Note: I don't want this to be political or to come across as being too proud of my country (I'm definitely not) so I'm not going to mention where I'm from. I have posted this on /r/Spanish, but posts like these seem to get downvoted often, so I am also posting here.
Hi, guys. So as someone who is very self-conscious about my language abilities (even in my native language) this bothers me, and I need to know if this has ever happened to others here.
When I first begun learning Spanish, I went on video game servers in Spanish, forums in Spanish, etc. I was preparing to go to a Spanish-speaking country and wanted to get as fluent as possible. After having small conversations with people, they could tell I wasn't a native speaker, so they asked where I'm from. I told them my country of origin, nothing more, and they said they can't fraternize with people like me and left.
I was a little offended, but I shrugged it off, as trolls will be trolls right?
However, I traveled to several Spanish-speaking countries, and people were often a bit impatient with me. Turns out my accent really gave away where I was from at first. Eventually I lost my accent and got to a C1 level, fluent. I went to classes, school clubs, the gym, etc. to try to be more exposed to the language and talk to people to improve.
People often didn't even notice my accent too much until they asked me where I was from, with which I responded my home country. I was surprised to see that this somehow made people go on political rants and become suspicious of me.
Then I met someone who I thought was one of my closest friends. However, one day, we started discussing languages and which ones we'd learn. He is monolingual (only Spanish-speaking), and I speak 3 languages, so discussing possible new languages was a blast. However, he said something that sort of demotivated me:
"People of (my country) speak really horrible Spanish. Seriously, every one of them I've met is so horrible at it, because Spanish is the most difficult language in the world, plus they're all really violent/unintelligent people. I feel like they shouldn't even try because they're not smart enough to learn this language."
I thought he was joking, but he was dead serious. He knew I was from that country, and still said such a thing. So I stopped talking to him. But that's just one person right? Wrong.
Ever since that incident, I've been noticing the same thing everywhere. For example, I see a baking video made by an Italian speaking Spanish? The top comment is always "Wow your Spanish is so good, it's way better than that of those f*cking (people of my country) lol, none of them can speak it at all". I see a video in Spanish with a German speaking about languages? All the top comments are "But at least we can all agree that people in (my country) literally cannot speak Spanish or any other language, your Spanish is so good"
I have witnessed this behavior in real life, online every single day, and have even been sent hateful messages after asking for help with Spanish. Do people really hate me that much? No matter if they meet me, someone from that country who speaks 3 languages, they still don't change their mind about "everybody in that country is so dumb that they can't learn languages, it's actually impossible for them".
All in all, all learning Spanish has done is open me up for constant daily verbal attacks, and hasn't actually done me much good. I'm beginning to regret having learnt this language, as the people really seem to dislike me and only insult me rather than help me or give me constructive criticism apart from "this is why people in your country can't learn our language!" I've never heard these sentiments in my other languages, so taking the time to learn a language and culture just to be insulted rather than supported/helped is really a bummer, and I'm not sure if I want to keep maintaining Spanish anymore.
If anyone has any stories about this happening to them, or advice on how to get over this, thank you in advance.
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