alt Hacker NewsIf this happened, you didn't put in the effort to learn to speak Vietnamese well enough. Or she didn't speak your language well enough.
"Common language, culture, and context makes a more peaceful world" is such a ridiculous and abhorrent thing to say I can't even keep writing here.
Edit: Then again, I just saw this post you wrote: https://www.kcoleman.me/2026/01/28/when-everything-becomes-n...
Your last line there - "Instead, in 2026 I want to restore contrast." So I can't tell if you're joking now because those words and this comment are at stark odds.
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>ridiculous and abhorrent
Why such an adverse reaction? Nothing about what they said seems abhorrent! It's a common/usual positive sentiment, like "Understanding things give life meaning", etc.
My SO is Vietnamese and a Bac Si trained in Japan and here, and even she has made similar ESL mistakes.
Some of the tools and dictionaries used for Viet-English are wonky, and depending on when they were educated the English teachers were either unqualified backpackers or some grifter who opened an English tutoring center (oftentimes one and the same).
And coming from a language with little overlap with Indo-European languages and roots makes it a very alien experience (and the same in reverse as well).
As others have touched on, you're applying black and white thinking on what should be a gradient.
Artists and scientists have famously been prosecuted for different communication.
But at the same time, communication gaps also resulted in millions of deaths.
Unifying language/culture/etc enables the "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts." Europe knows this (see formulation of the EU). Asia knows this (China's camps, Japan&Korea's immigration policies).
Its not this or that.