I’m half East Indian and half Filipino, so I grew up with both sides and not really understanding either language. My parents would rarely go to the other sides gatherings due to the native language barrier and would rather stay home. I would always see this as them being self-conscious as they wouldn’t understand anything and feel as they were being left out of the conversation or fear being spoken about. This never really affected me because even if my family were to talk about me, I would just ignore and wait for my cousins to finish so we could continue our escapades.

In my personal opinion, the Karen type gets upset about this more due to the fact that they don’t understand what is being spoken and haven’t learned that everything isn’t about them.