Multilinguals share the hilarious things they've overheard

multilingual zuv reddit what's the best thing you've accidentally overheard in public in another language a bunch of things from when I studied abroad in Japan not necessarily best things but more like lessons in being polite even when you think people can't understand you Story number one 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 start and I think it scared the SH 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 on public transportation Story number two I had a bunch of guy friends who would rape Japanese girls on the subway in English she's a ten and she's a seven anyway I was pretty much expecting this to happen eventually but one day while we were commuting into downtown Nagoya our a girl turned around looked my guy friend in the eye and said I'm from New York ufi a hole after high school I took a solo trip to Europe before start in college I was in Amsterdam sitting alone at a restaurant when I hear Hebrew my native tongue though I live in the u.s. a couple of people at the next table who I noticed 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 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 until one girl careful she might understand Arabic the main B goes nowhere we 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 severing the looks of disbelief in the mirror I came to the US when I was nine years old with my parents from the former USSR and and speak fluent Russian however you would never know from speaking to me since my accent is practically non-existent 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 so it's a particularly non eventful day of normal cashier work people get on my line I scan - I bag - I tell them how much money they spent and they give me money to stuff the register at some point this Russian woman and her 20 year old son get in my lane I finish ringing up the customer before the man the following conversation ensues me to previous customer have a nice day me too Russian woman do you have a sharp right card woman no me do you have any coupons or rain checks woman no I then begin scanning her groceries hope that as far as she's concerned it has been established that I speak flawless English woman to her son translation look at what this idiot is doing I glanced up trying to find the idiot she is talking about perhaps something funny is going on woman translation why is he even working here god I hate idiots at this point I realize she is talking about me mind you I am doing at this point is taking her groceries waving them over the scanner and putting them aside - back later I'm not banging them or taking a long time or anything I was doing a pretty decent job of it's actually I begin to run the situation in my head and 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 SH woman translation how long is this going to take I finish raining Apple staff punch up a 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 translation he doesn't even know how to pack correctly oh what an idiot she managed to throw in a few more insults my way calling me some very colorful things in Russia I made sure to pack all of her things away with a smile and then replied me translation how will you be paying for this the woman stops dead in her tracks her eyes open white 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 mister 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 refused to say anything their rights are firmly locked onto the floor as they leave I smile at them again and say me translation thank you very much please come again now the cherry on the icing happened almost six months after the incident the son happened to get on my line with whom I assume was his father they were speaking Russian to each other and didn't pay much attention to me but I recognized the son after I was done scanning their things a pause put on my smile again and say to the son me translation I remember you how are you doing the best part wasn't the sun's look of Terror when he realized I was the same cashier that caught his mother being an a-hole it was the same look on the father's face and the subsequent look of shame and insistence on looking at his shoes and not speaking obviously the story of his wife's antics reached his ears at some point and they all remembered even six months after the fact that is an awesome story I am The Stand Russian too and I sometimes overhear people talking about me on the train even on the queue when it's passing through Brooklyn when people really ought to know better my favorite story though was on a bus from JFK I can't listen to people and not look at them at the same time so when I am listening to strangers converse it's fairly obvious fairly quickly two pilots were having a conversation in Russian right across the aisle and I must have been gulping more than usual because one of them started periodically glancing at me looking puzzled finally he stopped talking to his companion turned to face me straight on and told a joke I couldn't help it it was funny so I laughed he points at me with this triumphant look on his face going gotcha then he told jokes for the rest of the ride overheard a bunch of French tourists in Nepal discussing in graphic detail the diarrhea they'd been having for a few days after a while they turned to me and my friends had asked in English where we are from my friends answered in French we're from the same place you are and he made us from Quebec a look of embarrassment was just delectable the awkwardness was palpable I lived in China and being blonde and white people don't think I can understand