'AITA for yelling at a girl for constantly correcting my Chinese? My parents think I'm rude.' UPDATED

"AITA for yelling at a girl for constantly correcting my Chinese?"

Quick background: I was born and raised in the UK, but my parents are Chinese. I know how to speak Chinese since my parent's English isn't very good, but I don't know how to read or write it.

I would like to say I'm pretty fluent, I am able to converse and understand others fine, and most Chinese people I knew outside of my family thought my Chinese was good or at least better than they expected for someone raised in the UK.

I do occasionally make grammar or vocab mistakes when I'm talking about something in Chinese, but in a general conversation, others do get the gist of what I'm saying. Recently, my mum invited her friend and her daughter from China to stay at our house for a while, and I really don't like them.

I speak in Chinese to accommodate them and even translate stuff for them, but whenever I make a mistake, they would double over laughing at me. I initially tried talking to my parents about it, but all they said was that they weren't exactly wrong since I DID make a mistake.

I wanted to confront them too, but my parents always stopped me and told me it would be rude and disrespectful to mum's friend, and also how her daughter is 'just a kid'. To clarify, her daughter is 19. I don't really see my mum's friend that often much since she spends time with my mum, but the daughter tags along with me a lot because we're the similar age.

But I can't ever talk to her without her ridiculing me and laughing at my Chinese when the biggest issue is just saying the wrong word or something. She also started 'correcting' me by yelling at me the proper word to say or the perfect pronunciation of a word if I ever slipped up.

She laughs at the fact I can't read or write Chinese. And it just kept building up since my parents told me not to say anything, otherwise she 'might cry.' I eventually lost it when she yelled at me condescendingly again because I mispronounced a word. I yelled back at her that my Chinese isn't perfect since I'm born and raised in the UK, and it's rude she does this whilst knowing that.

She tried responding with something about how she was trying to help me, but I shut it down. Eventually she started crying and ran to her mum, which got me in trouble with my parents. To clarify, I don't mind if someone corrects me, but normally it's very non-intrusive in a conversation.

With this girl, she stops the conversation to yell at me. My parents and obviously the friend and her daughter are upset, but my brother said she was rude and it was gonna happen sooner or later. My brother doesn't live with me, so currently everyone in the house is all awkward and standoffish to me, and it's been making me feel slightly guilty for yelling like that. AITA?

The internet had a lot to say in response.

YouthNAsia63 wrote:

Speak to her in English. Girl is in the UK now, let’s see how she gets along without you translating for her, shall we? Your “guest” could correct you without insulting or laughing at you, or politely ignore your little mistakes entirely, she isn’t your teacher and you aren’t her student.

But yelling at you- “condescendingly” … this is not the way to get people to go out of their way to help you. Oh, hell no. And now she cries and runs to mama. Oh, boo hoo. I roll my eyes. And NTA.

xSwyftx wrote:

100% agree that OP should only speak English around them. Translating for the parents is one thing, but dealing with condescending aholes is not your responsibility. NTA.

booksandchai18 wrote:

NTA. The way she was correcting you was extremely rude. The least she could've done was politely let you know that you made a mistake.

I agree with your brother; it was bound to happen sooner or later and honestly I think the way you responded was perfect; you gave her the same treatment she's been giving you, which she deserved. And I can't believe your parents are defending her by saying she's "just a kid" when she's 19. That's ridiculous.

OP responded:

Thank you for your thoughts, the 'just a kid' defense is kinda baffling to me too. I didn't mention it in the original post since I didn't think it was that relevant, but the girl does this whole cute act.

I don't really know how to describe it, she talks in a high-pitched voice and acts very childish in front of my parents, which may be where the kid thing came from. This is just an act though, since I've seen her talk normally to other people.

Five days later, OP shared an update.

Hi, I just wanted to give an update on what has happened since, it's not a huge update so I'm just posting it here in case someone wanted to know what happened. The next day, following the advice of many commenters, I simply stopped speaking Chinese in the house.

At first, the girl and her mum seemed to genuinely think I somehow forgot Chinese and didn’t understand them. They found it funny whenever I just looked at them with a confused expression, but then it soon hit them what I was doing, and they clearly did not find it that funny from then on.

I know it’s petty but it made me smile. The mum barely spoke English, so she just gave up on talking to me or asking for help. The girl did learn English in school, so she tried speaking to me in English, though she was clearly uncomfortable about it.

She wasn’t that good either. I felt like correcting her like she did to me would be an AH move so I didn’t do that, but instead I just pretended not to understand what she said if she made a mistake. She gave up after speaking some English and just spoke to me in Chinese asking why I was “being so mean”, and “weren’t we friends?”

She went to her mum again to complain, and then my parents were really upset with me, my mum especially because I guess she thought I was going to be best friends with this girl or something. My parents complained to my brother about it on the phone, and my brother told them off and picked me up to stay with him for a bit, at least until they left.

I don’t really know why my parents thought my brother would agree with them when he has been treated like that before too. For the rest of the days they stayed, they were apparently pretty miserable and didn’t really enjoy the rest of their trip since I wasn’t there to show them around the UK and translate for them (according to my parents anyway).

My parents drove them to the airport and then stopped by my brother’s and gave me a letter written by the girl before leaving (my brother wants me to stay longer with him). My parents said something about how the girl was so nice and sweet and still wanted to be my friend. I didn’t really want the letter but I took it and opened it after my parents left.

It was completely in Chinese besides her social media tag to keep in touch or something. I will not be finding out what it says anytime soon. Even without the language thing, the girl and her mum were pretty unpleasant and rude so I’m glad they’ve gone home. Thank you all for your comments, they definitely made me feel better and significantly less guilty, so I appreciate it.

The internet was glad to hear from OP again.

UberNoob719 wrote:

Being half Chinese, I can confirm, most families are s#$t when it comes to familial relationships and care more about saving face than being better for themselves and others.

HellFireChris wrote:

Never ceases to amaze me how parents will let their kids be treated like crap out of “politeness."

UncleNedisDead wrote:

Glad you stopped putting up with their treatment of you. All they had to do was sincerely apologize and be better, which they were incapable of doing. So glad your brother was able to rescue you out of that situation. Perhaps you could get someone else (not your parents) to translate the letter and if it’s full of insults, give it to your parents to read about what that “nice girl” had to say.