45 Times Being Multilingual Totally Paid Off During Awkward Gossip Moments

Our office had a maintenance guy who referred to me as “the pretty one” in Spanish. I didn’t let on for months that I spoke Spanish because quite frankly it was nice.

I was living in London for awhile when a French group of Lyceen started criticising the British. Since I normally speak French, I went up to them and said basically don’t assume that there isn’t at least one person on the bus who doesn’t understand French. S**t, I was embarrassed by their lack of respect. They were too when I finished with them.

I was working in London, at the time I was working in a warehouse. I was on my way home on the underground after a night shift. So I was dirty, wearing baggy pants (it was a long time ago). And these 2 women started talking in Afrikaans about how dirty I was and how s**t I looked. When I got off the train I told them to enjoy the rest of their holiday.

I used to hear it occasionally when I lived in Rio. I speak American English fluently and without a foreign accent. I also speak Portuguese with a Brazilian accent.

I’m very pale and skinny with dyed but natural looking golden copper hair. I’d hear people talking casually about how I was probably a gringa or tourist , etc. Nothing malicious 99% of the time but occasionally I’d hear comments about how I needed some feijoada and a day at the beach. 😅

One day I turned around and said:

“So, you want to give me a sunburn and gas?”

They were not expecting that. I laughed it off because they were looking very uncomfortable and eventually they started laughing too. It was a group of older ladies.

When I was in Japan in an antique store and I asked how much the price was in broken Japanese (my understanding is better than my speaking) and the assistant told me. She then turned around to another employee and said “she can’t afford anything in here.” They both laughed but I said “I actually understood that” in Japanese, and walked out. Im sure they were both mortified but I wanted to cry I was so embarrassed!

😅 so I’m a German line cook working in Brussels, we have an open kitchen where I work so we can usually hear quite clearly what’s being talked about at the nearest tables.
Last week a group of around 10 German speaking customers sat at the table right next to my kitchen, and spent a huge part of their time criticizing “how spicy” and how “there’s too much seasoning” on my dishes (thrust it’s not like that, German people just have the most boring tastes), just before they left I walked passed them wishing them “Einen schönen Abend und Danke für ihre Meinung”.

I used to work as a hostess at a sports bar. A couple girls I had sat near the hostess stand were talking about me in our native language but I’m “Americanized” for our culture so they had no idea I was also their ethnicity. I don’t recall what they were saying because it was well over 10 years ago but it was definitely s**t talking. So when they were leaving, I said bye in our language. They both froze and stared at each other for a second before ducking their heads down and leaving. It was satisfying to see them feel so f*****g stupid.

Not a spectacular story, but this triggers a fun memory.

When I was a kid, we used to go to France for our summer holidays, in the middle of nowhere. Closest town was 6km, there was one neighbour that rented out their villa. As an only child, I was often alone with my parents during those holidays.

When I was 11 or 12, I was lucky. A family with a daughter my age rented the villa, and the daughter and I became friends fast. They were bilingual French/Dutch, I spoke Dutch, basic French and a little bit of English at the time. So most conversations were in Dutch.

At one point, the daughter’s 2 cousins (also our age, but boys) came to visit. I think they lived in South Africa and spoke English and French. Most conversations with them were in French, but they spoke a lot of English between them, especially if they didn’t want us to know what they were saying. It was all quite innocent, like talking about pranks they wanted to pull, kid’s stuff. Although I didn’t speak a lot of English, I could understand most of what they were saying.

At the end of their visit, I was in the swimming pool by myself, under a kind of fountain we created with a hose. One of the boys got in the water and asked “are you good?” To which I responded “yes”. His face was hilarious, you really saw the realisation hit him that I understood him and his brother all along, followed by a very embarrassed exclamation “you can understand us!?!”.

I was in Germany with my Mom visiting my Onkel. Mind you, I'm an American citizen, but German is my first language. I speak both fluently and daily. The three of us were on the bus coming back from my Onkels doctor appointment. I was saying something in English to my mom because the medical terminology escaped me for a minute. We hear these older teen/young adults that were sitting in front of us talking s**t about how I'm a dumb American and should get out of their country.

