Bilinguals, What Your Best Story Of People NOT KNOWING You Speak Their Language?
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I don't speak Chinese, but when my landlady was discussing plumbing repairs with the plumber, I chipped in, "Wow, I thought the building was older than that." They both stopped talking and looked at me with their mouths hanging open. They didn't realize their conversation was mixed with so many English words anyone could have followed it!
Haha lol that's hilarious 😂
The number of times I've seen "I'm _____ but don't look it" play out actually astonishes me. Being polite is free and takes less effort than making up insults or justifications for your rudeness.
I'm a white guy who speaks mandarin. I was out on a jog (not the best shape) and I'm waiting for a crossing light when these chinese couple come out a coffee shop come the crossing light a s start talking about me in mandarin. (How I'm a slob, how I'm probably homeless, how I smell, how I'm white trailer trash who probably doesn't have most of my teeth, ect) the light turns I turn around say "I'm sure your parents didn't raise you to say what you said." Saw their mouths drop as they realized I knew what they were saying. Jogged across the street they stayed where they were and looked at each other. Then I yelled across the street "if you keep your mouth open a fly might fly in" I saw them look down and walked away and I went on my jog
Classic last line
Not too interesting but one time in math class, there were two girls talking about math in Chinese. They were talking about the recent test we just took. I found their panic quite funny so I decided to contribute to the conversation. They were quite shocked to know I spoke Chinese. I found their shock quite funny.
I am quadrilingual and speak English, French, Arabic and Derja. I am Asian and definitely look like it. Currently, I live in Tunisia and have been for the past eight years (since I was seven) and most of the time, Tunisians don't realize I am fluent in all the languages they speak. There are two very memorable moments I can tell of and they both happened at the beach.
The first time was when I was with my sister and we were playing around when we heard these older teenage girls talking about us very loudly about how we were Asian and how cute we looked. My sister and I were giggling so hard by the end of it
The second incident was around last year and I was swimming in the water when this group of boys who looked to be slightly older than me started to talk to each other loudly about me and were catcalling me along with saying a lot of other rude and inappropriate things in Derja. One boy whistled and catcalled at me and made inappropriate gestures at me so I just got fed up and told him: "Bala3 fomik, ye 5ra." which means 'shut your mouth, you piece of sh*t' in Derja. (Though I'm pretty sure the shut your mouth part has a ruder meaning). And I said it extra loud to make sure the other boys heard it too. It was so worth seeing the look on their faces.
This happened to my friends not me but we do both speak the same languages.
When my friend and her grandma were at a store they heard some people insulting them in their language. Immediately my friend turn turns to them and says “ hi how are you?” In the same language the ladies were speaking. They immediately were embarrassed and started apologising.
Hilarious.
I was at an outlet mall in New Hampshire, not far from where I live. These two gentlemen behind me in line at the foodcourt were speaking in Norwegian. One of them said something along the lines of "This guy shouldn't even be here. Fat American as always."
I turned around and said in Norwegian "Can you blame us? We have so many cuisines to choose from here".
It was an easy language to pick up. I learned it back in 2015 when one of my friends in college was a student from Norway.
I got to witness my friend do this. For context, we are both Welsh, but I can't speak it, I've always stuggled with languages, while she went to a Welsh school and is fluent. We lived in a small town for Uni, only about 3000, and Welsh was the first language for most residents.
We had gone to the shop and decided to sit on the floor to have the ice-cream we had just got, two older ladies walked past us and tittered (I've had to google translate to approximate it) "Wyt ti eisiau eistedd ar lawr?" "Nac oes. Dyna beth mae slobs yn ei wneud" (Do you want to sit on the floor? No. That's what slobs would do) . My friend calls back to them. "Wyt ti'n siwr? Byddai'r baw yn cyfateb i'ch personoliaethau." (Are you sure? The dirteould match your personalities)
Diolch cont would have worked to old bars like that. Even if they were not from Caernarfon, it's still a valid compliment/insult 😂
Holy sh8 you and your friends story shook me to the core, because I wouldn't even know if I could reply back because im scared and shy 😂👉🏼😊👉🏼😐👉🏼😢 like literally. Ur friend is so brave to call them out like that and roast them like a chicken barbecue
I’m non hispanic white, but have made a hobby of learning Spanish. I’m not as fluent as a native speaker, but I can always make myself understood and I understand a lot. Once my husband and I were in a liquor store. Standing next to us were two young Latino guys, early twenties. They were discussing their evening plans, what they would smoke and drink and what they planned to do with women. I was amused, but tried not to show it. But one of them must have caught on, because he said something to his friend about me listening to them. The friend glanced at me and said in Spanish, don’t worry, she can’t understand us. At that I turned and grinned at them, and in Spanish told them, “Have fun, fellas!” They both looked shocked and it was priceless. 🤣
my mom is actually a trilingual, she’s fluent in english, spanish, and portuguese, and when she worked at a clothes store before i was a born and this is my favorite story she’s told me from when she worked there: these two women came in with this kids, and the kids were running around like crazy. my mom said “hey, you need to gets those kids under control.” and in spanish, the women to each other were like “who does she think she is?” when they came to check out, in spanish, my mom said “i’m the manager, is who i am.”
