> The best way to prove braingenious wrong is by not engaging with him
Well, I like to give someone the benefit of the doubt when discussing these kind of contentious issues (up to a limit, of course). It has served me well in the past (here on HN, for example), and I've learned things that I wouldn't have learned otherwise (from people who hold different opinions than mine).
I also get bothered when I'm accused of something that I'm not, obviously. It's not always easy to move on when someone is saying blatantly false statements about you, as you can imagine.
> FWIW I don’t believe you when you say “your language,”
My native language is Portuguese. I was born and raised in Portugal and lived there well until after I was an adult. All of my family and all my childhood friends are Portuguese.
I learned English very early in my childhood, as part of my formal education, due to US cultural exports (i.e. Hollywood movies and TV shows that are broadcast in Portugal without dubbing, i.e. they have always been subtitled and therefore it's much easier to learn the language and become fluent in it) and due to my early childhood interest in programming.
I've always read lots of English prose, especially related to computers and programming (magazines, articles, documentation, websites, Youtube videos, source code, etc, etc). Almost all of this content is from the US, as you can imagine.
I've worked for a few US companies (mostly multinational ones, think FAANG-level) for many years, had many coworkers from all over the world (including many from the US) and always worked remotely, so both oral and written communication has always been in English.
Both due to my professional work and as a tourist, I've spent many months in the U.S., in total (close to a year).
Well into my adulthood, I've also lived for more than a decade in Spain, so I'm also a fluent Spanish speaker.
Also, for many years (perhaps since I started working) I've been reading and listening to way, way more English content than in the other languages I'm a fluent speaker of. This includes Hacker News and other news websites. It includes all media entertainment (Netflix, etc). For decades, I have stopped bothering to find Portuguese or Spanish subtitles anymore for video content due to their mediocre quality or lost meanings, although I do try to put English ones when it's easy to do so.
As another example, I almost exclusively follow English-speaking Twitter accounts (although some Spanish ones as well).
All of this English content is way, way more interesting to me than what I can find in Portuguese or even Spanish. It's not even remotely comparable.
I also don't bother at all with translations from English content which, when they exist at all (well, nowadays there is automated translation, but still), are inevitably mediocre or incomplete due to the much smaller vocabulary in these languages or simply due to the incompetent or error-prone translations.
So to summarize, it would be fair to say that you have culturally captured me :)
It's OK if you don't believe me, but there you have it anyway.