Ugly American

I've been having a couple instances of culture shock recently. Here's an anecdote.

I was relaying a story from my vacation today to someone I know. The story involved my grandmother saying something to me in Chinese that I didn't understand.

The person laughed and said, "so she was like, [unintelligible babble that an average American would think sounded like Chinese]".

I didn't say anything, but was pretty offended. If you don't *know* a language well enough to attempt speaking it, you have no business trying to fill in the blanks with your own made-up shit. It's just rude.

I know this person didn't mean any harm, but I definitely think it was a prime example of Ugly American at work. Yuck.