If you're a larger person and a Spanish speaker starts making fun of you, say "soy muy embarasada" while patting your belly. It will throw them for a loop, especially if you're male because it means "I'm pregnant"
Was in russia as a student. Near our building was this bistro with a good discount for students, so it was always full of them, foreign students included. One day as i was eating, 4 russian students came in, sat next to me and upon noticing me, began a lively discussion about wether i was korean, chinese, japanese or tai. They kept glancing at me and saying stuff like "naaah, her face is too round for a japanese" or "well she eats with a fork, so probably korean". I ate without uttering a sound and acted as if i do not understand them to no give the gig up before hands. They went on for around 15 or so minutes, which i find impressive. When i finished eating and 4 friends had time to place their bets, i waved my hand to a waitress. The 4 started franticly arguing on who is going to go approach me to resolve the bets. And as the waitress asked me, in russian: "Card or cash?". I, still acting as if the those students were not even there, answered in my perfect russian, since it is my first language: "Oh, card, i don't think i have any cash on me anyways".
Instantly all 4 of them went dead silent and in perfect comical synchrony turned their heads to face me. Their clear "It was at this moment that he realised" impressions almost made me busrt out laughing. But didn't. Instead i payed and walked away, ignoring their silent embarrassment all the way to the door.
Nice story. But you should probably add that there are Asian looking etnics groups in Russia like Yakuts or Buryats and some people from these groups have Russian as their mother tongue.
Or you might be Russian-speaking Kazakh.
@@tariver1693 , they are not "asian looking", they ARE asian. Asians are part of russia's population.
@@tariver1693 , and having them makes it all even more hilarious
@@tariver1693 , вы у нас из защитников мира от нацизма путем уничтожения украинцев, ненавиденья американцев, называния россии для русских и засилья русского мира? Или из нормальных?
@@PolinaLee94 я татарин. :)
I work in an auto parts store. I’ve been teaching myself Spanish for a few years. I’m cashing out a gentleman and he types his phone number into the PIN pad to earn his rewards. The phone number doesn’t seem to take. I turn the pad around to see that he had put in his number right and I say to him, “Well it does say ‘Gracias’ so it should have went through. He says “De nada” and I reply “Todo va a estar bien.” (means, Everything will be alright) I’m very obviously white American so maybe he thought I only knew a few phrases from high school because he says, “Tengo un gato en los pantalones.” (Which means, I have a cat in my pants) I bust up laughing. He asks, “Sabes hablar Español?” I say “Un poquito.” We have a pretty good laugh. It’s a line from a movie.
So i took French in school for so long i was practically bilingual. Anyway I was in Quebec Canada and my mom spoke no french so we were talking in English over breakfast. A couple minutes later a couple came in and sat down near us. They started saying the most embarrassing things things you don't usually say in public but they thought they were safe. Well i start listening and O M G they were so indiscrete I started blushing. Unfortunately I never got a chance to speak French in front of them.
Two friends had met through a student exchange program in Finland. The American brought his Finnish counterpart to stay with his family as hosts. They went sightseeing and wound up on an elevator with a woman. The boys started making rude comments about her in Finnish. Eventually they came to her floor. She turned to them and thanked them in Finnish.
It was in a university club. There were two guys who spoke in Cantonese all the time, it was a club that had members from different nationalities. They always assumed I didn’t understand Cantonese, since I had openly said that I could not read Chinese (doesn’t mean I can’t speak). Then one day I answered my phone and spoke in fluent Cantonese to my mother. They were horrified, because they couldn’t remember if they had ever gossiped about me in Cantonese in front of me.😛
Not my story but still a fun one I heard from in here in the uk.
On a bus there was a muslim woman on the phone speaking to someone else on the phone, having a pretty standard day-to-day convo and wasn't being overly loud to disrupt people and out of nowhere a guy bascially screamed at her "WE'RE IN ENGLAND, SPEAK ENGLISH". Naturally this shocked everyone on the bus but without missing a beat, an older man chipped in to speak up against the guy and said very sarcastically. "Actually mate, we're in Wales and she's speaking Welsh so F off".
Wish I was there to see it
Love it! LOL 😄😁🤣
I speak Welsh as a 4th language (it's the first language where I am living). I was on a train in England and heard 2 staff discussing in Welsh a job they were hiring for and discussing the applicants cv's. They were discussing the applicants personal information (including names) and laughing about how desperate the applicants were and how much they were b.s.-ing. As I was leaving, I asked in Welsh if they had reviewed my application yet, I wanted to be around while they roast me. They both went really pale and started backtracking. I then swapped to English so everyone else in the carriage would understand what they were doing. I couldn't believe they were that unprofessional that they would discuss private details out loud for anyone to hear. But then again, they were dumb enough to say the name of the company they worked for, so go figure.
my mom was working retail and a spanish lady was talking on the phone. this lady say something bad about my mom (she never told me what) to whoever she was talking to on the phone, and mom says, "that was rude". the lady stops talking to the person on the phone and just stares at my mom.
i'm not fluent in any language (unfortunately) other than English but I do speak/understand a few languages conversationally (French, Mandarin, Caribbean pidgin and to a lesser extent a little arabic).I was working as a security guard at a shop when a group of French girls came in, maybe 5-6 of them. After a short time they started talking among themselves (all in French), and were being rude about myself and another co-worker (think comments unflattering about appearance). I ignored them, have been called worse by better, you know? Their convo changed and they started talking among themselves about a particular shop that they were looking for that they couldn't find. I walked over and gave them the directions in French. They were half way through thanking me when they realised I had given them the info in French and stopped with a look of dawning horror and/or awkwardness. The girl I was talking to started awkward laughing, followed by the other girls giggling and they left the shop. I chuckled to myself and went about my day.
I got to witness one from a supervisor during my first paid job. It was a temporary position where I was tasked with transporting and changing out robot motors. These motors were for the painting section of a Japanese automotive plant, specifically the Toyota one in San Antonio, Texas (this was back when the place was still fairly new). Most of the top managers and executives there were Japanese, some of whom even came directly from Japan.
