As someone who also lives in a monolingual culture, I'm not sure I totally agree. I would wager that any small or medium-sized city is going to have an enclave of immigrants who have a different native language. In you can definitely find Spanish- and Chinese-speaking people working pretty much anywhere. If you ask nicely and make a real effort I think they most likely won't mind interacting with you in their native language, if you can more or less get through it.
I have a guy who works at a convenience store near me who I speak to in his native language, and the other day he was in the back and I was talking with his coworker in English, and when the guy I know came out from the back he yelled at him in their native language, "Why are you speaking English to them? They speak ___!" which made me feel pretty cool and accepted.
Now, if you're trying to learn Swedish or something, yeah that would be pretty much impossible.
Just my experience, not trying to invalidate yours but rather give encouragement!
As someone who also lives in a monolingual culture, I'm not sure I totally agree. I would wager that any small or medium-sized city is going to have an enclave of immigrants who have a different native language. In
you can definitely find Spanish- and Chinese-speaking people working pretty much anywhere. If you ask nicely and make a real effort I think they most likely won't mind interacting with you in their native language, if you can more or less get through it.
I have a guy who works at a convenience store near me who I speak to in his native language, and the other day he was in the back and I was talking with his coworker in English, and when the guy I know came out from the back he yelled at him in their native language, "Why are you speaking English to them? They speak ___!" which made me feel pretty cool and accepted.
Now, if you're trying to learn Swedish or something, yeah that would be pretty much impossible.
Just my experience, not trying to invalidate yours but rather give encouragement!