If you are living as foreigner in any country, you might have felt this feeling. This topic is bit sensible but it's the most common thing happened. In the matter of language, except the case that you were born in that country you can't be perfect at the conversation like native speakers. And I'm sure the most of them treat you as 5 year-old child if you just started to learn their language, not because they don't respect you, but they're just so kind and want to help you to understand easily what their saying. The problem is, some of them may think you're not an adult enough like them, owing to the language barrier that you're facing. And as we know, that's not true. You feel everything you can, you think the same things (or more things) as they do, you're just not able to express it in their language.
I had experienced it when I was in Korea, too. I write this to tell you that's not just a problem of Spain, but also it happens everywhere you are. When I was in Korea I got several friends from Canada, America and England who taught English to children at private schools. Some of them were my co-workers.
Korean is really beautiful language, however, it's quite hard to learn for foreigners. Besides, most of Korean people are able to speak English due to the education system, so if you don't speak Korean but English, it won't be a big problem while you're living in there. By the way, my friends spoke Korean even though that was just a little bit. When they started to have conversation only in Korean I was so happy to see them speaking in my language, they even seemed so cute. Everyone loved them, because we all knew that our language is difficult to learn (the truth is that's easy reading and writing, but the grammar is.... hard like hell).
But some of their boyfriends didn't think like us. Because of my friends were not able to explain what they felt, those dick-heads thought that they couldn't feel as same as they did or couldn't be hurt like them. They deceived my friends, kept lying, even tried to cheat with another foreign girl because they thought it wouldn't be any problem, they just thought those girls were totally different from them.
And when I started to travel, it also happened to me (and is still happening). Most of people who I've met were so nice and they're still my friends (I'm always lucky with interpersonal things). But few of them abused that I'm foreigner, that I've not reached the stage of complete mastery in Spanish, so they thought I was idiot as same as my friends had been treated before and ignored my feeling because I couldn't demonstrate it as if I say the same thing in Korean. Those things are happened by lack of sufficient understanding and the mistake of generalization :
FOREIGNER=DIFFERENT=THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND
So, what I'd like to tell you is :
I'm not a stupid, not a 5-year old child, not a dull, nor an alien. I'm a human being exactly as you, can feel the same thing as you do, can be hurt if you scratch me. Please don't think that I don't know what you do behind me, what you think about me because I can't discuss it fluently, don't think that I'm different because I'm not a Spanish. Of course there is a dissimilarity between you and me due to the different culture in which we've been living, but you can't define that makes me totally different from you in human nature. You did it all to me because you hadn't believed that I could be hurt.. and look, that's not true. I'm injured enough.
Don't forget this, practically there is no difference between you and me, if I have to define something, you got higher spanish level than me, so fortunately, you can express whatever you feel, and I don't.
Treat me as a grown up!
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