Because I did not speak Japanese, I was paired up with someone who did, and that someone was my supervisor. He was a nice guy, we got along well, and we had little trouble getting the work done (he was pretty hands-on whenever it came to work). The occasional mistake was made on my end, but it was never anything that interfered with operations. That said, in this instance, some of the Japanese managers were watching us work, and even though I couldn't understand Japanese, from what little I could hear through the hearing protection as well as watching their body language, I could tell that they were being insulting towards either me or both of us (I assumed it was more towards me). Neither of us said anything to them, at least not while working, but once we were finished and were about to leave with the old motors, my supervisor stepped up to those managers and spoke to them in Japanese.
I should have mentioned earlier that my supervisor looks like a stereotypical Mexican: tanned skin, relatively short stature, everything - he even has a fully Mexican name (for his privacy, I will only say that his last name was Rodriguez). While that is his heritage, he has explained me that he is an Air Force brat, which, in his case, meant that he spent his childhood in Okinawa (he was born in the US shortly before his father was transferred to Okinawa and brought the family with him). Thus, when he and his family moved back to the US, he was fully quadlingual in English, Spanish, Japanese, and Korean (the Korean came from a neighbor who had spent time in South Korea before transferring to Okinawa themselves).
A part of me wondered if those managers could get any paler than they did, and they had turned rather ghostly when he dropped that bombshell on them. It took quite bit to not even look like I was holding back laughter at their reaction. We never saw those managers again.
I never asked him about what he told them because from their reactions, I felt like there was no real need for me to know. In hindsight, perhaps I should have asked anyway, if for no other reason than to use it should I ever get insults sent my way in Japanese again (not that it has happened again, of course).
I'm a German native speaker, fluent in English, and speak conversational French. An elderly couple talked shit about my brother and me because we spoke English together, and I replied in French "well unlike certain bigoted old fucks, we're trying to learn other languages!"
They went dead silent.
Years ago I went to a Polish restaurant in Montreal. Neither my friend nor I spoke much French. When I asked for a table for two the older maitre'd replied ' je ne parle pas anglais'. I came back in Polish with ' No problem. We'd like a table for two, please.' The guy stared at me blankly. It turned out he spoke no Po!ish at all! He had to grab a co-worker who Spoke Polish. He was mortified and I loved every second of it.
Perhaps slightly different, I taught school in Brownsville in far South Texas. I was as blond-haired, blue-eyed as anyone could be. However, anytime I went into Mexico, the people would start speaking to me in Spanish as if I understood (which I did, I was fluent) and I'd respond as if it was natural. However, they would always speak English to any Hispanic I was with, even if they started speaking Spanish. It was weird.
Unfortunatley my story doesn't have sweet revenge, but I was on a bus in a Balkan country, a few monts after covid was really big, so me and my family were wearing masks. An older lady on the bus said in condesending french, "they are wearing masks." I wish I had said somthing back to them. They likly assumed, us being white tourists that we were American, and only spoke English, we are Canadian, although french is my second language.
Je comprends cela.
The main group I have issues with are Canadian activist groups. (Especially LGBTQ+ AND "Diversity" groups) They say so much sh*t about French Canadians, that they don't realize the person next to them speaks French.
And it gets worse when you reveal to them you are French Canadian.
And no, I don't live in Quebec.
I have 2 stories about this....I'm Puerto Rican and Greek but most people don't know this at first glance. 1st story: I was walking in my apartment complex past one friends house, going to another friend's house. Four Mexican gentleman exit the friends apartment I was walking past. One says "hola Mamacita".... I completely ignore him. A couple seconds later he says "puta". I turn around and say, "Entiendo español, pendejo¡ A mi padre no le gustan los mexicanos¡" His face was priceless 😂😂
2nd story: I was shopping in Walmart and there were 2 Hispanic men about 5 ft from me, I hear one say to the other, in Spanish, hey look at that girl...the other, also in Spanish, says, nah, she looks like she messes with black guys. I was like WTF😳?! I literally stopped and started looking myself up and down trying to figure out what about me said that. I still don't know but he wasn't wrong so whatevs 🤷 😂😂😂😂
I am a retired ASL Interpreter, I was in the mall and there was a group of girls that were openly mocking a young couple who were very much unaware of others around them. After a few minutes I got the attention of the one doing to most nasty comments and Signed to them Asking if they wanted me to start voicing what they were saying to the policeman watching them from behind the column. They looked shocked and quickly shuffled out the entrance/exit doors.
Many years ago I worked for a national fast food chain as a restaurant help desk technician. I’m white but grew up with a Mexican family so I speak spanish, but not as well as I do now. So I didn’t tell anyone I spoke spanish because I was afraid of getting the spanish calls. As I became comfortable with the job, I was put on the Night Shift and was the only spanish speaker at night, so I started taking those calls.
One night, one of my coworkers came in to retrieve something he forgot and heard me speaking Spanish. I asked him not to tell anyone and he promised.
Well, one morning shortly after, it was the end of my shift and I was busy working on a store whose back office computer wouldn’t boot up that morning, and my coworker is talking to me and I’m mmmhhmm and uh-uhing my replies as I’m typing,then stop as I realize he was speaking in Spanish to me the whole time.
I turn around in my seat to see a couple of Mexican girls with horrified expressions and the biggest shit eating grin on that guys face!
Damn, I couldn’t pass on those Spanish calls during the day anymore after that!
I got to do this while working at Macys. I’m not fluent but I knew enough French to understand how they were being really awful to my coworker. I told them in French to stop being assholes and don’t assume no one in America can speak French, well as close to that as I could with my less than fluent French. The looks on their faces was priceless
Stories like this make me more encouraged to continue learning other languages.
