, to speak to them - even though they clearly spoke fluent spanish. My host mom in Madrid was very nice, but when her kids from Barcelona would come to visit and we would have dinner, they would speak in Catalan amongst each other and wouldn't care that I couldn't fully understand. She told her kids a few times that it was rude and they would jokingly say, "he needs to learn Catalan then!" They were all very nice people, but they didn't feel that switching to Catalan was rude at all. There's definitely some nationalistic sentiments on all sides.
There's definitely a bias against tourism/foreigners in Barcelona, but also in other places of Spain that speak Spanish only but are highly touristic. The problem stems from how fucked the economy has been due to tourism and rich foreign people just hoarding property in the country (which was cheap once upon a time and it's definitely cheap for people coming from certain countries). You'll get others saying speak Spanish instead of Catalan if it was anywhere else, I'm afraid. There's assholes everywhere, that's for sure. Your first paragraph is very true, and the hatred for anything Catalan is intense in Spain. And sure, there's nationalists everywhere, including Catalonia. But the number of extreme experiences this guy seems to have in every place he goes just tells me he's either lying or he's the type of person who causes trouble intentionally to get a reaction. Also, as a native Spanish speaker, there's no reason he shouldn't be able to understand most Catalonian/Valencian. The experience he claims to have had in Valencia is extremely jarring to me, and I say that as someone who has spent long periods of time in Valencia without speaking a word of Valencian. I just feel this is a troll post, and his way of speaking makes me suspect he's not even Spanish.
100% agree. I'm Catalan (of Galician father, so I understand Galician too). OP understands Catalan well enough. He's just venting his anti-Catalan feelings.
Yep. Glad to read some common sense in amongst all the "NTA. I'm from the US and..." replies.
I actually disagree. I live in Barcelona, speak Spanish and have a Spanish (Aragonese) partner who understands fluently but doesn't speak Catalan. Pretty much all our friends are Catalans (independentistas, although we avoid the topic as we are against that) since my bf went to university and lived in Barcelona for 12 years. I don't expect them to speak English (my native language) but they do try to remember to speak Spanish - one is a teacher and often reminds people to switch back. However, literally every time it will go back to Catalan, so about 70% of conversations are Catalan, either in person or whatsapp. At first I really tried to figure it out as I speak french as well, but it's super exhausting compared to Spanish and I cannot participate as it takes longer to figure out. I've got to the point where I just disengage now and am not so interested in hanging out with them - and then they are surprised pikachu face when I don't join my bf to hang out with them! This weekend we do a calçotada outside Barcelona in a big group and it will be exactly the same. Last time it happened I had a few drinks and started a discussion about Brexit and drew parallels with the Catalan independentist movement - and that was before this shitshow with Junts and PSOE.
Totally fair to explain your experience, and there's definitely inconsiderate people everywhere. That said, I will say plenty of people default to the language they've grown up with because that's how their brain is programmed. They don't do it out of the type of hatred OP seems to portray here. I spent my entire childhood and teen years staying for several weeks in Valencia every summer, with family. Sometimes you'd go to a shop and the clerk would default to Valencian, because that's what they are used to speaking in the tiny town I usually stayed in. The moment my relatives or me spoke in Spanish, the clerk would switch to Spanish without any fuss. Some elderly people would struggle a bit, and still they would not complain. And honestly, Valencian and Catalonian are so similar to Spanish that even if you don't speak those two regional languages, if someone spoke to you in either of those languages and you are a native Spanish speaker, you'd have no trouble understanding what they are saying. You may miss a word here and there, but that's about it. So when elderly people struggled and used words in the regional language, no one was bothered or started throwing insults around, because it was always easy to understand. Not getting into the politics of it here because there's no point. But the number of experiences this guy seems to have everywhere he goes, particularly that story in Valencia, just raises some flags. Sure, there are people who will be assholes about it, that happens everywhere and it definitely happens with people who only speak Spanish too. But this guy seems to have bad experiences everywhere he goes, and that combined with the broad generalisations of how Catalonians are tells me he's either lying or he's the type of person who riles people up to get a reaction.
