Rude

Self,

I know that one thing that makes this country extremely unique is the fact that it is very divers. There are people from all over the world and speak a multitude of languages. And no where is that more evident than here in Los Angeles, and other major cities. I say that because in a way I do appreciate that fact but sometimes bilingual folks can piss me off.

So a couple days ago I was at work chatting with a coworker who I'll call Night because he works the night shift. So while I was talking to Night at his cubicle another company employee, who I'll call Manilla for the capital of his home country, came over and interrupted us. Now the conversation wasn't serious or important so that wasn't what I was upset about.

What pissed me off was that Manilla interrupted the conversation by speaking to Night in Tagalog, the language of their shared home country. This became like a 3 minute conversation between them. It's pretty obvious that I don't speak Tagalog (yes I know a few cuss words.) I found it extremely rude to basically dismiss me from the conversation by not speaking in English, the native (if not official) language of this country. I know Manilla speaks English because it's a requirement of our job. To Night's credit he gave all his responses to Manilla in English so I slightly was able to follow the thread of their dialog, despite the fact that Manilla continued to speak Tagalog.

As I stood there feeling annoyed and contemplating to say something about it I became very frustrated because it occured to me that doing so may have caused problems for me. I realized that with all of our civil liberties and the diversity tolerance policies to protect those liberties, that if I said something about Manilla speaking Tagalog and not English, I would have came off as some kind of racist.

And as I continued to think about the situation through out the day, I realized this wasn't the first time that I've witnessed something like this either at my expense like this or at the espense of others. The language can be Tagalog, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, French or a whole range of others.

Maybe It wouldn't have been so bad if Manilla had started in English saying, "excuse me" before blurting out in Tagalog.

Did us native speakers give up our respect by trying to be respectful of others.

Did we become our own second-class citizens by allowing foreigners to earn their citizenship?

When did I miss that memo?

Sincerely,

Pharaoh