Originally Posted by jwb

I often prefer interacting with people who don't speak English when it is someone I don't need to have extensive dialogue with.

I had a coworker who was some short old asian guy who barely spoke English.

We mostly worked in silence. Occasionally one of us would try to strike up small talk with the other, but his English was limited.

I asked him one time what country he's from. He said Vietnam. I asked what did he used to do in Vietnam. He said he was a soldier.

Then we went back to awkward silence.

Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien

There is only one bright spot and that is the growing habit of disgruntled men of dynamiting factories and power-stations; I hope that, encouraged now as ‘patriotism’, may remain a habit! But it won’t do any good, if it is not universal.