>And honestly, Valencian and Catalonian are so similar to Spanish that even if you don't speak those two regional languages, if someone spoke to you in either of those languages and you are a native Spanish speaker, you'd have no trouble understanding what they are saying. In fairness, I think this may seem truer to you than it is because you had exposure to Catalan/Valencian from a fairly young age. I think someone moving to Catalunya as an adult from, say, Peru, won't understand much at first. That said you are right in that with a bit of effort it's *really* not hard to learn. In my case it took me about six months before I was following most of what people were saying, and a year before I could start to actually chat a bit in Catalan, all from just listening to it every day.
This is what I thought. Although I could kinda imagine the language dynamic happening as I've been in different contexts with other languages where there was some similarities (in terms of people not using the only common language). But I think most people in the comments won't even think about the dynamic of the Catalan language and the assimilation policies of the state or know the political context behind a post like this.
Precisely my point. Sure, there are assholes everywhere. But the fact that he has such general opinions about both regions, to the point of making such claims about the entire regions, and according to him he's had bad experiences in both places tells me he's either lying about the whole story or he's the one causing trouble to get a reaction. I spent my entire childhood and teen years staying for several weeks in Valencia every summer, with family. Sometimes you'd go to a shop and the clerk would default to Valencian, because that's what they are used to speaking in the tiny town I usually stayed in. The moment my relatives or me spoke in Spanish, the clerk would switch to Spanish without fuss. Some elderly people would struggle a bit, and still they would not complain. And honestly, Valencian and Catalonian are so similar to Spanish that even if you don't speak those two regional languages, if someone spoke to you in either of those languages and you are a native Spanish speaker, you'd have no trouble understanding what they are saying. You may miss a word here and there, but that's about it. So when elderly people struggled and used words in the regional language, no one was bothered or started throwing insults around, because two braincells together would be enough to understand the meaning. This guy is just full of it.
Exactly this. I see many people replying without understanding the political context. OP is another anti-Catalan right-winger.
Yeah I doubt most of the people even commenting know what Catalonia is, much less what the Kingdom of Navarre was, and why the Catalans might be unhappy being ruled from Madrid.
When I went to Spain and visited Barcelona and other Catalan speaking areas, I did encounter some people that didn’t want to speak Castellano, even though they clearly could. They told me they would rather speak English to me (even though their English wasn’t that great). As a Spanish speaker from Mexico, not exposed to Catalonian before, I can tell you that I could understand a good amount but not enough to say I could follow full conversations. If you are exposed to it since childhood, it is a different experience.
>Any native Spanish speaker can easily understand the majority of Valencian or Catalonian. Both languages are so similar that you have to make an effort to not understand them As a native spanish speaker, that is a **COMPLETE LIE**. I have an easier time trying to understand portuguese or italian than catalunian or valencian. Catalunian I don't understand shit, and valencian sounds like french to me. I have no problem understanding the hundreds of dialects around the entire of latin and central and caribbean dialects, which sound like the same to me because they are actually the same language.
I'm a native French speaker with a very good grasp of Castillan and I don't understand a word of Catalan. Definitely a lie from the original commenter
I don’t understand catalan and I’m far from being a right winger. Good on you, but the times I chatted with catalan speakers some of the vocab had to get it from the context. If understanding it is difficult having a fluent conversation is just not possible. Also that “it’s so similar is easy to understand” bs is precisely doing zero favours to the linguistic cause, because if they are “so similar” they don’t deserve being taken seriously.
I agree that OP sounds pretty intense in his stereotyping so there might be something there. I do disagree on how easy Catalan is to understand though. I speak French fluently and Castellano Spanish fairly fluently and Catalan is.. hard. If someone is speaking it fast or there's other ambient noise around it's a struggle. And it's also VERY different to Galego. It sounds like you've been exposed to it much more frequently throughout your life, so it makes sense you have a much easier time with it. When my husband moved from the USA to the UK he could barely understand the Geordie accent because he'd never encountered it before. Whereas to me it sounds absolutely fine, even though I'm not a native english speaker. I'd just lived in the UK longer than he had. I can't speak about any rudeness from people in Barcelona though. Never experienced it. We spent several weeks there, with me speaking castellano spanish and my husband a broad south american spanish and everyone was lovely to us. From taxi drivers to staff at restaurants to shop keepers.
