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Am I paranoid, or do I have a valid point. It seems to me that whenever I am on line at a local grocery store or bank or post office, the people behind the counter are speaking a different language. Are they talking about me ?? , if not then why not speak english ?? I have heard so far, Russian,Spanish,Hungarian,
and recently Portuguese !!! I think since we live here in America we can all talk english.
Thanks.
Ummm I’m not sure about that… ever been to Har Nof? Ramat Beit Shemesh? Paris? Rome? The English speakers tend speak English there, too. So that rule doesn’t seem so fair.
Rabbosai, ich mein az der “op” du iz ah bissel tzidreit.
Absolutely. Aglesino para YOSSI151 zeh Dolt v’twit levrut.
Ok mods this has gone far enough i think.
Maybe they dont want you to understand because they are speaking about themselves.
Am I paranoid, or do I have a valid point. It seems to me that whenever I am on line at a local grocery store or bank or post office, the people behind the counter are speaking a different language. Are they talking about me ?? , if not then why not speak english ?? I have heard so far, Russian,Spanish,Hungarian,
and recently Portuguese !!! I think since we live here in America we can all talk english.
Thanks.
Wow! Such creative punctuation.
YOSSI151, who cares if they are? Unless you are doing a chilul Hashem, I wouldn’t worry about it. Just smile. Always have in mind that you were created b’Tzelem Elokim and Hashem loves you. Nothing to worry about!
No, you are not imagining things. When you overhear people talk in a foreign language, 9 out of 10 times, what they are saying is, things like, “hey lets talk our native tongue, so the host country people think we’re talking about them.
So, yes, they are talking about you, but they are not talking anything meaningful.
(Oi, hust du ge’hert a zoliche narishkeit? Der R’ Yossel is a zah nervaizeh mentch!)
And what terrible things could they be saying about you?
And if they are talking about you? Why do you care what the Peurto Rican guy says about your hairstyle, tie, or shoes for that matter?
What you have explained is termed as “linguistic paranoia”.
They were unlikely talking about you. We just like to think they are because we have a tendency to think the world revolves around us. This is not meant to say you are self-centered but rather that we, as humans, tend to make sense of the world in terms of ourselves.
More likely what’s going on is: one of the speakers might not speak English, so the other speaker will interlocute in their shared language. Or perhaps they feel they wish to speak about a matter that doesn’t concern those around them and they can only do so in the non-dominant language.
“Am I paranoid, or do I have a valid point.” yes, you are paranoid but that doesn’t mean that they are not talking about you…
This paranoia exists in a lot of people. I used to work for a company where at least 50% of the employees spoke Mandarin (Chineese) as their 1st language. It got to the point where HR had to establish an oficial company policy that all speaking in public areas, business or personal, had to be in English. The official reason that accompanied the memo was “we have received numerous concerms from employees, that their fellow employees are speaking negatively about them in a foreigh language”.
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