Did FFXIV make me racist?

[Serilda]

I'm another FFXI refugee so I'm used to a world where a variety of languages are spoken. I used to play on a server with a large multilingual community, but I started before the English version was released and used the Japanese client. For many years I was in a non-English-speaking linkshell, so I have had a lot of experiences on both sides of the language divide. FFXI didn't broadcast your language settings so clearly, and I've been in parties where the Japanese speakers say "Oh no, an English-speaking player, let's disband" the moment someone joins and accidentally/deliberately speaks in English instead of the party's main language. I've also been in parties where a lone English-speaker (or so they thought!) would curse at the Japanese players, making fun of them for not understanding until I spoke up and told them off. And sometimes people used auto-translate thoughtlessly in a way which they thought was cute, except it sounded incredibly rude to people reading the translated version; I wish there was an in-game auto-translate dictionary so you could see what you're actually saying to the other party in their language too for the benefit of multilingual people.

Then there were good parties where someone who didn't speak Japanese would try really hard to use auto-translate (when it became available) and online dictionaries to communicate in a simple way, even if they had to write in roomaji instead of Japanese characters, and the Japanese players would break out their English textbooks and try to reciprocate. The general rule was that both groups have to try to compromise rather than trying to force their language on the other, and if nobody would do that then the party isn't going to work and everyone will come away with a bad impression of the other side.

In XIV, I play on a Japanese server in a Japanese data centre and speak good English, good Japanese, average German and very basic French. I don't select F or D in duty finder because I'm not confident in being able to communicate detailed strategies in those languages but I'll happily act as a translator when needed and I don't mind at all if people with no English/Japanese knowledge end up in my group. However, I see all kinds of strange things from people who seem to decide that other human beings are NPCs and think it's fine to flag for languages they can't understand at all. Sometimes they put a message in their search comment explaining that actually, they don't speak that language and flagged it for faster queues. They cause everyone massive inconvenience.

On Japanese servers, it's the English-speaking players who speak no other languages which cause everyone to react in the exact same way as the Moogle players are describing when they meet French-speaking players. English speakers who don't have any other languages selected will generally be rude, refuse to use auto translate and type irrelevant, inappropriate things because they assume nobody can understand them (I won't soon forget the lone English-only player I met in FL who started off with a horrible rape joke right in the middle of the strategy discussion - naturally, I reported him). My friend is often approached by weird overly-friendly strangers attracted to his cute female Miqo'te; they're always English-speakers. Even when I translate instructions for English-only flagged players, many will ignore me because they're so used to being able to get away with not understanding the discussion that they don't want to communicate with a translator.

While there are, of course, many exceptions, it's the bad players everyone remembers rather than the good ones and this makes it harder for everyone who makes an effort. I've never had a single problem with French or German players in this server group; in fact, I felt so sorry for a French-only speaker who spent days trying to do the simple guildhests needed for the MSQ in PF because he'd flagged his language choice correctly in DF that I dragged my FC buddies to help him out (Japanese players almost never flag French or German, so he was having a hard time). He was a perfectly good player and even tried to use a few English words when I explained my French wasn't great. It sucks that a general lack of consideration across language barriers means that people like him will probably end up hitting a wall and quitting one day. Communication really makes a difference in how fun a session will be, so when there are problems or people lie about the effort they're willing to put in things can go downhill very quickly.