I'm not completely fluent in Spanish but I know and speak enough of the language to understand it if I'm in a situation that calls for me to speak Spanish. That being said I was in Geometry class in high-school and could over hear two girls whisper-talking a rumor about a girl sitting not far from them. I happened to know both girls moms because they're the ones who taught my mom Spanish where she worked at the time. So I leaned over to the girl they were talking about and said just loud enough for the two girls to hear " their saying alot of shit about your boyfriend cheating on you with the girl on the left" and went back to taking notes. I got to witness the biggest argument from them after that and they stopped talking around me in class.
Story 13 is hilarious. 😂 My family is also from Senegal. I unfortunately never learned how to speak Wolof when I was growing up. That was because I have an autistic sister and my parents decided it was best to just have u
s kids use one language to make it easier.
It was really unfortunate because both my parents could speak at least 4 languages: Wolof, French, English, and Pulaar, the language of the Touceleur people, as my family is of this ethnic group. Oh and my mom can speak Spanish too from her first job.
Amazing! It’s not too late! I know many adults who are interested in learning their parents’ language and practice with them. You’re not alone on that!
Growing up in Texas in the 70s my Hispanic classmates were discouraged from learning Spanish. Their parents wanted them to concentrate on English. At the time I considered it unfortunate because the children were unable to communicate with their grandparents. Today, businesses seek out bilingual employees.
In Spain, walking the Camino, coincided with a party of Germans, 4 females, 2 of them gorgeous, we walked together, ate together and stayed in the same hostels. I never let them know I was almost perfectly fluent in German. 3 days into us walking together, I overheard one of the females (gorgeous) telling another that she fancied me! I played it coy for a couple of days until I let her “trap” me into going out for the night with her. We “partnered” for the next two weeks and she invited me to Germany to stay with her. I can’t figure out how to tell her I speak German.
I´m spanish too, but my mum is from Germany and I also spent some school years over there.
I´ve met alot of germans in Spain and other countries and also still keep in contact, meet them here and there,
but I usually only speak english with them...
The amount of private coversation I overheard and the amount of secrets I know because I never told them that I speak their language is ridiculous 😂
@@M.J.-Diaz it’s funny, my son lives in Amsterdam, as you probably know, most Dutch speak three or four languages, BUT they assume no foreigner speaks Dutch, my son, though not fluent speaking, writes and understands Dutch perfectly, he often recounts conversations in Dutch he has inadvertently eavesdropped. He is a big dark man, in Asia he is confused for an Asian, in India confused as Indian, in the West Indies confused as West Indian, in the US confused as a Black American, in reality he is a Heinz 57 varieties, with 4 languages and an Australian who lives and works in Amsterdam.
I had one of those story though i was on the other side... I was visiting japan with my family and we were sightseeing a japanese castle. We got up to the last floor of the japanese castle...and then when it was time to leave i turn around and see the stair i had just climbed. The thing is...i have vertigo, like my legs turn jelly when i'm too high and my only option is to close my eyes and get down not standing but kind of sitting and crawlingwhen it's really bad. It was really bad, the staircase was very narrow, with high steps and for me it felt like a 90° angle (it was of course not a 90° angle) so i was contemplating on how to get down when my little brother noticed my discomfort and offered to get me on his back and get down with me (like he had seen a father do for his child who got scared) i was embarassed but my only option was getting on my butt and uncommodating all the people trying to get down (and i wasn't sure if the japanese people would be offended if i did that) so i agreed and said he was the bestbrother (because he is). ALAS i get on his back and then realize : this is worse!! Im HIGHER NOW !! but it was sucha nice gesture that i just close my eyes and grips his back and swallow back my fear. Of course i get nervous and the only way i find to allievate this nervousness is to...ramble and say everything that crosses my mind. So i start like :
"hey you know japanese people were supposed to be tiny, how come they built such HIGH STEPS for their staircases...? Isn't this kind of weird? It would be like half-as-tall-as them by this point? And if the castle was besieged they would have to go up in like full armor!! or worse if they have to get down to fight? They would have to go down in full armor like HOP HOP through the steps what if one falls down? It's so narrow it wouldgo down down down like domino and-"
and i stop because the japanese woman in front of us burst into laughing suddenly , she can't stop laughing until we reach down the end of the stair, then she waits for us, turns around and pats my shoulder and says with the most amused look on her face, in french : "samurai didn't fall down the stair" and then leaves. According to my brother i turned completely RED and he laughed until our parents joined us (and immediately told them about it because he is the worst best brother) I was so embarrassed...but also a little bit amused.
So yeah moral of the story, samurai don't fall down stairs and some japanese speak french fluently. Lesson learned. (Also second lesson don't go up before i check i can go down on my own)
were the guys in story seven really that creepy? it sounds like they were just shocked with how pretty she was and they didn't even try anything, and the one dude just seemed like he was overtaken by the spirit of simping
In Chinese, our various dialects may as well be completely different languages. Nothing like, say, Scottish English vs. American English where you can still completely understand each other. To this day, my extended family never seems to remember that I completely understand the Shanghai dialect (I just can’t speak it), assuming that I only know Mandarin. Even my parents underestimate how much of the Shanghai dialect I can comprehend. The family frequently forget to switch languages when addressing me at family gatherings, but that’s not a big deal to me. I’m just very confused as to why they’re always so surprised when I respond correctly in Mandarin after they speak to me in Shanghai dialect.
