30 Embarrassing And Funny Situations When Someone Didn't Realize Their Language Was Understood, Shared By Folks In This Online Group

I came to the US when I was 9 years old with my parents from the former USSR, and hence speak fluent Russian, however you would never know from speaking to me since my accent is practically nonexistent thanks in part to my being so young when we moved.

When I was 17 I got my first (official) job as a cashier at ShopRite. For those not on the east coast of the US, ShopRite is a supermarket chain here.

At some point this Russian woman and her 20ish year old son get in my lane. I finish ringing up the customer before them and the following conversation ensues.

Me: (To Russian woman, [in English]) Do you have a ShopRite card?
Woman: No.
Me: Do you have any coupons or rain checks?
Woman: No.

I then begin scanning her groceries.

Woman: (to her son, [in Russian]) Look at what this idiot is doing.

I glance up trying to find the idiot she is talking about. Perhaps something funny is going on?

Woman: [in Russian] Why is he even working here? God I hate idiots.

At this point I realize she is talking about me. Mind you, all I am doing at this point is taking her groceries, waving them over the scanner, and putting them aside to bag later.

I decide that it's best to just continue working and ignore the woman... for now. So I put on my best smile and keep scanning her s@#t.

Woman: [in Russian] How long is this going to take?

I finish ringing up all her stuff, punch up her total and begin bagging. Normally I would have asked how she would like to pay at this point, but I decided I would let her throw in a few more insults first.

Woman: [in Russian] He doesn't even know how to pack correctly. Oh, what an idiot.

I made sure to pack all of her things away with a smile, and then replied:

Me: [in Russian] How will you be paying for this?

The woman stops dead in her tracks, her eyes open wide in a moment of horror and for a brief moment our eyes lock. I smile an even bigger smile, as gentle as I can possibly muster, under the circumstances. Her son even took a step back. After what must have felt like an eternity for her, she hung her head in shame and handed me her credit card. I rang her up, handed her the credit card back, and handed her son the remaining groceries. Both of them are completely red in the face at this point and both refuse to say anything. Their eyes are firmly locked on to the floor. As they leave, I smile at them again and say:

Me: [in Russian] Thank you very much. Please come again.

My aunt had taken eight years of French in school, declaring that she was going to marry a Frenchman. She was working at the Epcot Emporium when a golfer and his caddie came in, chatting in French. The caddie looked over at her and said (still in French) "wow, she's cute. I'd like to ask her on a date." So she responded in perfect French "So why don't you?" They've now been married over 30 years!

I was on holiday in Jordan and went to visit their "down town". This area is beautiful has all sorts of cultural bits and pieces and amazing food at great prices. If you go there you need to haggle every price, even the locals do.

So I enter this shop and the shopkeeper at the door tells his colleague "Oh yes European foreigner lets see how much we can overprice stuff" I kid you not he said that, but in Arabic (which I can speak fluently having an Arab father) (Note I'm very pale, with brown hair and blue eyes. Not typical in that region)

I ask about the cost of a beautiful Arabian plate (in English) and he gives me an insane price. I look him in the eye and say "now that you know I'm a local how much does it cost?" (In fluent Arabic) his eyes pop out of his head and then he starts laughing saying "You heard me at the door didn't you?" I smile and nod and then he says "I guess I deserve that, that plate isn't worth much I'll give it to you as a gift for giving me a good laugh"

So my mom is Norwegian. My brother and I were raised in the US speaking Norwegian and English in the home.

One summer our family were visiting relatives in Norway and were browsing a little shop (I love a little shop!) in a very small village. We happened to be speaking English with one another at the time. My mom noticed (and got great pleasure from) hearing the two shopkeepers FREAKING out about having to speak English to us. They were late teens, early twenties and were likely very proficient in English, but nervous about having to use it on some American tourists.

Short-straw shopkeeper approaches us, very red faced: Good afternoon. May I please help you find anything in our store?

My mom (in Norwegian): We're quite all right, thank you.
Her: OH THANK GOD. (and other flustered mutterings).

It was very cute.

I was on the Greek island of Rhodes once. Rhodes gets a lot of tourists, particularly from Germany. I had a conversation with a Greek taxi driver. He said (in English): "You American? Good. American good. British good. German, not so much. German go to beautiful mountain, complain about toilets." I chuckled a bit at his stereotypes.

Two hours later, I was at the beautiful Mount Filerimos. Spectacular view, beautiful day, ancient sites, etc. And what do I overhear? A loud conversation in German complaining about the toilets.

After high school, I took a solo trip to Europe before starting college. I was in Amsterdam, sitting alone at a restaurant, when I hear Hebrew (my native tongue, though I live in the US). A couple of people at the next table who I notice are looking in my direction, saying "It must really suck, eating at a restaurant alone." I responded in Hebrew saying "It's actually alright, I've got a book so I'm good." We ended up joining tables, and spent the next day hanging out in the city.

I lived in China and being blond and white, people don't think I can understand Mandarin. I was walking into a coffee shop in Shanghai and I saw two old women look at me. They stared for a moment and said: "He has such a nice butt!"

It was hard not to laugh.

Heard some [girls] in a bathroom discussing in detail my supposed personal hygiene, like how "those people" don't even wipe, etc., as I was meticulously washing my hands. I let it go on till one girl goes "Careful, she might understand Arabic." The main [girl] goes, "No way a [mentally handicapped person] would know something that's not her native language." Without even turning around or looking at them, I dry my hands, go "you sure?" in Arabic and walk off, savoring the looks of disbelief in the mirror.

I'm Arab myself. I probably don't look Arab enough to them, or something.

My mom has the BEST story about this.

She was raised with French/English, and spent many years as a kid in Morocco.