These f*****g morons decided to "show off" their English skills (English is still very commonly taught in school). Their English was BAD, like they must have been asleep in class bad. So I start correcting their English while speaking German. I then said I might be a dumb American, but at least I speak both languages fluently AND correctly.

I lived in China for awhile. My ex is Chinese. Sometimes when he wasn’t with us people would start picking apart our kids features to decide if they were Chinese or not. I would answer in Chinese, “ Their dad’s Chinese.” They would quickly walk away. My ex thought I should tell them they were some Chinese leader’s love children but I never had the nerve.

I found out my boyfriend (long ago) was cheating on me when his friends were discussing it in German. They immediately caught on that I knew what they were talking about by the look on my face. The one guy goes, "S**t, you know German don't you?" I told him that I knew enough to understand. Needless to say, that guy quickly became my ex.

I live right at the border of two countries. While most people from my neighboring country speak our language only a few people in my country speak the neighboring country's language. So once I went to a bakery in the other country with a friend of mine and our kids. It was about 20 minutes before closing time. My friend ordered all the stuff, in our language as she doesn't speak the other one. Then her son had to take a s**t. There's a toilet in the bakery for customers. As she went there with her son the woman behind the counter started saying stuff like: be careful it's slippery. Don't fall because the floor's still wet from mopping... And so on. At first we thought she truly worried about the kid but later we realized she just didn't want to clean the toilet again. Because as soon as they closed the door behind themselves she started ranting to her coworker how rude we are and how our kids are ill-bred. What a bunch of entitled a******s we are for using the bathroom she'd just cleaned, 20 minutes before closing time. So when my friend finally came back with her son I got up and told this lovely lady, perfectly in her language, that maybe she should remember it isn't a secret language. It's spoken by many millions of people and I am in fact a teacher for this exact language.

He was walking by and said "why does this lady have so many plants?!" in Spanish, while I was crouched behind a bush, checking on my plants.

This was about 6 or 7 years ago, i was in mexico at a restaurant with my brother in law, we always speak english together, he is mexican, i am not

Anyway, the place was packed, we were sitting at a table for 6 people and it was just the 2 of us, an elderly couple asked if they can sit with us, my brother in law said yes

So they sit down, the older gentleman looks at me and says

OG : hello

Me: hello

OG: do you like mexico

Me: yes i do

OG: good, do you like mexican people

Me: yes i do

OG: do you like mexican food

Me: yes

He looked at my brother in law and said

OG: Donde encontraste el gringo/ where did you find the american

BIL: El es mi cuñado y también habla español/ he is my brother in law and speaks spanish

He looked at me and said hola

Him and his wife did not say a word after that lol.

I was in China going walking towards an event with a crowd of people. There were a couple kids next to me that said in Chinese: "Look, there's a foreigner"

I turned and looked at them and their eyes got huge, they asked if spoke Chinese and I said a little bit. We started chatting a bit.

As they were talking their mother came up from behind and asked them why they were talking to me, because I didn't speak Chinese.

I then looked at her, and said in Chinese that I speak a little. She immediately had the same expreothey did.

Fun interaction.

I was climbing the Monument to the Battle of the Nations in Leipzig, Germany with a group of American students. Someone behind us was complaining in German about the “fat Americans going so slowly” so I replied back in German, “We’re not all so fat!” And it was true, we were a pretty fit group on the whole! .

When I was 13 I was excited to hear Spanish. It was grown men sexualizing me. I had been hearing this in English since age 8 but it really made me sad when this happened and I was excited to use my new language skills.

My husband accidentally stepped on an older gentleman‘s foot and heard him mutter “Pies de payaso “ clown feet in Spanish .

Yes on my last trip to Italy this Italian couple were arguing and i was watching them and snickering and the woman made a comment about nosey tourists so i clapped back at her and said sorry i thought this was performance art she told me to f**k off to hell and they just walked off.

Checking some Hispanic women out at the register in a grocery store, they were talking about me in Spanish, and explicitly. Like they were talking about me s******y.

I counted back their change in Spanish.

One of them came back later and things happened.