I was on roblox speaking english with a random girl, then she asked me what country i was from and told her "Mexico" and she was like- "fi ur mexican how can you speak english" and i was like "gurl that was racist"
I ran into a man and his wife, who spoke German, and the guy was telling me that he and the wife went to a restaurant and there was a Hispanic/Mexican couple in another table after they sat down speaking in Spanish to each other so they decided to sit at their table and speak in German. I guess it allowed them to have a little privacy in their conversation when they were speaking together during their meal. I wish I would have been at another table there
I'm fluent in Dutch (native language), near fluent in English, and I speak a bit of German. Not enough to say it's decent, but plenty to get by with a bit of help during a conversation. As a bonus, Dutch and German are similar enough for us to understand each other well enough without speaking the other language as long as we speak slow and clearly. I don't know the expression that guy made, but during a game he got mad at us for kicking his butt multiple times and started swearing at us in German. I replied to him in German (with the bit that I still know), and he (as expected) threw another nasty message at me before shutting up.
I also know a tiny bit of French, but I would not understand much at all. I dropped it as soon as I had the chance and went with German (kind of a mistake after all. German difficulty would ramp up very fast while French stays at a more basic level even during the final years).
I don't speak spanish, but work alongside alot of native spanish speakers.
I will sometimes respond to them in english when they're talking in spanish.
Though that tends to be situational and related to the store.
Great video, Rufus :) I have a couple stories myself. I can remember 3 from the top of my head. For context, my native language is Spanish but I studied English from a young age.
1- I was like 11, I think. I was at the bookstore and an elderly couple wanted to buy something but the clerks didn't understand them. I stepped up to help and translate. They bought what they wanted and the lady who ran the store gave me a chocolate.
2- At a restaurant, same case. The waitress didn't understand and I translated for her and the clients. No reward there but I didn't mind because I like to help.
3- Toy store. Same. The lady bought a few toys for the kids and a costume for her daughter. The owner thanked me and gave me a little DBZ figure. I still have it xD
I actually have a few stories 1st story was the summer b4 my senior year of HS. My works for himself as a landscaper & would take me with him during summer break since i was about 5. So that day we were working on a house near a HS when 3 teens coming from summer school walked by me & 1 said to the other this is what happens when you dont have a green card & cant spicky Ingles. They all laughed until i said wtf did u say. The main guy's mouth dropped while the others looked at him. I said what u thought i didnt speak Spanish or maybe u thought because im by myself id stay quiet but you phucking with the wrong. They stayed quiet so i said just for your information I'm here voluntarily helping my dad & the reason i can do that is because im not a dumbass who stuck doing summer school. I also work for mine im not handed everything like mommy & daddy do to u. The 2 friends told the 3rd thats your problem you said it. So he said he was sorry he didnt know i spoke English i said thats not the phucken point you shouldnt be talking shite about ppl & if u are at least be man enough to do it where they understand.
2nd story is kinda the opposite of some1 talking shite about some1 else. Here i was at the grocery store where i have a friendly relationship with most the cashiers since im there at least once a week plus my lil bro use to work there as a bagger so they knew me. On this day the cashier had just helped a black lady & was ringing me up. As usual we we had a friendly convo in Spanish where she asked about how i was doing & how my bro was. When she asked if i still drove the black Toyota the lady got upset because she heard the word negro which in Spanish means black i tried explaining to her the situation but she wasn't trying to hear it & went off then called the manager. I told him what happened but she tried lying so the manager pretended to believe her & told her he'll talk to the cashier. A similar story happened to my mom & dad because in the hispanic/Latino community we give each other nicknames based on our appearances or some characteristic. Like if youre a chubby kid youre gordo even when u lose the weight, if you got slanted eyes youre chino, skinny youre flaco, light skinned youre huero & dark skinned youre negro. Both my parents are on the dark side so their pet names for each other instead of babe or honey was negro or negra for my mom. 1 day we were at Disneyland & my mom said in Spanish negro how bout we get on this ride again some1 misunderstood & thought they were being racist luckily this time when we explained things they believed us & things didnt escalate. Now im not saying Latinos dont do this because every group does.
Which leads to story 4 which happened when i worked at a baking warehouse where they made bread, buns & tortillas for all the cities around DFW TX. For some reason i was the guy the other coworkers came to if there was another coworker not pulling their weight even though i was just a regular employee. So they had just hired a few new ppl 1 of them being a black dude that got assigned to the bun group i was on the bread group. Anyways about 2 hours into the shift 1 of the bun guys that didnt speak much English comes up to me to chat while we're both waiting for the bread/bun stacks to come around on the chain. When the new guy passes by he said in Spanish "man u see that black dude hes slow af hes so lazy he just walks around letting stacks go by. Suddenly the guy comes & yells in Spanish that he speaks Spanish & if he got something to say come say it to me. Then he said that hes 55 years old & still new so hes not gonna be able to keep up with the youngins. My friend looked like he was gonna cry so i started laughing & said see what happens when u talk shit.
Final story happened when i worked in a coffee shop inside a bookstore. I was working when this lady came up to me & asked for a cafe a lat so i said "excuse me" so she said great can i get some1 that can speak American i aint gonna be dealing with some1 who wasnt even born here. I said i was actually born here also American isnt a language its called English which i can speak in fact i speak it better than you because aint isn't a word
It feels like a problem that people who switch to another language in public do so exclusively to be an asshole. I speak varying amounts of a few languages and every time I have overheard someone speaking in one in public (in America, so a predominantly English-speaking situation) it was to say things that would get you hit or arrested if you had said them in English. You already stand out because you felt the need to hide what you were saying, but also don't contain the sense to just not say anything. We don't have to know what you're saying to know you're a dick and if we DO know what you're saying it only ever confirms it. Speaking another language is not a license to be threatening, creepy, or disparaging of people around you and when you get called out or worse, nobody is going to defend you.
