Xenophobia is literally a "fear of unkown".
What I meant to say is that one could rationalize irrational fear of unknown speech with this feeling of exclusion, but could it be it's just uncommon sounds and intonations that make you feel uncomfortable?
I've mentioned Italian sales for this very reason: facing a different culture would naturally raise questions within you:
- are they talking shit behind my back?
- do they have something against me?
this all depends on your levels of paranoia and xenophobia.
As a person coming from a vastly monocultural society I used to feel this, too.
I believe the solution to this is being open for everyone and overcoming xenophobic sentiments and by no means complaining to the boss.
It's literally a "fear of foreigners". It was possible to use the adjective ξένος to call something strange, but that's not the sense used in the word, or the most common meaning of ξένος.
Based on the dictionary entries (see https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=cenos&la=greek#... ), it does not appear to have been possible to use ξένος to describe something as unknown. There is a related sense, "ignorant [of ...]", but that would describe the person who isn't familiar with something, not the thing that is unfamiliar to a person.
For "fear of the unknown", you'd presumably want something like "agnostophobia".
> Completely outa the blue based on what came before.
Not really; what came before is a story about how he'd talk with his friend in the office they shared, and then he condemns the OP for sharing the apparent American opinion that that kind of thing needs to be banned. The line from one to the other isn't exactly obscure.