Picture this: you're sitting in your cube at the office and your cubemate answers the phone and starts talking in an unknown foreign language, but at like 20 decibels louder than he/she does in English. Or on the subway, a Chinese woman and her friend essentially shouting to each other in Chinese and sitting right next to one another. Why is it that people think if they speak in another language that others may not understand they have the right to crank up the decibels? The point of using what I so kindly refer to as "inside voices" is not to disturb those around you. I guess to others the reason is to keep conversations private, but come on...I don't need to hear your business whether I can understand it or not. This morning a woman was yelling at her child in French (which I understood) on the packed subway ride to work...not what anyone needs to hear first thing in the morning. It's insane. The same rules should apply whether you're speaking English or not.
Arghhhhh!
2 comments:
This happens to me at work all the time too. We have a bunch of Russians, and whenever they speak in Russian, they speak very loudly. A woman who sits across from me speaks in a reasonable voice with her English-speaking co-workers, but when she talks to her husband on the phone in Russian, her volume level goes way up. Fascinating phenomenon.
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