Today, I was verbally abused by a tourist because neither I nor anyone else in my country can speak "proper English". We're in England - clue's in the name, dipshit. FML
Collection
Fall
Dead leaves, the first cold of the season and an umbrella flipped inside out: fall, the season of grace.
Today, two American guys attacked me for not speaking their language. I'm from England, and they said I'm speaking my own language wrong. FML
Today, a tourist from an English-as-second-language country taught me a new word. In English. FML
Today, a blonde tourist came up to me and asked me for directions to the nearest train station. I politely directed her there, and she left. Five minutes later, she came back and slapped me for not bringing her to an "English-speaking station". We're in China, lady. FML
Today, a customer asked me if I was English, because I was struggling to understand what he was saying. I said yes. He then called me a liar, and said I must be "one of them Polish immigrants." Oh, and he also had a thick Scottish accent. FML
Today, I got lost in a foreign city while on vacation and couldn't communicate with anyone, because I didn't speak the language and no one seemed to be able, or even wanted, to speak to me in mine. FML
Today, I was at the airport trying to help a man get to the right terminal. When he finished he turned to tell me "Don't worry, your English is pretty good, considering you're not American". English is my only language. FML
Today, for the second time this week, I was asked to stop putting on such an obviously fake "British" accent. I am British and have lived here all my life. FML
Today, while on a vacation, I tried to step out of myself and flirt with this boy who I thought was cute. He was going along with it and nodding so I thought it was working. Then he opened his mouth and I realized he didn't speak English. FML
Today, my English teacher kicked me out of class for being "rude and disruptive." In actuality, I had called her out for having blatantly used Google Translate for several example sentences, all of which sounded as if a semi-literate foreigner had constructed them. FML
Today, my now ex-boyfriend called me out after I spelt "realised" with an S instead of a Z. It wouldn't have been so bad, if we weren't both British, if he hadn't called me an "illiterate idiot", and if he hadn't muttered "family of morons" when my mum backed me up. FML
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Top comments
thatguynow 13
Throw tea in their face
challan 19
I'm dying to ask what country the tourist was from, but I'm petrified that you'll say the states.
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Comments (176)
Ridog02 3
What a loser
jordzy 8
Well it's really the opposite. Since Britain is our mother country we kind of ****** up the whole English language by changing it.
metalcrazed 21
Except the english didn't invent the language. English is a West Germanic language that originated from the Anglo-Frisian dialects, brought to Britain by Germanic invaders and settlers from the places which are now called North West Germany and the Netherlands.
gracehi 33
Didn't the germanic invaders speak, uh, German? I always thought that Old English developed from German after the Angles and the Saxons settled on the island of Britain. Then Old English evolved into Middle English and then Modern English after William the Conquerer established the French nobility as the ruling class in England.
lilacgold 16
English is a hybrid language, cobbled together over the course of multiple invasions spanning many centuries. There's the original Celtic languages, Latin from the Romans, Scandinavian languages from the Vikings, Germanic roots from the Anglo Saxons and French from the Normans (which was itself primarily derived from Latin). There's also a lot of words we straight up stole from other languages because they had a word for something and we didn't. A fair bit of dialect variation is down to how heavily settled an area was by the various invaders. And even without such major influences for the past millennium or so, the language has continued to change, and it has done so in different ways in the different countries that speak it.
deloria_fml 22
You wish you had, you mean. You're making this worse. :P Anyway, it's not surprising, native speakers generally have terrible grammar because they pick up the language solely from being exposed to other natives, rather than by actually figuring out the dynamics of how the language is built and what that means. Very few people go to the effort of learning the underlying structures of the medium that they think and speak in, which is a shame because it can give you fascinating insight into your own culture.
kMb1998 2
cant we just call our language here American. hell weve been independent for 200 + years.
gracehi 33
The language we speak is called "American." ... "American English" that is. Really, the varying languages of the native Americans are the true American languages. However, even that's a misnomer, because they were speaking those languages long before Europeans named the continent "America."
skittle_QUEEN_YO 15
Mmm yes, you can call it American when you've learned how to use it properly.
fluffywaspluka 7
You'd be surprised.
luffynoandroid_fml 5
maybe it's because they cannot understand your accent
idiotsinlove 5
http://m.livescience.com/33652-americans-brits-accents.html
patsyd 4
I've traveled a fair bit, mostly to non-English speaking countries and never really had a problem communicating. I went to the US and it was so hard, my accent was just too thick. I chalked it up to exposure to the accent, when you hear Aussie or English accents on TV they're so fake. To the OP, that sucks, I'm not excusing their behavior, but they may have been really frustrated.
GwennaRose 22
Well maybe I'm just being an asshole but you did use a double negative in your post