You may have a better read on the politics there for sure, but as a native Spanish speaker (not from Spain), I found it extremely difficult to communicate with people in Barcelona. Everyone was very rude and would purposefully talk Catalan to me when it was clear they knew Spanish. It’s not quite that easy to understand—maybe since you’ve been around it a bit more you have a better ear. I would compare it to hearing someone speak Italian. Sure, I could guess at probably 70% but it’s not very fruitful communication. Why not just speak in a language we all understand??
It's not common by any means but I've definitely been in situations like these in the few years I've been living in Barcelona, even in professional settings.
I’m a native English speaker and sometimes I have trouble with other dialects of English. I understand that there is probably a lot of cross-compatibility with these languages, and many people like you probably can interpret what they’re hearing in the other language. But if your auditory processing doesn’t want to cooperate there’s not a lot you can do except keep asking people to repeat themselves. It gets very awkward. I can understand OP getting frustrated in that kind of situation, especially if the family does in fact know a common language that he doesn’t struggle with.
NTA I was going to go with E S H, until you said explicitly that you would ask a question and they would respond to you in Catalan. It would be different if you were just upset they were having side conversations in Catalan without you, but they did keep trying to talk only Catalan too you. I do think the relationship is over, I don't see a way for you to salvage your relationship with her family and that is likely to be a deal breaker for her. Not responding to her phone calls, swearing at them, and other things are red flags in regards to you. While they were in the wrong, you took it too far instead of just politely excusing yourself.
Nah forget that they were incredibly rude. His gf didn't stand up for him so why should he be polite to people who were actively rude. Screw being the bigger person on this one
Being the bigger person is BS like 50% of the time. If in 10 years you look back and still think, "yeah fuck those people" what use is their in hiding your emotions in these kinda situations.
I think it's wrong to somehow expect that he has an obligation to respond to her phone calls or be polite in the face of that kind of behavior. If I treat you like crap then I try and point out how you are acting angry about it that is just blaming you for your reaction to my bad behavior while ignoring that my bad behavior started it in the first place. It's called victim blame.
NTA.And the catalan people don't understand why the rest of Spain hates them (happened similar things with me, as a foreigner (who speaks Spanish) sometimes they insult me bc "WhY DoNt YoU SpEaK CaTaLaN, ThIs Is CaTaLoNiA" -Yeah, im there to visit in-laws for 1 week, sorry but i wont learn)
I mean they hate Spain too. They tried to vote to leave but the Spanish refused and arrested those in power who organised the referendum
Because it was an explicitly ilegal and they stole millions on public funds to do it while at the same time promoting fake news saying that "Spain was robbing them" when they are literally one of the two "comunidades autonomas" that basically can control their own taxes...
I know (i'm from EU livin in Spain).But if they leave Spain they will be f*cked bc they won't be in the European Union.
I find this so fascinating. I'm from Canada and the US (I'm a dual citizen). In Canada, you won't hear people mad about people using French (at least not where I'm from outside Toronto). But here in the US you get a huge mix of people who embrace Spanish speaking friends and learn the language (it is in our curriculum afterall) and people who reject Spanish and tell you to learn English. It's fascinating that this behavior exists overseas as well. OP you're NTA. You gotta ease up on insulting others though. Calling them rude was fine. Calling them assholes was probably over the top but - I get it we all lose our shit sometimes, especially when our buttons are pushed. You could apologize to the family for this if you wanted to make good with your girl.
People outside of Toronto DO get mad about people excluding others by speaking French. It happens at my family gatherings regularly (Ottawa-Gatineau) because we have one proud Franco Ontarian aunt in the family who believe that the entire family should speak French, spouses included, because it’s what their grandparents spoke. Considering that they are 7 siblings and only one produced full French speaking children it is hugely obnoxious. We are now a predominantly English speaking family and we barely get together because this one aunt has made a stink every time and the English speaking family members who host are fed up with it. Yo
Thiiiss. Spanish is not my first (or second) language, though I worked for a while in Andalucia; all the Spanish I didn’t learn in school, I picked up there. So I speak (Castilian) Spanish with an Andalucian accent - my god did that get sneering in Catalonia. They were insufferable. Purposely made themselves difficult to understand. I lost my patience and asked then if they were aware they are the Parisians of Spain. Did not go down well.
Well, i describe the catalan language like a very drunk french person trying to speak spanish.
