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

I speak several languages, and this surprisingly came in handy when I was in London. Sitting on the metro (tube or whatever your Lordships call it), I hear two Swedish girls bad mouthing these two guys standing next to them, while the same two guys are talking about how beautiful and lovely the girls are in Arabic.

Other than that, I love walking around Stockholm speaking other languages than Swedish and English, pretending to be a tourist. There is a remarkable difference in how people treat you, and the things they say about you.

I'm Russian, but spent a good chunk of my life growing up in Nigeria. The place where I live in Moscow is near this international institute place, and there's a lot of black people around there (a BIG rarity in Russia). In particular, there are a lot of Nigerians.

Now, in Nigeria, public schools are brutal. Cheating is not something you do there if you don't like getting your [butt] whooped by the teacher in front of the class. By comparison, Russian schools have essentially zero punishment for cheating. It's hard to explain to someone that hasn't experienced it, but its basically an activity for the whole class. Some kid will distract the teacher, and everyone else will pass around a sheet with people filling in answers along the way. We used to get creative with that.

So anyway, this one time after I'd moved back to Moscow, I was going somewhere on this weird minibus thing we have for public transport, when all of a sudden a bunch of Nigerians get on, talking to each other in English. From what I gathered, one of them had been at the university for a while, and the rest had just arrived. The guy that had been there for a while was explaining how stuff worked there.

Paraphrasing from memory:
Experienced Guy: "...and they have this thing here called "shpora" (Russian slang for cheat sheet). Everyone uses it, and even the stupidest people can pass the hardest tests"
Everyone: "Whoaaaaah"
Experienced Guy: "Yes! Even the most useless girl in my class got an A!"
Everyone: "Did she study?"
Experienced Guy: "Not at all!"
Everyone: "Nooooooo!"

They went on in this manner the entire time I was on the bus. The Nigerian accents and the fact that the new arrivals were genuinely horrified at the notion of cheating was hilarious and I could barely stop myself from laughing. As I was getting off I said "excuse me" in Hausa (one of the more popular languages in Nigeria) and got blank looks in return.

I was doing my clinical rotation at a hospital that was predominately Japanese elderly. During one of my AM shifts, I was taking care of the cutest (and littlest) of the patients that needed help ambulating.

While taking her down one of the hallways, she shuffled over to one of the many seated patients in the hallway and began to speak about a particular nurse that had, "smelly hair" and "speaks stupid". As she continued to speak, her language became... more vulgar.

Now being of Pacific Islander descent mixed in with Japanese, I look more like a toasted/burnt peanut rather than someone who is/could speak Japanese. So I just sat there while this cute little old Japanese lady mouthed off words that would make a sailor cringe.

These two girls we were sent to pick up from the airport [ant take to the dorm]. We met them without a problem and then while escorting them down to the baggage claim, one of them turned to the other and murmured aloud in Japanese "wow... look at all the gaijin." Gaijin being "foreigner," but in their case, it really means "not Japanese." It struck me as ludicrous. You came to the United States to study English, and you're surprised by all the non-Japanese people? Maybe it was culture shock but we had a good laugh about it for weeks.

I was at an airport in the Philippines heading back to Canada. When I handed my Canadian passport to the men at the check in counter they started making jokes about Canadians in the local dialect, which I understand. I added a couple of jokes of my own and got some very embarrassed looks from the men.

The way they pronounce Canadian (kah nah dee an) here sounds like a phrase in Cebuano that translates as "you must". What they were saying was "magloto ka na dian" which means "You must cook" in Cebuano. I added a couple of my own - labanda ka na dian (you must wash) and lakaw ka na dian (you must walk).

Slightly off-topic: As an Asian-American, I get introduced to my family friends as the American kid. I always love the look of surprise when people discover that I can understand what they're saying and that I can shout it right back at them.

I was in the Natural History Museum in London looking at dinosaurs and other related things when I heard some rather boisterous people from my home country (Finland) discussing the dinosaur skeletons. Some fat guy pointed at the massive dinosaur skeleton and then started to boast 'oh, maybe his [wing-dang-doodle] is as big as mine.' It made me laugh but then the group of them noticed me and started to talk about me, calling me [names].

I work at a Starbucks and I was on drive through taking orders. A French family drove through and ordered their lattes and such. I handled their order the same as I handle all orders, I'm always very friendly and outgoing to customers. Anyways, as the mom drives away from the speaker box she tell her family in french that I was a cocky a-hole, obviously thinking I didn't speak French. So I make her drinks, decaf due to the remarks and when she drives up to the window I'm standing there with her drinks with a big smile on my face. When she gets within speaking range I say, very charismatically

"Bonjour, Madame! Ça va?!

She looks at me, completely shocked and embarrassed and replies

"comme ci comme ça" and that's the last thing anyone in the car said to me as I completed the order.

I grew up in Geneva, Switzerland. Both of my parents were not Swiss however I went to public school (state school) for most of my time there, meaning french was essentially my first language. My family and I sat down in a restaurant one night, and the family next to us started [complaining] about how foreigners should all be forced to work in the fields. This was the point where I turned to them and went "hop suisse" (this is something Swiss people say during sports tournaments to support their team. Similar to "USA USA USA!")

I went on a cruise that happened to have a bunch of Germans on it. A couple was sitting near us by the pool and the man was talking about how terrible American tourists are. I leaned over and said "Ja, die Amerikaner sind sehr dumm." [Translation: "Yeah, the Americans are very dumb"]. We had a good laugh and chatted for a bit.