I have one that’s wholesome! I have picked up little bits and pieces of about a dozen languages that I’m not ever going to need in my life and I am by no means fluent in. So a few days ago I decided to randomly speak Ukrainian to my coworker because he was looking at me a little funny. So he says to me that “two can play that game” and starts speaking to me in a language he assumes I can’t speak. Turns out, the language he chose was the only language (other than my mother tongue) that I am actually fluent in. The look on his face was hilarious when he realized I beat him at his own game by responding in that language!
not me but my mum, we were living in london, england at the time (i wasnt born yet) and her and my aunt were sitting on the tube (train). theyre from ireland so they spoke a little bit of irish (irish isnt a well known language in Ireland, yea we learn it in school but thats really it there is very few places where they still speak it fluently and i mean under 50 places in ireland) anyways on the tube they saw a man and my mum said to my aunt “tá sé go hállain” (*taw shay goh haw-linn*) which means “it is beautiful or he is beautiful” (sé can be it or he) while looking at a guy on the tube and he must have understood my mum because he giggled and covered his mouth
I wasn't the one who knew the language but I had saw someone who knew it. I used to work in McDonald's when I was in college, worse job ever. It had been a normal day with people ordering what they want. The I got to the this couple. They looked like they were Amish but I wasn't fully sure. So I asked what they wanted and the Man started to speak in a different language that I had no idea about. I asked him to repeat in English but he just continued in the other language. I didn't know what to do. Thankfully, a man behind them spoke up and said they had wanted 2 of the peppermint hot chocolates. The man helped me through the rest of the order and got the couple through it. When it was the guy's turn, I quickly thanked him for his help and took his order. A few minutes later, I noticed that the guy was sitting at the table with the couple just talking with them.
I'm still waiting for my special moment in that regard when I catch someone being rude in either English, Spanish, Portuguese or Finnish, lmao
Not me, but my great-grandparents moved from Italy to America and as a result my grandfather knows some Italian, enough that he could translate to English but not so much the other way. One day when he was at work, i wanna say in the 60s, he was working with a couple Italian guys who were new to the country and were bad mouthing conditions here (i forget if he mentioned context on the word "conditions"). He walked over to them and said "do you remember that boat you came over here on? Well it goes big ways." I don't know anything after that except for them being embarrassed not knowing someone could understand them.
I'm kinda the same way as gramps but i can understand American sign language instead of Italian. I used to work with a mother and son where the mom was deaf and the son was partially hired afterward because i haven't signed enough in years that i unfortunately couldn't sign to her. It was known i could read hands and id occasionally joke as people walked by the 3 of us saying the mom and son are talking about whoever walked by, nobody did anything more than looking over their shoulder like "really?" before i told them i was joking. I was also the class clown so most knew i was joking right away
Some one on a game played thought that I was German because I nou some German and they were trash taking in English and I joined in English and said shut up they went quite then I mest with then in English and I laughed ha its still funny
I enjoyed this video this just shows that you should never judge anyone, because you don't know what that particular know about you or themselves 🤔.
Oh, i have so many stories, but this one had the most impact on my view on people to thisday. I'm multilingual, i was born Yakut (i think it's called Saha or Sacha today), my parents are from Russia and Ukraine, my grandparents from Germany, France, Kazakhztan and Ukraine (not going further back in my ancestry, cause it gets wild). The relevant languages here are german, russian and english.
So, i was 16 years old and visiting my grandparents living in Moscow. I was at the Moscow airport Domodedovo, waiting for my flight home to Zurich, Switzerland (i lived in the soth-west and the swiss airport was closer and back then cheaper then the nearest german one). While waiting there, i was watching other people pass that counter with their hand package to the waiting area. There were 2 businessmen in fairly expensive looking suits and they were in an argument with a female security stuff about their hand luggage. Problem was: They could not understand each other. The security stuff spoke russian and very rudimentary english, the 2 businessmen spoke neither: One was chinese, the other german and that's the languages they spoke. It took me a bit to figure that out. It looked like they were about to fight each other, so little teen me went over and asked the security staff in russian, if i shall help her as a translator: Even though my russian was basic, it's better than what they had. I turned to the businessmen and offered the same in german.
So, turns out the security stuff was very sus of them 2, something about espionage and stuff, especially cause they had a lot of papers in english but could not speak english. Turns out they were both from a company called Siemens, one from the german main company, the other from the chinese daughter company. They came to a personal meeting to negotiate some stuff about production and cooperation in China, and the chinese guy only spoke german and the german guy only spoke chinese (both cases strange enough, but the reason why both were representatives for this). And they met in Moscow cause for both parties that was the best compromise, plus at that time it was considered rather neutral teritorry for corporate meetings. The english papers were some kind of documentation made by a third party at the weekend, and each of them had a copy in their native language too, all for the higher ups.
The security staff was a bit sad cause she lowkey was hoping to make a big catch, which didn't happen. In the end she could only charge the german businessman for having more than the allowed amount of russian caviar in his hand luggage (like 2kg, wtf, they sell the same stuff in Germany in specialty stores). Anyway, the businessmen were very glad, cause they literally could have gotten arrested over this miscommunication.
That's not the end yet: The businessmen were travelling business class, i was in economy. I got really friendly with my seat neighbor, an elder russian woman who was visiting her family in Zurich, which she did on a regular basis. When we arrived in Zurich, it was my first time there (my flight to Moscow was from the Basel airport in France). The older lady took me under her wing and showed me where to go to check in for entering Switzerland. I waited in a huge line with her for about 10 min, when suddenly i felt a tap on my shoulder: It was the same german businessman. He asked me about my nationality, cause there is a different counter for EU and swiss citizens. As a german passport owner i was in the wrong line. He took my ellbow and was about to guide me to the EU counter, where there was literally no one, while talking to me in german.
