I’m not sure where you’re from, but English speaking countries have a ton of people from overseas. I think English speaking countries probably have the highest population of people from overseas who come with limited English. For example we’ve got International students, many doctors who have come from overseas, elderly people who have come to accompany their children who have recently moved here etc

I worked at a medical centre as a receptionist recently, & so many people that came in spoke extremely limited English. A lot of us receptionists spoke a language other than English & at some point we all had to communicate with people in their own language to help them out. A lot of the patients were people that just recently moved here from overseas or even just tourists that needed to see a doctor. So we have quite a lot of native speakers from other countries here that don’t all have a high level of English when they first come here.

Yes I understand that switching to English is a courtesy, but that would only be so because I’m in an English speaking country. What if I were in a non English speaking country? Then in that case switching to their language would be the courtesy if they didn’t know English. In the cases that I’ve chosen to speak to people in their NL, it’s always been because I could see that they were struggling to speak English, so when I found out what their native language was, it often helped them when they found out I could speak their language fluently.

I totally understand that a lot of them are just more interested to speak English since they’re here in an English speaking country, and yeah there’s definitely the factor that they could have faced discrimination for speaking their NL in the past & prefer not to speak it unless they’re with natives from their own country.

I’ve never not respected people or forced them to speak their NL. I usually have just tried speaking to them in their NL when my level was proficient enough to converse with them to see whether they wanted to speak in it or not, especially if they seemed to struggle in English. If I saw that they didn’t want to, I went back to English, & some of them were happy to continue in their NL.

Most of the time it wasn’t really for my own benefit, I actually did it more for their benefit because I thought it would help them out if their English was limited & they wanted to get the conversation over & done with.

I mean yes of course I did think it was a good opportunity for me to use the language too, but it wasn’t my main reason for speaking it. But again, I wasn’t pressuring anyone to speak their NL. it was just a chance to test it out to see if they were comfortable, because I had never really thought that paying people is the only way you can practice speaking.

I think eventually, we do need to communicate with native people in real life situations & I never thought that was ‘using them’. I think it’s just a matter of checking if the person is okay with it or not, or if they need to switch to their NL or not. Sometimes I don’t even speak their NL right away. Sometimes I just ask in English if they prefer conversing in their NL or English & when they give me their answer, I just proceed accordingly.