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> Perhaps you are getting your views exclusively from German newspapers? yes it must be all those German newspapers I read while I was living in the UK. /s I

> Perhaps you are getting your views exclusively from German newspapers? yes it must be all those German newspapers I read while I was living in the UK. /s I don't make armchair philosophy statements! my experience comes from living abroad since the age of 16 and never having stopped (e.g. never live in the same place for more than 5 years). So you can insinuate whatever, I _know_ what I experienced. Seriously the number of times British expats in Germany asked me "how I feel about the war", one guy even said once "aren't you ashamed of your grandfathers sins". He assumed I was German which isn't the case. This was the kind of Brits who have an open worldview. The type that actually leaves the UK to work abroad ... None of them bothered to learn the lingo and preferred to hang out with other English speakers rather than mix with locals. Not to mention the number of times they thought I was British and thought it was OK to make degrading jokes about foreigners. My mother lives in Spain. And I used to live in the South of France. Both places have a large British expat community. Not once have I seen the Brits integrating into the local culture. Instead they mix exclusively among themselves like some Raj ruling class. Rarely ever hanging out with the locals, despite themselves getting invited by locals, ... or while other foreigners would try to mingle with everyone else, Brits rather stay among themselves. They can't be arsed to learn another language either. I may sound like I hate Brits. Actually it is the most fascinating and funny people I know. But oh my god - it is an awful lot of work to make friends with them if you aren't native English speaker yourself. The only other people I know who keep treating you like an outsider even if you've been among their midst for years are the Japanese. I know not because "armchair philosophy" but because I'm married to one since >20 years! AMA

thu2111 7y ago
Come on, you started by talking about the country being the most "racist and divided" in Europe, now you're admitting you've not lived there a long time and are talking about expats asking dumb questions. That's not the same thing at all. Immigrants often group together, wherever they come from. Big Russian community where I live. The UK of course has entire areas where the immigrant population doesn't speak English, or where many of the shops are Polish (and use the Polish language). New York famous for certain areas being dominated by certain nationalities at various points (e.g. Italians). It sounds like you think this is uniquely British, but it's not. By the way, I'm a British immigrant living abroad. All but two of my friends are not British. Their friends are also mostly not British. I've got qualifications in German and my girlfriend is German. You're painting with an extremely broad brush here. I think you just don't really notice the Brits that blend in, or other nationalities that don't. As for language, native English speakers of all origins find it hard to learn local languages because nearly everyone learns English as a child and are routinely exposed to English language culture. Native speakers learn, at most, one or two other languages that may not be used at all in the place they end up, and they're rarely exposed to other languages anyway. Naturally that means whoever they talk to is better at English than the other way around, and few people want to struggle through a miniature language class when they have other things to do. Yes, most British immigrants should try harder to learn the language. But it's wrong to claim that's just laziness. When I was first learning lots of the local people here gave a strong impression they didn't actually care or worse, just found it annoying.

thu2111 7y ago

Come on, you started by talking about the country being the most "racist and divided" in Europe, now you're admitting you've not lived there a long time and are talking about expats asking dumb questions. That's not the same thing at all. Immigrants often group together, wherever they come from. Big Russian community where I live. The UK of course has entire areas where the immigrant population doesn't speak English, or where many of the shops are Polish (and use the Polish language). New York famous for certain areas being dominated by certain nationalities at various points (e.g. Italians). It sounds like you think this is uniquely British, but it's not. By the way, I'm a British immigrant living abroad. All but two of my friends are not British. Their friends are also mostly not British. I've got qualifications in German and my girlfriend is German. You're painting with an extremely broad brush here. I think you just don't really notice the Brits that blend in, or other nationalities that don't. As for language, native English speakers of all origins find it hard to learn local languages because nearly everyone learns English as a child and are routinely exposed to English language culture. Native speakers learn, at most, one or two other languages that may not be used at all in the place they end up, and they're rarely exposed to other languages anyway. Naturally that means whoever they talk to is better at English than the other way around, and few people want to struggle through a miniature language class when they have other things to do. Yes, most British immigrants should try harder to learn the language. But it's wrong to claim that's just laziness. When I was first learning lots of the local people here gave a strong impression they didn't actually care or worse, just found it annoying.