The russian lady grabbed my other arm and tried to pull me back: She was rather alarmed, cause she didn't understand him (he DID have a very strong bavarian accent tbf) and was worried that a middle aged man in a business suit was trying to pull away a teen girl from where (as she thought) she was supposed to be.
I explained to her what was going on and what happened at the russian airport and we said goodbye, but she was watching us like a hawk till the end. Me and german businessman went through within 5 minutes then, he helped me find my luggage and then left me next to security spot and told me not to move till my parents pick me up and not to talk to strangers and went on. My parents took their sweet time though, i was talked up by a lot of people while waiting (including one man who was waiting for his blind date to arrive, with a rose in his hand - like who come to a blind date to another country?).
Honestly, so damn many nice people on that one single flight. They just had a language barrier. For me that taught me that if you are nice to people and make an effort to communicate with them, they will be nice to you too and help you too if needed. 20 years later i still stand by it, though of course it didn't always go so fairytale lalaland smooth as it did that time.
1:44 just as a head's up, I have been told that Khmer is pronounced "kuh-my". No worries though since I made that same mistake for sbout two decades.
Yea never assume that nobody in the room can speak spanish in America, especially in the west coast or Texas.
I don't have any particularly funny gotcha moments. It's usually just small things when I notice a person's accent when speaking English. If they're struggling with English, I'll just speak to them in their language (if their language is Spanish or German).
I remember meeting a taxi driver who spoke Spanish and German fluently but his English wasn't great, so I just ended up speaking to him in a mixture of both languages. If I couldn't think of a word or phrase in one language, I'd switch to the other. It was pretty entertaining and it worked!
Although, one time in Austria, I was approached by American tourists who thought I was a local. They thought I was an Austrian who was speaking to them in English to be nice. Nope! I'm just a fellow American who acted inconspicuous, spoke passible German, and happened to be dressed nicely to attend an opera that evening. THAT was funny.
I was in my University library and this girl started talking loudly on her phone in Spanish. She said rude things about people in the USA and the school. I just kept reading my textbook. When she finally hung up, she started talking to me in English. She mentioned that she recognized me from the bus stop (weird?) and kept the conversation going. Long story short, I casually let it drop that I had just returned from 18 months in Central America. The look on her face was worth all the lost study time.
I decided not to include that I'm also Latina. I just got the recessive genes so people don't look at me and assume I speak Spanish
Not me, but I was working my shift as a cashier and a younger girl was working at the register next to me. Some women came through her line and were sizing her up and talking in Arabic about how she would be perfect for one of their sons to date. Yup, she speaks Arabic and clearly understood every word. She told them she “wasn’t interested, but thank you”. Their faces were like this 😧.
So, while I’m not Russian or Ukrainian, I can speak Russian.
When I was working as a waiter 10 years ago, a Russian couple came and gestured me to order. Ok. I take their order and after some time, I bring them what they wanted. Just as I was approaching the table, I heard them trash talking the whole stuff in Russian. The dude sees me and says to his gf/wife (I’m not sure) “Here is the fatty, bringing our food”. I served them, smiled and said “You better be careful with those word because next time, someone might spit in your food” in Russian.
I’ve never seen someone turn white as a ghost as those two. In the end, before they left, they left me with a hefty tip.
Underrated Video!
Not me but two of my university teachers, who are polyglots, encountered similar stories.
The first teacher in question speaks Russian among other languages and was one of the rare canadian scholars to be granted as a young adult a visa to visit and study soviet Russia back in the 1980s. He used to say his way of speaking Russian was so perfect he thought he could easily pass as a native of Russia. Sadly, his cover did not work because 1. He didn't initialy knew that, if you want all of your bureaucraty papers to be approved or to be dealt with in soviet Russia, you always have to pay money under the table, which all soviet natives knew ; and 2. His hair was curly... Like, really curly with hints of redhead, which was so rare back then in the URSS that it was a clear proof you were a foreigner (a westerner). Luckily, his friend Tatiana was always there to save his skin. Plus, he knew good jokes, about russian litterature and, even though people could always pinpoint him as a foreigner, a lot of Russians were always surprised to see him speak their language perfectly. So, at the end, the people he met respected him for being nice and respecting their culture with a lot of curiosity, without any judgment or feeling of superiority.
The second teacher in question speaks Mandarin chinese among other languages and visited a few times China in the late 90s/early 2000s, also as a canadian scholar. He then said because of his tanned skin, his short beard and his arm hair (Chinese people don't really have facial hair and don't show a lot of body hair like arm hair), he would often hear older chinese people mock him by calling him loud and clear a hairy monkey in their language, thinking he was just another stupid American tourist. Then, one day, he went to a nearby food cart and politely discussed (loud enough so the insulters could hear) in a perfect intonation (not only the pinyin but also with the accent of someone from Beijing) with the cart lady about the weather, the quality of her ingredients and correctly guessed from which chinese region she originally was from because of her accent. The teacher then told us (his students) that, while the cart lady was pleasantly surprised, the people that had insulted him and mocked him had then become red of shame and quickly left the place.
So, moral of the story, do not disrespect others if you want a minimum of respect. And BE nice to people who are nice, don't just act nice, no matter how different people may be, because who the heck needs to trash nice people because of their physique ? It's childish and petty.
Also take care and do not kill each others ! Peace from Canada ! ❤
Two Instances:
In the Philippines because I came from Italy and mostly spoke English I was assumed to not know Tagalog (I'm fully Filipino, I was born in there), the absolute confusion in people's faces each time when I speak in Tagalog is priceless.
Second instance was in Italy, I look like a foreigner (because I am), and always spoke in perfect English, some Italians made snide comments about how I looked. I started arguing at them in perfect Italian throwing several cusses here and there telling them off.
I'm Trilingual. Going to have a 4th language to my arsenal once I learn French.
