OK a lot of people feel this way.. but why?

I don't feel like people are talking about me when they are speaking in a different language. However, being in the US I do feel that using a forgein language in public is quite rude, especially when you are standing right in front of someone. Now it is different if you are a tourist vs if you have lived here for many years and just don't use the language.

I think it goes like this. When people who don't know more than one language hear people talking in another language, they are startled a bit and have an instinct to give them a LOOK. And when they give them a LOOK, the people speaking the other language have their train of thought broken by that and give them a LOOK back. The first people, unaware, perhaps, that they actually started the thing don't like the look they got and so they stare back and get stared back at and then think that because the people speaking the other language are LOOKING at them, that they must also be talking about them, which if they are rude enough and stare long enough may even come to be true!

By then they might be saying "Why is that person looking at us like we did something wrong?" or "Look at that person who is rudely staring at us!" I always say to people "If you wish to think the worst of people, watch out what you wish for as you can through your own actions make it come true!"

I do not particularly react by thinking they are saying something bad, although sometimes (not always) I feel it is somewhat ill mannered, but it really is not any more ill mannered than whispering is. People get just as paranoid about that. I think it is easy for you because you speak such a variety of languages, that you grasp that foreign speech is not necessarily secretive or derogatory, but might be just private, keeping one's business to one's self. I do not like it when we become so isolationist. Another reason I am easier with it is that I have friends who have a different native tongue than I do.

I don't feel this way, as people can speak whichever language they would like to speak when they aren't talking to me. I have managed to learn some Spanish listening to other people talk. Many people speak Spanish in this state.

I do get bothered when somebody speaks Spanish to me expecting me to understand, as my Spanish is a few basic words. I think this would be like me talking to them in sign language and expect a response when they have only watched me sign.

During most of my growing up years, teens through early twenties, I lived in San Jose, California. People would speak Spanish in front of me and frankly, I never even really noticed. I guess I'm just not that paranoid when it comes right down to it. I suppose if someone were pointing and guffawing right at me I might be lol.

I think it depends on the situation. If I am out to Walmart and I hear Spanish around me, I don't think they are talking about me, but if they make eye contact with me and are laughing and saying stuff, I could assume that they are speaking about me or the way I look. In the workplace, I was a nurse for many years... we had many Filipina nurses, when they spoke to us they spoke in English, and when speaking among themselves they spoke Spanish... I never thought anything of it really because Spanish, being their native language they are more comfortable in that language...and too maybe it is more private to them because most of us that worked there didn't understand the language.

Some workers would get offended because they were paranoid, but I don't see it that way.

It all depends on location. When I was in bank, cashier was speaking Spanish to other cashier while helping me and it makes me very upset. I took it as disrespect...
I don't care if people around talk in different language, but I don't like when they do it in front of my face.
I know few languages, but I respect others and I never speak other language than English when close to people who can feel not welcome in the conversation.

Here it really depends on the Circumstances before anyone thought htat
But it is not often at all that you hear someone that you know in a different language to be honest
It is more when People whisper that the alert Button goes of
But when they do that they make it obvious that they are talking about you because they are glancing at you
I just ignore it now I really do not care anymore what People think of me I know different