Hellobee Boards

I'm Korean and my hubs/inlaws are Chinese. They speak English but sometimes my MIL slips and starts speaking Cantonese to hubs, which is fine. What annoys me to death is when she mutters things in Cantonese under her breath to hubs in front of me - it's usually about something she thinks I'm doing wrong, or she doesn't like the way I'm feeding her, etc. SIGH.

My mom sometimes says things in Korean to hubs by accident but the thing is, hubs can read Korean and understand a whole lot so my mom just naturally feels inclined to speak Korean.

My Partners family speaks Spanish. When we started dating, I didn't speak a word of it.
I was understanding when his folks spoke to him in Spanish, but it kinda pissed me off when his brothers our age spoke Spanish to him in front of me when they were perfectly capable of English.

After about 6 months I figured if you can't beat them, join them....and started learning Spanish myself.

I would say After 2 1/2 years I understand about 85% and speak about 45%. Our lo will be raised bilingual

I guess I'm one of the only ones who is bothered by it then...? DH is is Russian and mainly speaks Russian to his parents when they're/we're all together. It is very isolating for me--they'll slip back into English for some things but I hate not being able to follow conversations. It makes me not want LO to speak Russian, because then that's another person who will be excluding me from family conversations I should add that DH got me Rosetta Stone for Russian and it did NOT work (granted, I only tried for like a month). But Russian is HARD.

I understand most of what is said but in big family gatherings where multiple conversations and joking around is going on I get lost. I am very self-conscious about speaking though, my accent isn't very good so I haven't practiced talking it much, my husband and I rarely get annoyed with each other but for some reason I get sensitive or he gets impatient when we try to practice together so speaking is coming along much more slowly. If push came to shove I could get by though.

My MIL is annoyed that I won't speak French with them but at the same time now that she knows I understand most of what is said she'll lower her voice and mumble sometimes so just whoever sitting next to her can hear. So I'm pretty sure she likes not being understood.

French isn't a super uncommon language though so when we're out and about and she uses it to criticize someone around us it's like you know they might understand!

DH's fam speaks igbo, they're from Nigeria. they also assume that i can follow when they speak pidgin to me, ummm... no. once in awhile, someone will stop and explain to me what they're saying, and if my family is around they tend to speak in english (his grandmother is the only one that isn't fluent in english). i'm not really supposed to contribute to adult male conversations anyway, so it's probably for the best- i can be pretty opinionated & keeping my mouth shut isn't always a strength for me.

most awkward language barrier moment: they brought all of these people to my parents house and told us it was for everyone to meet/go over thing & promised that would NOT marry us that day.... well, they married us anyway and i had no idea until it had already happened, i cried when i figured out what was going on.

We both speak each other's language. Before DH I had a boyfriend who didn't speak English and I realized how important it was to me that my SO speak my language since I live in his country and speak his. Good thing I found DH who was already bilingual
I understand that you can feel excluded when you don't speak the language and everyone else does, but at the same time, when you speak several languages you often have a preferred language based on who you are speaking with. For example, I cannot stand to speak French with my native English speaker friends. DH and I speak French and it is next to impossible for us speak English to each other, it just seems really weird. So it can be hard to speak the "wrong" language with someone for the benefit of a third person... I think this is why it is so easy to forget about the third person and slip back into the preferred language. With my in-laws, my new sister-in-law does not speak French, and it is very difficult for everyone else to make the conscious and unnatural effort to speak English for her. The conversation always slides back in French.