7:27 wow he pronounced that so well
Man i love videos like this 💖 loved all the stories most of them were really funny and unexpected and some i quite didn't understand nicely.💖 the commentd wre really nice, u deserve more subscribers dude ima sub too
i was in canada once and my family decided to eat at a hotpot place. i was reading while we waited for a table bc i’m a really big book nerd so i usually have a book with me on vacations. being a hotpot place it was full of asians. these two people walked in and saw me. the girl said in chinese look at her she’s reading a book at a restaurant and i looked up confused cause what else am i supposed to do when im waiting with nothing to do? she didn’t realize i understood her and i didn’t confront her abt it cause we were in a crowded restaurant
I had a boyfriend once who was from Honduras and didn't speak English and he didn't know that everyone knows that loco means crazy and he was shocked and embarrassed when I told him because he had just cussed somebody out telling them he was loco and not to mess with him also I only speak a little Spanish so the language barrier was a problem sometimes example: someone had told him that business means prostitution so any time I said the word business it caused a lot of problems
My take on story 1: don't flippin expect someone not to speak a language on a plane xD
Im Canadian, worked for an American company. One day i got a call from some wanabe congress sychophant who had no clue what she was doing. After explaining things to her for the third time, she turned to her coworker and insulted my intelligence in French. I flipped over and finished our discussion in French. All,she was able to say was ..uhh..uhhh...umm,.. thank you....😂
How many channels does this guy have??? Rufus Stories, Tales, and now READ IT?! neat.
Yass slay queen
Love these stories! Don't have one to share myself, but what Spider-Man game is playing in this video?
Story 17 was quite cute😊
My stories about this aren't really interesting, but I'll tell them anyway. I'm italian, I live in Italy but I speak english pretty fluently (self tought as italian english teachers are pretty useless in teaching the language), or enough fluently for people that don't talk english to think I'm mother tongue, last year we had this exchange student who didn't speak much italian but spoke enough english to have a conversation, this one time we were on a trip to another city and we were chatting a bit in english, then this lady comes up to us and tries to ask us if we can take a picture of her she went something like "picture... me, per favore" and I unswered in fluent italian "oh, sì, subito" (oh, yeah, right away) and she was like "oh, so you speak italian :0"
This other one is a old story, it's from when I was like... 6 or smth like that, so I didnt speak english yet other than "yes" "please" "hello" "stop" and some random colors like orange and yellow, but my dad speaks english too (he's self tought too), but his pronunciacion is still very italian like, we were on a trip to Croatia, and in some very touristic parts many speak english, italian, and I think at least spanish and french too, but not sure, but my dad went with english as default, so at a certain point we go to this mini shop, and my dad is peaking with thie lady in english, then I ask something to my dad (obv in italian) and the lady goes like "ah aspetta, ma quindi parlate italiano" (oh wait, so you talk italian).
Nothing interesting, but also the only moments that kinda made me laugh
I had the pause the 9th story and read what he said, so I could understand it. But good on you for trying😊
What did it meant
@@artwithlucky7002, it means: "Have fun with that". 😊
Loved the last one. Sounds like something Al Bundy would say.
I’m not bilingual but I have enough Indian friends to know the insults.
I'm from Brazil, and mind you this happened in my own country...
So I was at Leblon beach (the closest beach from my grandma's home, I was visiting her from another state) in Rio de Janeiro back in July 2021, and iirc an international football/soccer match was about to happen in Rio so there was huge amount of gringos everywhere
And there was 2 couples of middle aged Americans with their children right behind my family... And they were some obnoxious qanon delusional Trumpminions, they were talking about so many antivaxx crap, they were talking about how Bolsonaro was great and how Brazil was a safe haven for ppl like them... And they were being so blatantly xenophobic against Brazilians, I really felt like they genuinely thought Brazilians can't speak English at all ans understand their bullshit LMAO
In one time, I just turned my head, looked at them with a judgemental look and said "excuse me" in a sarcastic way... They got even more red than they already were and stopped talking lmao
I believe they only assumed my family is Brazilian bc we were speaking in Portuguese, bc we definitely don't look like the Brazilian stereotype ppl have in their minds... I'm so pale my skin shine, just like Edward Cullen lmao
Im slovene but i have a lot of foreign friends. One time two of my american friends came trough on a vacation and we met up so I could show them around. We were on the bus and were (quietly) talking. An elderly pair kept giving us this ugly look and then they started talking shit. So uh. I showed my hand i suppose and shut them down. Americans get a very very bad rep because they DO tend to be bad tourists, but its not all of them.
8:09 what does that mean?
8:09 what does this translate to?
"Have lots of fun with it"
I know the pain in story 5, I'm pretty pale( im a gremlin) for a puerto rican and I do the same thing I don't tell people i know spanish its kinda funny watching people
I have a Filipino last name and I’m proficient in Spanish…it’s hilarious when kids or adults see me or the color of my skin and think I don’t speak Spanish. When I start responding to them in perfect Spanish they have no idea what to do
Did he just censor the word 'sad'?
The Austrians in Story 8 must have spoken very clear German, I mean I often can´t understand some of the German dialects...
12:12 Maybe he's a Vietnam vet
A bit of a reverse of this. I am from Canada, and my first language is French. (Outside of Quebec) I was with a DnD group in English, and we overheard an LGBTQ+ club at the uni I was at that said some very racist things against French Canadians.
Stuff that would make the KKK shocked, and comment on how they treat African Americans far better than these groups.
Story 7 isn’t rely as it is more cringeworthy
so... you're supporting people bad mouthing? like... why? i get the reasoning but just.... why?
Why anybody care
Dein Deutsch ist gar nicht mal so schlecht