If this applies to you, I'm just curious.
At work we got a few international workers joining up for experience for the next two weeks as part of a program. Two are from Asia and one is from Europe, and all are female.
I was asking them what it was like working in Australia (separately to make conversations etc) and all three complained that they wished English was their first language.
They all said slightly different things but the main reasons were;
English is just as important as their main language at school, so you have to learn two languages really well, rather than do a language course that interests you. They need to know both languages fluently to pass but also to just simply do everyday things.
And that it's a lot harder to learn two fluently at the same time, rather than one for interest and one for learning.
They also complained that since the majority of the world speak English online etc. not knowing it would be really annoying and they miss out on too much. They said they had their own websites in their own languages but it's just not that same and they often feel isolated on the net if they don't know English.
Lastly, they said that most people expect everyone to talk English, but people don't expect people who only speak English to speak Italian or something.
Since I only speak English, I was surprised that all three thought these things as it never occurred to me how people feel about the world being mostly English etc.
Does anyone here who speak English as their second language feel any of this?