AITA for correcting every single sentence spoken by my boyfriend’s aunt in front of everyone?
A Reddit user shared a story about defending her Acadian heritage after her boyfriend’s aunt repeatedly criticized her accent and language. During a family dinner, tensions rose when the user began correcting the aunt’s flawed French in response to her insults.
Was the user justified in standing up for herself, or did she go too far by embarrassing the aunt? Read the full story below to decide!
‘ AITA for correcting every single sentence spoken by my boyfriend’s aunt in front of everyone?’
I know the title looks pretty bad but hear me out! I’m a native French speaker from Canada, but I have a very pronounced “Acadian/Chiac” accent. For those who don’t know, it’s pretty much a mix of French and English with some local dialect thrown in there.
Pretty common in the maritimes, where I still live. I’m perfectly bilingual in both languages. I started dating my boyfriend, who only speaks English, about 4 years ago and spend a lot of time with his family, they’ve all been really great, except for one of his aunts.
She says she was a French teacher in anglophone schools for over 40 years up until a year ago and even studied in France, and she INSISTS on only talking to me in French. I agreed at first since I didn’t want to be rude to his family but it’s getting super weird.
I don’t understand how she was able to teach kids English or how she comes up with most of her sentence, like I have to guess 90% of whatever she says and hope I’m right because it makes absolutely no sense.
(Example: she said “a la citrouille la tarte va bien dans ma bouche” which roughly translates to “to the pumpkin a pie goes well in my mouth” when she meant “this pumpkin pie tastes delicious”)
She constantly criticizes my “accent”. and tries to correct my pronunciation of certain words, and tells me I need to “pick a language” when I accidentally say something in chiac (speaking proper “français standard” is actually getting harder for me since I’ve been only studying/working in English).
So last night during dinner she started going on about how Acadians were uneducated and made no effort to properly learn a language, which is total BS, and obviously weirdly directed at me.
For the rest of the night I stopped guessing what she was trying to say to me in french, acting like I didn’t understand anything, and started correcting her as well – which was pretty much every single sentence she said.
I wasn’t trying to be rude or aggressive about it but after a while she gave up on the French and ignored me for the rest of the night.Turns out she was super pissed and told everyone I was trying to embarrass her in front of everyone.
Looking back I think I might’ve taken it too far by not stopping after 2-3 sentences and I feel bad. My boyfriend said I was being bitchy while his mom said she probably deserved it. AITA here?
EDIT: Forgot to mention that I told her a few years ago that it’s hard for me to fully speak proper French as I spoke chiac all my life, tried to explain Acadian culture (she wasn’t having it, surprise) and she stopped for a while but is now doing it again.
Here’s what people had to say to OP:
maxmynameismax − This sub needs a new judgement – JA Justified A**hole. In a lot of cases you can be an a-hole but still not be the bad guy. Sometimes people need to be put in their place and it can’t be done nicely.
Edit- Obviously they’re not going to add another judgement. But maybe we can all agree that being a JA and giving someone what they deserve or defending yourself within reason is a NTA. Just because you act like an a**hole doesn’t make you THE A**hole. And doesn’t deserve ESH
lyralady − Sometimes I feel like on this sub the answer is yes, you were being a j**k but it was justified? Not an “everyone sucks” kind of way, but in a “in this situation the other person was a d**k and so you did something that may have been otherwise assholish to make a point.”
Anyways for lack of a better way to state that NTA – sure your method of getting her to knock it off was a little dickish, but it was well deserved.
Edit: I stand by NTA as my ruling. Op has dealt with this woman belittling and mocking her language and by extension her intelligence for YEARS, while also being condescending as hell and just an all around a**hole.
Aunt is the a**hole whose prejudices are hurtful and ignorant. I don’t think op sucks for responding to that after God knows how long. Context matters and OP is allowed to have a spine.
magictubesocksofjoy − NTA – \*raises fist\* “she started going on about how Acadians were uneducated and made no effort to properly learn a language”
MAYBE BECAUSE THE BRITISH DEMANDED THEY M**DER THEIR OWN COUNTRYMEN OR BE EXPELLED FROM THE COUNTRY. MAYBE EMBRACING BOTH LANGUAGES IS PART OF A SENSE OF CLASS SOLIDARITY THIS CRABBY WOMAN WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND. WHO FRIGGIN KNOWS? BUT SHE SUCKS.
i’ve lived in ontario for too many years to remember a smart-mouthed reply, but my moncton-born heart supports the living hell out of you.
unicorndreamer23 − NTA shouldn’t it be la tarte est delicieuse? ( my French is rusty). she is petty and shady either way
10447570 − NTA she started it and you simply showed her how wrong she was.
NakedAndALaid − NTA. She was unnecessary rude, and you called her on her ignorance. Good for you.
SgtSluggo − ESH but sometimes people deserve it. Sounds like this aunt deserved it. Remember you can be right and still be an a**hole.
[Reddit User] − Eh. NTA. F**k her. You’re from the land where she claims she’s a f**king master and you spoke your motherland’s tongue. And she dared to talk s**t about your people. F**k her. F**k ESH. You don’t do that s**t.
That’s like me going at a Latinx person for having a thicker Salvadorian accent but I can’t speak spanish fluently worth of s**t. It’s disrespectful and god damn it. I’m happy you stoop down to her level. Yeah you were being bitchy. Bitchy happens when you act ugly to a person. Huh. Imagine that.