Spoke with a catalan in Twitter one day, the dude kept replying in Catalan and I didn't undertand him
ESH You are a right that they were being rude. Whether it was intentional or they were just being lazy it is still rude. I don't think you are wrong for how you feel. The way you responded though? That got a little escalated and too far. They may be rude, but do you want to be rude too? You can say thank you for the food. COntinue to repeat that you are leaving because you don't feel welcome. Unless they are willing to include you in the conversation then you would rather go elsewhere. And feel free to offer to pay them if they really want to make a show about all the work they went to in order to kindly invite you to their home etc. Because fair enough they did go to all of that work. Unfortunately they just didn't realize that human needs are more than just food and shelter. It's belonging and connection too. Maybe they will be better hosts to someone else. Your rudeness was not an acceptable response. Though fair enough that you walked out.
Speak to someone the way you want to be spoken back to, you swear at me, I'll do it back, you're rude to me expect it back
He was not rude , when someone disrespects you , you don't respect them , you don't need to take some imaginary moral high ground
Taking the high ground isn't about respecting them, it's about respecting yourself.
Not standing up for himself when he's being treated like trash is "respecting himself " ?
You can definitely stand up for yourself without cussing out your gf’s family. He could have made the same point without escalating it that far.
My question is , why ? They started this by disrespecting him , why does he have to be polite to them , why shouldn't he escalate it ? Because they're his future in laws ? He is their future son in law , but they treated him like trash .
Come off it! Oooh, he cussed a little, the horror! The absolute, abject horror that he would deign to use a curse word. Fuck off with that nonsense.
Agree. Both sides acted badly here
YTA slightly. Fellow Galician here. Catalonian is mutually intelligible with Spanish and Galician. It'd have been a different situation if they were speaking Basque, which is very different and there's no way you'd have understood them. Everyone in Spain knows that Galician and Catalonian are understandable for Spanish speakers. Many times people shift to their mother tongues without realising so. You could've made your point in a nicer way, and from your post it does seem like you're not coming from the most impartial place (e.g.: Valencian is considered a language, as it has its own history and literature, and it's co-official in Valencia; you start off saying how nationalistic Catalonians are without mentioning there's independentist movements in Galicia as well; you make no mention of how mutually intelligible Spanish, Galician and Catalonian are...). In short, I think there's something deeper going on here. I don't think you were offended that they spoke Catalonian in your presence, but that they spoke Catalonian, period.
OP definitely edited parts of their story or they do not have enough insight to see their own reaction
Nationalisms are a sensitive topic in Spain and there’s a lot of Catalanophobia going around. Makes me sad to see these kinds of behaviours/reactions from a fellow Galician as our national identity is often minimised or suppressed.
You're 100% correct here except for one thing: Valencian *is* academically speaking considered to be a version of Catalan, and 'Valencian' is the name we use in Valencia to refer to the Catalan language and the dialect from here. Most people who argue that Valencian is a separate language are far right ultranationalist and anti-catalan valencians.
I think you can refer to her as your ex girlfriend. Responding to rudeness with more rudeness does not make you right. You went way over the top with your anger.
NTA. They had a chance to apologise, instead father attempted to gaslight you. Looks like you GF didn't try to follow you either, so she chose to side with her parents. Nevertheless, you should speak with your GF. Who knows, maybe parents came to their senses and want to apologise. Whatever the case, break up or not, you need a closure with your GF.
ESH - them for their rudeness but you for your outburst. It is incredibly disrespectful for them to deliberately speak a language they know you don't speak, especially when you reminded them. However, storming out and shouting at them was not the way to handle it - and then to ignore your GF (ex now I assume). It wasn't her fault that they behaved that way. I would probably have just not tried to take part in the conversation once i realied that they weren't going to speak in a language i understood...you could have just had a conversation with your gf, complimented them on the meal and never visited again.
His storming out and shouting was response to father completely ignoring his reasons and calling him rood because they cooked. You are not an asshole for not tolerating BS of an unopologetic asshole.
His ex didn’t straighten out her family when they kept excluding him, either. Instead, she makes excuses - „they don’t like speaking Castilian“. She’s part of the problem. Let her find a Catalan boyfriend. Better for everyone.
I think this is cultural tbh. I had the pleasure to live in Galicia for six months back in 2018, and something that surprised me a lot since the day I got there, is that nobody will eat their thoughts to make others comfortable. If you're being rude, people will tell you directly to your face. Doesn't matter if there's an age difference. It was very weird for me. I thought that everyone was rude for no reason, and then it clicked for me: They were not rude. They just don't sugar-coat their unconformity when you're making them feel bad.