Mandarin I was walking into a coffee shot 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 my mom works with a man from the Dominican Republic he was helping to spanish-speaking girls at his job they were speaking in Spanish thinking my mom's co-worker could not understand since he looks black he fully understood their compliments about how helpful he was that ended much better than I expected I am the stander sir sign language I was watching two older women using a sir to have a conversation these women were at least to their 60s they were talking about the fact that one of the two ladies was seeing a new guy named Ray and talking about their last date and all the one seeing ray eventually said all Ray wants is a piece of my psy pie the other one signed back hazel you better not say psy pie there's a lot of people who know sign language and one might say half white half Chinese here but people usually can't place me I've gotten Mexican Greek white and a few others over the years lived in Taiwan for a few years and learned to speak Mandarin Chinese fluently my parents taught at an all-girls high school imagine eight thousand plus school girls in uniform no guys around except the teachers and me who was the same age as 'm they would always assume I was a foreigner that didn't speak Chinese and talk about me fortunately for me a very large percentage of them thought I was attractive and would Yap away in Chinese right in front of me about this I'd never let on just pretend to notice them and smile and start conversing with them in English all students had to take English class so all had some proficiency as a result it was enormous ly easy to date as many cute Chinese girls as I could find the time for I know a couple of Mexican men living in Vancouver they went to a takeout sushi restaurant to pick up some food for supper they were served by a very cute Japanese girl working the counter they started talking about her in Spanish with a focus on particular body parts and their attributes when she handed them their orders she gave them the price in Spanish her parents were Japanese but she was born and raised in Peru I have a co-worker who speaks French and sometimes will sing all talked to himself everyone likes him and it doesn't bother anyone one day I was working in the same room as in training some people when I heard him singing I usually don't pay any attention but this time I did he was singing a really obscene song about having us with cows I stopped what I was doing and gave him a really weird look then we both started laughing really freaked out the trainees so my mom is Norwegian my brother and I were raised in the u.s. speaking Norwegian and English in the home one summer our family were visiting relatives in Norway and were browsing a little shop I loved the little shop in a very small village we happen 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 yes they were late teens early twenties and were like be 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 huh oh thank god and other flustered mutterings it was very cute knowing a less spoken language like Hebrew affords me some funny situations with Israelis in the u.s. who think that nobody understands them I was helping out with freshmen moving 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 studied German in collagen can understand it pretty well I've never overheard any conversations but I did make a fool of myself when I went to see Hellboy 2 with some of my family there was one scene that ended with a character singing her very slightly suggestive song in German which wasn't subtitled this came right after a slapstick sequence that had the whole theater laughing and so it took me a moment and my sister elbowing me in the ribs to notice that I was the only one laughing at the German joke I was on the brussels tram and these two texan girls they kept talking about texas were being really loud and in the end one said to the other i wonder if any of these people can understand us and a guy getting off the tram said we all can we all speak English there's Ollie I hear a lot of Chinese people in China talk sh about my girlfriend I'm Chinese and she's white as if I can't understand it even if it's in the dialect although I usually just yell at them a little bit and I don't think they are embarrassed not me but my boyfriend is Cuban but looks like a gringo weed white skin red beard pale hair and him and his best friend had been backpacking in Spain they got on an elevator in a hotel at their next stop and we're chatting to each other in English in these women who got on kind of turned up their nose at them and then started going on in Spanish about stupid American tourists so my boyfriend looked at them and in perfect Spanish said something along the lines of excuse me but do you have some sort of problem with me he said the woman was so embarrassed that he spoke Spanish she couldn't even look him in the eye and got off on the next floor [Music] [Laughter] [Music]

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Keywords: askreddit multilinguals, askreddit bilingual, multilingual, multilinguals share cringeworthy times, reddit, best of reddit, reddit stories, reddit top posts, ask reddit, reddit cringe, tz reddit, updoot reddit, reddit funny, funny reddit, multilinguals, askreddit, reddit story, r/askreddit, people of reddit, best reddit posts, askreddit funny, reddit stories 2019, funniest reddit posts, funny reddit stories, reddit and chill, askreddit stories, reddit compilation

Id: mDhsz9oazXM

Length: 13min 33sec (813 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 04 2020