Sob Stories

Being a language whore ain't fun.

Here are some quote from people around the internet who have been taken advantage of by English Bandits. The main purpose of this page is to give some examples of the worst cases of people being abused.

 

Don't go around town haunting every foreigner to practice your English. Everytime I tried to do language exchange with a Chinese person they always took advantage of me and spoke more English and barely any Chinese. Even some of my close Chinese friends do that. I think my chinese is decent, it's definately the same level as their English but I am the one who has to put up with their English. Why can't Chinese people be patient towards a foreigner when he/she wants to talk Chinese? ...

http://home.wangjianshuo.com/archives/20050517_language_exchange_partners_wanted.htm

One week she asked if my Aussie roommate I would like to come with her in her car to Fragrant Mountain. That was a nice offer! It’s a long bus ride and we wanted to go there. I said sure. I felt properly acknowledged for my kindness, not that it was necessary.

Unfortunately, the night before the intended trip my roommate got very ill and I wanted to stay home to look after her. I called this woman and expressed my regrets. She started arguing with me! She was extremely upset that I wasn’t going along. It turned out she’d invited her entire middle school class to meet us there and practice their English with us.

http://www.talktalkchina.com/index.php/2005/05/20/language-rapists/

Taibei’s situation is no where better. People are even better in English and some of them would come right at you and spit out some English words only because you look foreign. Some would respond in English instead, if you ask them directions or order food in nice restaurants. Doesn’t matter if you’re from Europe, South America or any place else where people don’t speak English. Those are not only language rapists but also racist bastards.

http://www.talktalkchina.com/index.php/2005/05/20/language-rapists/

I had a similar experience with a Chinese aquaintance back here in England. The Chinese person in question was in the UK on a Masters course, as was I.

. . .

Anyway, the next thing I know I’m getting rough drafts of her assignments in my inbox expecting me to correct them for her. OK, number 1 her written English was so bad I’m not sure how she got on the course,...

. . .

 The list could go on, the first time it happened I good naturedly tried to make some constructive criticisms, but by the time the end of the year was rolling around and she was still emailing me stuff despite my making it pretty clear I did not want to help her,

. . .

 I got nothing in return, talk about feeling used. Having lived in both China and Japan I’d encountered my fair share of what I termed language leeches, people who didn’t seem to be able to view a person with white skin as anything other than some kind of English spouting machine permanently at their disposal, rather than as an actual person.

http://www.talktalkchina.com/index.php/2005/05/20/language-rapists/

I’m not wure how long you’ve been in China but I guess it’s not long enough to be sick of being raped, at times. I’ve spent many hours in conversations being ‘raped’ and put up with it. I work as the sole foreigner in an American company where all my senior staff are required to speak English. Hence, after more than 5 years here (I’m a comparatively short-timer) my Chinese sucks - BIG TIME! I cannot conduct business meetings or daily working pratices in Chinese so in effect, I am being self-abused and self-raped every single day so you can imagine that after a week in the factory the last thing I want to do some times is sit and talk Chinglish.

http://www.talktalkchina.com/index.php/2005/05/20/language-rapists/

Anyway, thanks to the storm, my train ride that normally only lasts about 7 hours turned into a 51 hour ordeal. I was the only laowi on one section of the train and I had parents bringing me their children because they wanted me to speak English and talk to them. The train conductor approached me and asked me if I would give an update to all the non-chinese-speaking individuals. However, she wouldn’t let me use the speaker system..I was raped for about 48 hours, now I know what it feels like to go to “fuck you in the ass prison”–Office Space

http://www.talktalkchina.com/index.php/2005/05/20/language-rapists/

I say that’s racist. I live in Taiwan. I’m a native English speaker, but most of my old foreign classmates at Shida were not. I’ve had half a dozen Spanish and German speaking friends leave Tawian because they felt like Taiwanese people were racist. Think about it. They saved their money, came here, studied hard, went out and used Chinese (the NATIONAL language), and people answered back in English, which they don’t even speak.

http://eflgeek.com/index.php/eflgeek/comments/stonewalled-when-speaking-korean/

6. It is a complex situation....yet as noted many times before, it can be simple. Just speak your own language in your own country. If you need to speak another language if asked by a visitor, they do so if you can.
When Japanese come to the US, do Americans try to speak Japanese? No, of course not. Japanese expect to speak English when they visit an English speaking country. Thus, why is it any different when we visit Japan? If we save thousands of dollars, plan heavily, fly across the ocean, enroll in school, get a job, study hard.....why can't we 'practice' our Japanese in Japan. Of course we can try, only to get hit with rudeness, crap English, gestures, or 100 mile an hour native Japanese. Oh, and ask them to repeat or slow down, you just get the good ol' broken English reply or pointing.

http://www.jref.com/forum/showthread.php?t=14915&page=7