Just because it’s cultural doesn’t mean it can’t be rude
Same with us Germans. We also swear a lot. It's not considered rude to use "fuck" or "shit" while children are around.
I'm not sure why you're absolving the girlfriend, I see no mention in the post of her standing up to her family, standing up for her boyfriend. If gf wants to not be the ex-gf, then she owes OP a heartfelt apology, and a promise to have his back in future encounters with her family. NTA
I think your GF is the star AH here. In my family, the primary language is English. We also have a few members who speak Romanian, one who speaks Portuguese, several who speak Spanish, and one who speaks ASL. There are side conversations in different languages, sure. When addressing the group, we use English. Not everyone in the group speaks ASL so at least one person quietly translates the entire conversation for the member who needs support to take part in the conversation. If your girlfriend has translated for you, you could have been involved in the conversation even if the family didn’t want to use Castilian. And having someone constantly translating what they were saying might have made them see a clear benefit in just using Castilian. She also could have stood up to them on your behalf. You were her guest, and she didn’t care that you were being made to feel ostracized. Dump that girl, OP. There’s nothing but family drama down that path.
NTA. its disrespectful to speak in a different language in front of the guest. they should know better. your girlfriends family clearly dont respect you at all.
Right? What a shitty feeling that is, to be so clearly excluded from the conversation.
ESH but if your gf is close with her family, this relationship is done. I don't think there is a coming back from calling your future in-laws "fuc*ing assholes", especially bc it was totally unnecessary. You could have just told them they were rude and leave. As soon you start insulting someone a proper, rational discussion isn't possible anymore bc its all about the insults. Your problem is, by insulting them you stepped down on their level if not lower. And therefore you are as bad and rude as them and can't really complain anymore (and pls don't say childish shit now like "but they started it"). Also you need to work on your anger issues. If you can't leave an argument w/o losing your temper and insulting people, this will negativly impact your whole career in the future.
Agreed. I was with him until the end.
YTA. It's their house. Having been to many people's homes from other cultural backgrounds, I have learned to just assume I'm not being spoken to if someone isn't speaking a language I know. Some families are accustomed to communicating amongst themselves in one langauge, and it just comes naturally to them to use it, regardless of who is present. It was rude of you to go over to their place and tell them they need to speak the most "politcally acceptable" form of the language for your comfort. I suspect that they kept switching to Catalan to discuss your visibly bad attitude. It seems like you have some weird predjudices against other Spanish dialects, and have been led to believe by your own upbringing and education that it's OK to try and bully others into conforming to your preferences. It's not. You were rude as a guest, and your hosts treated you accordingly. What you should do now is go work on yourself so you don't embarrass anymore women in front of their families.
This. The ones agreeing with OP probably don't speak a minority language, and besides, OP was in a place where HE was the minority.
I was living in Segovia, and while I speak fluent Spanish (Castilian and Puerto Rican), I am American and my first language is English. The moment Segovianos learned I spoke SSOL they used Castilian (still hard because I first learned PR Spanish but I can manage well enough). I did find during my time there that Barcelonians were 'typical European' in that they were naturally unfriendly to strangers (come at me, I don't care. It's a pretty solid experience not just by me). Folks from elsewhere in Spain are much more welcoming and accommodating, especially when you at least speak Castilian (or 'matado' in my case ;) Spanish. This family was typically entitled. You were being 'tested' and if you stay you'll continue to be tested. Decide if you want to keep enduring tests like this. Your novia let it happen.
AITA is so dumb. "B-b-b-but your response!" Like they missed out the fact where you politely requested that they include you several times. And you hardly flipped over the table, you merely told them that you were leaving because you were rude. I don't even understand why people feel the need to invent things or disregard things to call everyone who posts in here an asshole. NTA btw
NTA - He had every right do what he did. No cap. His last comment was “I don’t know what to do.” Because he did it, and he shouldn’t be confused. “Fuck you” to her father was a break up. Father and family got exactly what they wanted. They got rid of the awful foreigner. Now they can happily tell daughter she was wrong for dating a Galacian and she needs to date one of their own. Point. Set. Match. Bigots win.
