Besides English, I speak French, German and Russian, though my fluency in the latter two has become very rusty.

I lived in Detroit until recently and had many francophone friends. I socialized in French a good bit of the time. One of my friends was a real estate investor from France who had moved to Detroit to capitalize on the booming housing market.

I’ll never forget the time we were sitting in an outdoor cafe having an animated conversation in French, only to be interrupted by a scowling middle-aged man who yelled at us to speak English.

Talk about disconcerting. My friend’s English was excellent, but he enjoyed speaking French with me because he missed his native language. Nonetheless, he had become an enthusiastic new American and happened to be pumping a lot of money into the Detroit economy as he renovated glorious old abandoned houses.

To run into hostility simply because of the language he spoke was quite off putting for my friend, who is also fluent in Italian and is used to multiple languages being spoken in the south of France where he hails from.

Trying to explain to him American “nativism” and its outward manifestation of English-language militancy turned into a most uncomfortable experience for both of us.