Trials & Tribulations of a native English-speaker

(published in the Turkish Daily News http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=74440 )

Native English speakers, they like to say, are not good at learning other languages.
In my case that certainly holds true.
I am handicapped, as a New Zealander, having grown up in a society where no other language was used.
Eight years ago I set off for Europe in search of adventure. One of the challenges I set for myself was to learn another language. I settled in Spain and spent the next five years learning Spanish.
The first year I was based in Jaen, central Andalusia. This provided an invaluable crash course, for English-speakers were few and far between.
The next year, spent in the Basque capital Vitoria, was similarly beneficial.
Then I moved to Barcelona, a veritable paradise on the Mediterranean. But like much of that sun-drenched coast, it is infested with English-speaking foreigners, not least the English themselves.
Among the locals, and even the immigrants from non-English-speaking countries, I stood more chance of having a discussion in Catalan than I did in Spanish.
When I spoke to people in Spanish they would invariably reply in English. If I insisted on Spanish they would raise the bar to a level above my comprehension, then smugly come to my aid in English.
My companion during these times, a blond Catalan, was regularly addressed in English by her own countrymen - in the heart of Barcelona, much to her annoyance
I have encountered similar difficulties since coming to Turkey. Perhaps due to the Turkish language's lack of international usage, the prevalent attitude seems to be that a foreigner attempting to speak it is clearly showing off. The raising-the-bar tactic is thus executed with particular relish.
Yet the Turks, like the Spanish, crave nothing more than an opportunity to practise their English with a native-speaker; a joy which surpasses even that of deriding the native English-speaker's lack of linguistic aptitude.
All this is, of course, a result of English-speaking America's domination of the world. A thousand years ago I might have encountered similar difficulties striking up a conversation in anything but Latin. Five centuries ago it might have been Spanish. Two hundred and fifty years ago, French.
While American domination of the world is encouraging its inhabitants to embrace English as the lingua franca of our times, it is simultaneously encouraging much animosity toward America.
I would be the first to endorse widespread grievances over the manner in which American domination of the world is being sustained. But a tallish, broad-shouldered redhead - the embodiment of the stereotypical 'Frankish' oppressor, I suppose - I tend to find myself a prime target for those with the chip-on-the-shoulder mentality.
But, if anything, resentment of my efforts to speak other languages seems even more proncounced among English-speakers themselves. For it is unnecessary in a world where everyone is learning English.
Clearly I have spent the past seven years struggling to learn other languages just to show off.
Had I not made that effort, however, I would have been perceived as the arrogant foreigner who expected everyone to speakEnglish; the embodiment of the stereotypical English-speaker incapable of learning another language.

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