[DStiego]

There's two things at play here:

1. Defensiveness; one could describe it as "Stockholm syndrome"

2. What outsiders don't understand about the language thing is that it's not about how much German you need to get along in daily life. That's a similar challenge everywhere in the world.

The crux is that in Germany, correct use of the language is a social status thing, more so than in other places. Any person, whether German or foreigner, who appears to have difficulty with the language, is easily looked down upon.

[fallingbananna]

The point about correct use being a status thing is such a good point, that you almost never see mentioned, but definitely feel it.

Recently I saw a discussion on Reddit where the author made a minor mistake in the title, that sounds perfectly fine and understandable to me, as a non-native speaker. They used "Mit was" instead of "womit". And more than half the comments were people pointing out the mistake and making fun of the person due to it, rather than engage in the topic that was raised in the first place.

[DStiego]

Yes. I don’t want to invalidate people’s bad experiences, but I think it’s a more general problem and not specifically xenophobia. What you describe can happen to anybody!

The same is true for speaking English, which is considered very high status in Germany. If someone has a strong German accent, they’ll be made fun of. I always find this ironic because the people laughing usually don’t speak much better. (Not that I would care; I love people’s accents.)