On my parents honeymoon, they go to morocco, and go to a synagogue on a Saturday morning there (we're Jewish). My mom goes to sit with the other women, and they start making snide remarks "Americans...stupid Americans", and insulting her appearance. This went on and on for the duration of the service!

After the service, my mom gets to the exit before the other ladies, turns around to all of them, and in perfect French with a perfect accent tells them she "hopes they have a wonderful day, a pleasant Shabbat, and that she looks forward to coming back soon."

The women just were in complete awe, and didn't know what to do. Their jaws dropped, followed by complete science.

Glorious.

I never have any good stories when these types of threads get posted. This is the best I've got:

Girl (in Chinese): They have papaya.

Me: LOUD GASP

Girl (in Chinese): She understands Chinese!

Me (in Chinese): THEY HAVE PAPAYA.

I used to help with exchange students coming in from Japan. We'd pick them up at the airport, take them shopping to get some essentials (shampoo, bed sheets, etc) and then get them settled into their dorms. Doing this for a few years alongside taking several years of Japanese at the university meant I knew enough to know some of the dirty stuff.

Anyway, I remember these two guys that came one semester. They were friendly enough when talking in English but they got pretty filthy when they spoke in Japanese to each other. I got treated to a very awkward discussion they had on my [breasts]. I tired not to give away that I knew what they were saying but my Japanese friend that came along to help decided to be a brat and started talking to me in Japanese. The looks on those two boys' faces when I responded in kind said it all: "... [well, damn]."

I'm Filipino, and I speak Tagalog. I was on the [Bay Area Rapid Transit] one day and there was a Filipino mother and her daughter sitting in front of me. the mother said in Tagalog, "I have to poop, oh, I should've pooped before we left the house." then she looks from side to side, giggles, and says, "it's good that no one understood that, huh?"

BUT SHE DIDN'T LOOK BEHIND HER.

Not me, but a girl I dated in college was fluent in three foreign languages. Specifically, three languages you would not expect a very pale redhead to speak. She worked with border patrol while still in school and frequently got useful intel from drug runners that were talking quietly to each other in Spanish. Apparently, she would regularly hear something along the lines of, "this stupid [girlie] doesn't know what we're saying." After college, she got a job with the FBI and basically disappeared from social media...that or she REALLY didn't want to stay friends after.

Overheard a bunch of French tourists in Nepal discussing, in graphic detail, the diarrhea they'd been having for a few days (i.e. "I CAN'T TELL IF IT'S A FART OR IT'S [CRAP]"). After awhile they turned to me and my friends and asked, in English, where we are from. My friends answered, in French "we're from the same place you are, and he(me)'s from Quebec". Their look of embarrassment was just delectable; the awkwardness was palpable.

Knowing a less-spoken language like Hebrew affords me some funny situations with Israelis in the US who think that nobody understands them. I was helping out with freshman move-in at my school, and caught a mother and daughter off-guard when they were complaining about the heat and the smell in the dorm, and i responded over my shoulder in an attempted native accent that it gets nicer once all the parents leave. The mother wasn't amused.

I once lived in Holland. One day I was in the company of a friend (also American) and a few Dutch teenagers. Our Dutch was relatively good, but we'd only been in the country a couple months. The kids were speaking really fast and we were having a hard time understanding, but it was clear they were talking about us, and my friend was starting to get really frustrated. He knew that speaking English wouldn't fool them because Dutch kids learn English from a very young age. So he started speaking to me just like Boomhauer from King of the Hill, saying stuff like "thesedangkidsthinkthursogreatdurnkidswiththeircrazygelleduphair." They were all very confused and didn't understand a word of it.

I'm fluent enough in Japanese, so I knew when people were talking about me. Usually people just stare at you when they notice you're a foreigner, but some people do talk. This one couple saw me, sat across from me on the bus (this was in a residential area, not a tourist spot), and started [complaining] about how, what, tourists will be bringing their 'loud American friends' around now? I let this go for about five minutes before getting sick of it and saying, "Are you sure you want to be talking about this in front of me? Because it's kind of rude, so please stop," and I think it scared the [guacamole] out of them. Some chick towards the back of the bus started cracking up.

That said, many of the other American students in the same program as me were always loud as [heck] on public transportation.

Went to this humongous market in Turkey that was partially underground. It was cool.

My brother and I speak English to each other. One guy at a stall we were looking at told his friend that we were suckers and he was going to mark the scarf we were looking at 3x higher. We both just kinda stared at him for a moment and told him we understood him. He was so embarrassed. He watched us go to a neighboring stall that sold the same scarf.

At my college campus, I was eating at an Indian restaurant with friends and this Chinese couple comes in. It's buffet style but there is also a regular menu. They're obviously international students and they somewhat struggle with the menu. I overhear the girl telling her boyfriend in Cantonese, "I wanted KFC!! What is this place?" He says, "I don't think there is a KFC nearby, but look, that Asian girl (me) seems to be eating chicken!" They gesture to the buffet and the hostess collects their money. They go up to get their food and when they return, they start bickering. The girl says, "The rice is so strange. Why is it yellow? How do I eat this (referring to naan)?" He tells her, "Watch that girl's Indian friends. They appear to wrap it up." "How strange! I prefer to pretend this red chicken (tandoori) is KFC. Is this red because it's BBQ chicken like BBQ pork?" At this point, I step in and explain what they're eating in Cantonese. They're mildly embarrassed but thank me for my advice.

Sitting in the back of a pickup truck in Northern Thailand. Little kid, maybe 5 years old looks up at his mom and says "Mom! Mom! That big foreigner has white eyes! Is he a ghost?"

I lean real close to him and point at my eyes and say in Thai "Actually, my eyes are blue, but ghosts can have blue eyes, right?"

He then buried his face in his mom's side trying to hide from me.