Discochickens − Nta . She needs a taste of her own medicine
livience − Very soft ESH. The aunt is MOST DEFINITELY the bigger AH by a MILE for many reasons, including:
1. Insisting on speaking French with OP when no one else at the gathering spoke French. It would be one thing to have a side conversation with OP in French, but to insist on speaking French in front of everyone makes things awkward for OP AND excludes EVERYONE ELSE from the conversation. That’s rude.
2. Criticizing a NATIVE FRENCH SPEAKER’S accent/vocabulary. We use all kinds of slang terms and idioms in America that the Brits don’t and vice versa.
Even if a Brit tried to call me out on how I phrased something, I’d probably think they were being a little presumptuous, but if a non-native speaker tried to “correct” my English, I’d be extra-offended—especially if he/she were guilty of #3.
3. Thinking she speaks better than she actually does and not bothering to find out how well she actually speaks. I teach English to Czechs, and a lot of my colleagues are native Czechs who studied English and speak well enough to teach.
Many of these colleagues also take lessons from me because they know that, even though they’re teachers, they still have gaps in their understanding of the language and they want to improve for their own sakes and for the sake of their students. Would that this aunt had that level of self-awareness and humility.
I myself have been studying Czech for five years with no end in sight. People tell me I speak well and some even say that I don’t have an accent. And you know what? I DON’T BELIEVE THEM.
They are either being polite or just don’t have a good ear, but I can guarantee you that within a few sentences, they have at least some idea that I’m not a native speaker, either because of my grammar/phrasing or because they can tell that something about my accent is not quite right, even if they can’t put a finger on what it is specifically.
If I really spoke as well as they said, they wouldn’t compliment my Czech because they’d assume it was my native language, and there’s no need to compliment someone for speaking their own native language well.
And I know enough of the language now to be able to hear my own mistakes most of the time. So for the aunt to think she’s good enough to criticize a native speaker is pretty arrogant, which is AH territory.
4. This was a family gathering, not her classroom, and OP is her nephew’s SO, not her student—a totally inappropriate context for criticizing someone’s accent/vocabulary. Even if OP DID have a bad accent (which, as a native speaker, they do not—do Americans have “bad” accents? South Africans? Singaporeans?), it would be totally inappropriate to point that out in this context.
5. She didn’t offer OP any constructive criticism or help. Let’s assume that the aunt is right and OP’s French is awful. How does saying, “Wow, your accent is really bad. You sound uneducated,” help in any way?
All it serves to do is to put down OP and elevate (but not really) herself. As a teacher, this really annoys me. If I’m not in a classroom context and the mistake doesn’t lead to a misunderstanding of some sort, I won’t correct it unless the person specifically asks me to correct them.
Even then, I only correct major mistakes because everyone thinks they can take it, but even the most tolerant person is going to regret asking for correction when they can’t finish telling a story without constant interruptions. And that’s if they ask for it; no one likes unsolicited advice/correction, and the area of language is no exception.
That being said, OP could probably have dealt with this more diplomatically—responding to the aunt in English with, “It would be great to chat in French later, but maybe we should stick to English right now so that we can include others here in the conversation,” might have nipped her behavior in the bud, or maybe after the first “correction,” you could have said,
“You know, to be honest, I’ve been speaking English a lot more these days because of [reasons]. I’m pretty tired right now and my brain’s just not switching to French very easily. Would you mind if we just spoke English tonight?” Let the baby have her bottle instead of trying to fight pompous with petty.
But I totally understand why you were annoyed. She was being rude and showing off, and without any basis for her confidence. I’ve had students who thought they spoke better than they do because they’re surrounded by people who aren’t as good as they are.
One girl complained to me every week about her English teacher in school and would say things like, “I can’t stand my teacher; her accent is so terrible.”
After a few weeks, it became clear that she wasn’t saying this because her teacher actually spoke poorly, but because this student was proud of what she thought was her accentless English and was putting her teacher down to make herself look better in my eyes. I could imagine that she was probably a total snot to her teacher in class, too.
Finally, I told her one day, “You know YOU have an accent, right?” She was taken aback and got defensive, saying, “People always tell me I have a good accent.” And I replied, “You do, and you speak very well.
I understand everything you say and I don’t even have to slow down when I talk to you because I know you understand everything I say, too. But you do make mistakes, and when you speak, you don’t sound like a native speaker; I can automatically tell. Just because someone has an accent doesn’t mean they don’t speak well.”
She stopped complaining about her teacher after that and paid more attention during our lessons, to boot. But she was my student and it’s part of my job to give people a realistic picture of how well they speak.
If people get cocky, they stop trying to improve and that doesn’t serve them well; people who make lots of mistakes and are humble about it elicit a lot more good will than people who don’t speak as well as they think they do and try to show off.
And I wrote this entire book just to say that you were maybe just a teeny bit AHish, but it was understandable. I get the sense that your BF isn’t a huge fan of conflict, and maybe he doesn’t understand how offensive it was for his aunt to crap all over Acadia like she did; might be worth trying to use an analogy to help him get a sense for how bad it was, like telling an African-American from Atlanta that their accent makes them sound ignorant.
I teach every summer at this English Camp in the Czech Republic, and some of my American co-workers had a lady in her class that insisted that it was “D.C. Washington” and not Washington, D.C., and they finally gave up trying to correct her because she refused to listen and they had ten other students to think about. Or imagine an American insisting that you HAVE to pronounce the T in “Toronto.”
Was the Redditor right to stand up for her accent and culture, or should she have taken a different approach to avoid escalating the conflict? How would you handle criticism of your heritage or way of speaking? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below!