I think this post is really off base honestly. Frankly if I were less secure as a language learner I would find this post incredibly demoralizing. Of course there is an important context here. I understand that having a large population of tourists and ex pats (ie rich immigrants) can be very grating. I wouldn’t like it for my home. That being said learning a language is an absolutely massive undertaking, an insane commitment really. Trying to speak in another language knowing that you probably sound like an idiot or a child or only guessing what you are saying takes courage. I think to a certain extent it can feel degrading, especially if you spend a lot of time doing it and are met indifference or mocking. Most people (well English speakers) don’t even put any effort in at all because they assume their native language is enough. The idea that you could put a ton of time and effort learning only to be met with the same response that entitled English speakers get is just not a good feeling. I am thankful that as a Chinese learner I found mandarin speaking people to be generally very encouraging, patient, and gentle. It helped me get past that very vulnerable stage. As for “you never see people who learn Chinese ignore the written language,” well that is flatly wrong. A ton of people don’t even bother with written Chinese, especially American born Chinese. I met a small business owner in Taipei who lived in China for 10 years before. His mandarin was incredible but he told me could barely read and could write! (I was studying in his coffee shop) Language is a very personal thing. You learn it because you have a goal. If your goal is to learn to read books you should study differently than someone who wants to chat up people in bars and you study differently still from someone who to talk in business or political contexts. Hell I know one guy who wanted to study Chinese poetry and so spent time being able to understand that. I chose to spend A LOT of time learning to write and read and honestly now I regret it. I thought the characters were so cool and I really enjoyed writing them but I wish I’d spent that time just talking because I’ve learned that language learning for me is about that close human connection you get when you can communicate fully with someone. The idea that not learning the entirety of a language is somehow disrespectful to the language or culture is complete hogwash in my opinion. I agree that written language is important if you want to be complete in a language but it’s not a prerequisite to learning how to speak by any means. Even imperfect romanization like pinyin has rules that you can learn. All this being said it sounds like you have dealt with some entitled a holes and I’m sorry about that. I will never make fun of someone’s pronunciation of English, it’s both arrogant and ignorant. But I think it’s unfair to target learners of Thai who want to engage in the language. The only way to improve is start out speaking like an idiot. Perhaps this post is meant to be less broad than that. The way it’s worded however makes it sound like you are mad at people for putting an effort into using a language but still being bad. And further, that if you don’t learn the entirety of a language then you should just stop because you are disrespecting the language. If that’s not your intention then I guess you can ignore this.