36 Times Folks Overheard Others Speaking About Them In Another Language, Not Knowing They Understood

My cousin was having dinner at a Chinese restaurant with his parents and overheard the waiters speaking Chinese saying something about what black people are doing eating there (referring to my cousin and parents). My cousin replied to them in Chinese. Ended up with free dinner.

Mexico. Just a regular neighborhood in CDMX. I was staying with my GF who lives there. I'm a white guy from the Netherlands. But I was wearing a cheap old outfit and wearing a baseball cap. Stubble beard. I looked like a local sitting down with my 6ft.

Two Dutch girls walk by. They look at me, giggle, and one wonders why Mexican men are so ugly and scary. The other disagreed and said that I at least wasn't fat. My clothes were just awful, according to them.

Later, in the shower, I found at least 3 satisfying replies I could have given that would have given me Reddit gold times 4 here, easy.

Anyway, I didn't.

I live in Japan and this happens quite a lot and to varying levels of insult. I'll tell a cute one. I was at McDonald's perusing the menu board and the longer I stood there, the more uncomfortable the staff became. "Oh no. No one speaks English. We have to find the English menu. Where is the English menu???" I told them, "No, it's ok, I'm just thinking." They all sighed in audible relief.

I sign, but I'm not *really* skilled enough to speak English while I do it so I don't (Plus there was no need to, I was the only hearing volunteer that night). Earlier this year I was a volunteer at a Deaf event held in my town, it was at a pool hall that was just open to the public as well as the people playing in the Deaf competition; I was actually shocked how often a hearing person would come in and say something rude and mean about us all signing away happily.

Eventually I just got sick of it and told one group walking past I could still hear them and the looks on their faces were great to watch.

Not exactly the same, but my ex-wife was Arabic and spoke the language fluently. But normally she acted and looked very western. Once we were selling a van to two North African Arabic guys, and she listened as they discussed how much money they had and could offer. They also thought it was difficult to handle the transmission (manual, but on the steering column instead of the floor). We made sure to show that she had no problem driving it (they were a bit chauvinist) , and sold it to them for their max price.

Every day at work! I work in a manufacturing facility with many hispanic immigrants who like to gossip constantly. They assume that (due to the fact that I am white) I have no understanding of spanish. But what they don't know is that I went to a school system which required us to take four years of a language, where I reluctantly learned spanish.

For three years now I've been working there, listening to their gossip about me. I haven't said anything because I like being able to hear what they really think (and find it kind of amusing). At times it has been quite difficult to pretend like i cant' understand, but I've managed to pull it off.

I'm really looking forward to my last day when I bust out my Spanish and teach them a lesson about being judgmental and shallow.

My mom speaks an obscure dialect of Chinese, although not very well since she learned English upon going to school. But she can still usually understand anyone else speaking the Cantonese dialect.

One day we went to a market in Chinatown and my mom was trying to order something, but the people had a hard time understanding her because obscure dialect. At that point, the old ladies behind us started talking smack about us in Cantonese. My mom said what she got out of it was: *That lady is very Americanized, her Chinese is terrible. And her daughter* (me) *is clearly half-White and because of that she is ugly.* We gave them the stink-eye.

Two old Japanese ladies in a sauna were talking about their niece and how she was about to marry a "stupid American" and was making a huge mistake. Finally one of them said something like "there's other people in here, maybe we should talk about this later", to which the other responded: "what, those two white girls? Yeah sure, like they would understand." My friend and I were only like 12 but were in a Japanese immersion program. When we left I said "I hope you get the problems with your niece worked out.".

I was in a restaurant once with friends and there were a couple Mexican women talking about how annoying we were. The looks on their faces when I told them I could hear them was priceless.

Not me, but heard from my dad, a stamp collector and an associate curator at the Carnegie Museum (they sold off the collection long ago.) A group of Polish Falcons wanted to see the museum's Polish collection and started trash talking, Polish of course, about how badly their country's stamps were presented. The Carnegie Museum had at that time absorbed the entire Smithsonian stamp collection. The curator, Hungarian, spoke English, French, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, and a few other Eastern European languages. After a minute or two, he walked over to the group and kindly asked them to leave, in perfect formal Polish. The curator's parting shot was, "The last cultured Pole was Copernicus.".

At a blackjack table in an Indian Casino two Mexican dudes were kind of drunk and talking business. Big business. Of the Breaking Bad variety. I kept my head down and mouth shut and pretended I didn't hear a word.

English speaker. Learned Spanish off and on. I catch bits and pieces of Spanish and am fluent in curse words. But am by no means perfect.

Guy at work spends an hour and a half calling me every curse/disrespectful word in Spanish. I catch all of it.

This is work, not a bar. Just told him (in Spanish, he pretended to not know what I was saying in English) to stop or at least say it in English.

Last time he ever worked with me or tried calling me amigo🤷‍♂️.

A friend of mine and I (both Americans) were in Sweden riding a train to our apartment. We were both fluent in Swedish, but we were talking in English, because it's easier. Two girls get on the train and sit across the aisle from us, and they say in Swedish "Look at that guy (my friend), he's SOOO hot. He looks like he works out, has a nice beard. I want him, I need to have him." My friend and I both play it casual because we know that they'd be pretty embarrassed if they knew either of us spoke Swedish. Then my friend pulls out his phone and calls a friend of ours, and in Swedish says something along the lines of "Hey, just checking if things are still on tonight, call me back when you get the chance, see you later." to her answering machine. We sat there in silence for maybe 5 seconds until one of the girls says, "And he speaks Swedish. How awkward." Then we made small talk for a bit with these girls, until they ran off the train at the next stop.

I'm not fluent in the slightest but after a couple years of high school Spanish I was at the point where I could understand what people were talking about. I work in a small store that gets a few Mexican people in it and I can always tell if they're talking about me but I don't know to say anything back. So I just kind of give them the stair and they get really uncomfortable when they realize why I'm doing it.

Well I’m Samoan and I don’t look Samoan cause I’m also Puerto Rican...

I speak Samoan and Spanish.

I was helping a client in Spanish at the moment.
Right after these Samoan kids came into my office to get a print out of received benefits for their mother.
(I wore a T-shirt with Samoan tribal prints on it and a flower in my ear that day)
The two kids said in Samoan
“aisea na ia faia ai lena fugalaau e le o le poly”
Which basically means why is she wearing that flower she isn’t poly.
Poly as in Polynesian (which Samoans are )
I replied
“o le a lau tala? taʻu i lou tina sau sau iinei i le taimi nei!”

They were so shocked . I said “what did you say? Tell your mom to come here right now”
When their mom came I told them how disrespectful they were she was so embarrassed and she beat their asses In my office, and I sure did allow that!

Its so important to watch what we say around people you never know who is listening.

I was in downtown Seattle on the ferry to Bainbridge Island, sitting across from these two gorgeous Swedish girls. They were talking about how good looking I was for an American, and were debating inviting me back to their hotel with them to party and show them a good time. Now, I don't speak Swedish *per se*, so this interpretation was based entirely on my imagination.