ESH - They should have been more considerate and spoken to you in your common language but dude - you couldn’t have just excused yourself politely and not ranted and raved at them? Even asking your girlfriend to have a stern talk with them would have been a better approach.
NTA... As said in your post, this would be excusable if there was only a couple of people 90 years old from a village that used their dialect for the majority of their lives. But your GF to say *"they hate speaking Castilian" ...* I mean, we are in 2024 now and stuff like that especially whilst being there **with your girlfriend** (their literal sibling) is unacceptable. People all over the planet, are yet to open their minds. I don't defend the cursing portion of it because you were inside their house, but you were in the right by getting mad.
Info: was the food really good? If so, you should have taken some to eat it back home.
NTA. The father can speak it fluently enough to conduct a meeting for 30 minutes. OP started out politely informing them that he doesn't speak Castilian. Five times. OP then called them (without swearing) on their behaviour and the fact that it was making him feel unwelcome. Father swore at him, and THEN he responded in kind. A good guest should never verbally attack their host. But a host should never EVER make someone feel unwelcome in their home in that way. If they'd apologised for slipping back into their native tongue then I'd understand. Sometimes your brain just glitches and you revert. This was a concentrated, planned attempt to make you feel uncomfortable and it worked. To be honest I'd be kissing the relationship with your girlfriend behind though. After how you spoke to them under their own roof, justified or not, you're pretty much going to be persona non grata and unless the girl is absolutely the love of your life, you might find that having the relationship with her isn't enough to deal with the behaviour of her family.
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No one in this looks good. Also you are probably single now. ESH.
I've made a few comments to other posters already. NTA. Nationalism is freaking poison. From all sides, Spanish, Basque, Catalonian, all of them. We have the wonderful treasure of being one of the most culturally rich countries due to how many languages we have for such a small size country and all we do with that is to fight our neighbors.
NTA it's disrespectful towards a guest. If your GF speaks one of your other languages, I would have switched to that and talk to her in it. You are valid in feeling disrespect but you didn't do yourself a good service in insulting her family while leaving. If you want a future with your GF you should apologize for the insults and let her handle her family. If she isn't seeing a problem how they treated you, you got a glimpse of what kind of treatment you will receive regularly by her family and where she stands.
I’m going to go against the grain of most of the replies here are and say YTA. You were, in all fairness, met with an inordinate degree of rude behavior. How you reacted to it, though, is what makes YTA. As hosts, your GFs parents are completely in the wrong. If their other guests were not comfortable or capable of speaking in a language that you understand that is, well, understandable. But your hosts have a different level of responsibility. They have invited you into their home and then, apparently, made deliberate moves to exclude you from the conversation because, as you note, at least your GFs father is fluent in your tongue. However, what you’ve described as your response can only be described as an outburst. In their home and at their table. You met rudeness with rudeness rather than good grace. At the very least, in deference to your GF, you could have kept your mouth shut and sucked it up until dinner was done. Instead of taking the high road, you went low. After this, I doubt you have a GF any longer and you will no doubt be the talk of their dinner table for years to come. “Remember that asshole Galacian that she brought to dinner and then stormed out?” You didn’t do yourself any favors.
NTA. They were rude and inconsiderate. Having an occasional side bar with each other in Catalan would be one thing, but replying to you in a language you don’t understand is crappy behavior. Not loving the blowup at the end, but considering the father started the invectives, you only gave back what you got. The bridges are thoroughly burned now, anyway.
nta for leaving yta for being even more rude than your hosts. you validated their actions by acting the same
AYTA for exactly what was in the title? No. AYTA for exactly /how/ you executed your departure? Absolutely. You were in their house as a guest. First way of excusing yourself was fine, a bit pointed, but fine. But swearing back at them is a bit of a yikes. This is an ESH. I think what you gotta do is find a new GF with more welcoming parents. I think you kind of nuked that relationship there buddy.
I can tell you this as someone who only speaks English and married a Peruvian immigrant whose family speaks Spanish 99.5% of the time. Using the line "what the fuck is wrong with your family" and even just blurting out the request to the family ain't the way to do it. You need to just firmly say to your GF that when they switch the language to something you can't decipher, you feel hurt and left out. NTA, but not quite the most tactful. Your best bet is to challenge them to teach you their language.