Multilinguals, What Is Your "I Can Understand You" Story? (r/AskReddit)

multilingual z' what's your they didn't realize I could understand their language story I live in England but I come from Poland and am fluent in Polish alongside English couple of days ago I was ordering at a subway when two Polish employees started talking it went something along the lines of this fatty wants chicken and bacon and they laughed when it got to putting vegetables on the sub I gave my order fully in Polish with a big smile on my face the order cost me four pounds and 80 pence but the looks on their faces were priceless I was so low travelling in Morocco I'm twenty two female and speak Arabic enough to understand conversations basic words and phrases etc I was trying on clothes at a small shop and there were two women helping me choose what to try on they started talking about me in Arabic saying how I would be a great wife for one of the ladies sons they were going on and on and as I was leaving I responded in Arabic no thank you did I appreciate your help and they were stunned was a high school student in Toronto did I speak Slovak which is similar to Czech and polish I was going to school on the subway in the morning and two good-looking women started to talk in Polish right next to me I usually like to strike up conversations with fellow central Eastern Europeans unfortunately they started talking about how one of them has had a burning pee problem with nowhere to move on the packed subway and no headphones it was an awkward thing for a fifteen-year-old to hear from two ladies it got a little worse later when they started to talk about women problems now I have no issues with that convo nowadays of course but fifteen year old virgin me was a bit mortified a long 45 minutes I'm a black American my dad was military and stationed in Korea from his late teens to mid 20s he picked up on the language and as a child he taught me it was like our secret language to talk around my mum with she hated it anyway I went to college with a large Asian population while me and some friends were in a study room a group of students came and asked us to leave so they could use the room in English there was no time limit no sign up no nothing where they had that right so I explained that we were here first why do they want this particular room then they start speaking Korean and say something along the lines of ugh of course the black B is being difficult they've been here for a while they need to leave maybe we can lie and say the professor reserved it I respond in Korean call B a B in English so I can punch you and everyone in this room knows why their faces turned bright red they couldn't say anything they just looked at me in shock and then left the room not me bid my dad very white guy with equally white Irish last name was born and raised in India he speaks a variety of languages Gujarati Hindi Konkani English Portuguese etc he was at an airport and sitting across from two young Indian women one was saying to the other in Hindi look at that fat old white guy over there my dad got up walked over to them and greeted them in Hindi proceeding to make small talk about their flights and days from his telling there was a mix of shock and absolute embarrassment coming from them he smiled and walked back to his baggage when I was doing my exchange studies in China native Russian I was riding a subway in Shanghai at one of the stops a mother and her daughter sat beside me the daughter was maybe four or five and she wouldn't stop looking at me then without turning her head she started asking her mom mommy why's mr. so strange why is his hair strange and so on I didn't react as if I didn't speak Chinese and the mother patiently told her daughter mr. isn't strange he's just a foreigner they look different I thought it was really sweet so I started talking to both of them in Chinese they were very nice and I hope they're doing great now wholesome I was in the line to renew my license at the DMV to Latina girls were behind me and were talking about me having pretty blue eyes in Spanish they turned three shades of red when I turned around and said thank you my dad grew up in Egypt and now travels the world for dole the Fruit Company once he was in Morocco at a plant who were possible suppliers and they tried to deceive him they showed him the safety guidelines that were written in Arabic but were describing different standards in English my dad doesn't look like a typical middle Easterner n has a very nondescript accent so they thought they could fleece him after the dude was done talk my dad says that's not what it says and the guy says what do you mean my dad repeats the statement but in Arabic the guy apparently dropped his jaw and all he could say was you speak Arabic needless to say that Moroccan plant did not get the gig also props to your dad for understanding Morricone Arabic no native Arab speaker can't even understand it not me but my dad we are from South Africa my dad speaks five English Afrikaans similar to Dutch French Italian and German he emigrated to the UK in early 1995 when a lots of other South Africans were doing the same due to embedded racism of a fledgling nation but I digress he was on the underground in London when he overheard two guys speaking about a pretty woman on the train and Afrikaans my dad's native tongue according to dad they were being incredibly rude and using quite graphic descriptions of what they wanted to do to her my dad decided to speak up and told them to freak off and to not speak to people that way they don't know who is listening if the two guys looked horror-struck and shut up immediately the lady turned to my dad at her stop and said in fluent Afrikaans I bet they couldn't do half those things with their tiny dongs my dad just laughed in shock and watched her get off the train pretty hilarious moved to Thailand and took extensive language training was drinking coffee in a quiet shop and the barista and the waitress started guessing my age where I was from why I came there three days in a row lived close by and I was thinking cool they think I'm cute how flattering and then the barista said but he is a little fat so when I left I told her my agent hometown when she brought the change back I told her that yes I am a little fat while my great-aunt told the story of how she once went into a butcher shop when she walked in the butcher was talking with a customer in Russian which he spoke the butcher saw my great-aunt Walken and told the costumer in Russian that he'd take care of this old hag and then continued the conversation sir my great-aunt in English asked for pounds and pounds of cold cuts all sliced and wrapped when it was all ready she told him in Russian to shove it up your butt and walked out god I loved that woman revenge is best served in cold cuts I was on the subway in the knick a few months ago when a family sitting across from me was playing I spy and Hebrew with their kids the parents went around describing each person they saw on the train so when they got to me I decided to play along I looked up from my book made a funny face and covered my face with the book before the kids could find me the parents started laughing and said to their kids I spy someone who understands us the parents and I shared a good laugh about it while their kids got really excited that someone else spoke Hebrew they never figured out who it was but it made my commute a lot more fun that is so painfully adorable I wish I could give you more upvotes my late best friend who was big tall and blond was in Tim Hortons he speaks fairly fluent Arabic having spent 7 years working in Saudi Arabia but three Arabic men were sitting at a table making very lewd comments about the women in the shop my buddy turned to them and said in Arabic you need to shut up before someone kicks your butt you never know who is listening they got very confused and left soon after sorry hey Bobby this coffee is going right through me my so is it tattoo artist who can speak Bulgarian Turkish English and German one day we were queuing in a supermarket and two guys behind us were laughing and snickering she turned around and said something to them afterwards she was laughing while one of the guys went bright red afterwards I asked her what that was about the guys were like look at her arm those tattoos disgusting how can you tattoo a naked woman on yourself in Turkish my so turned around and said thanks bro st. first the guy asked her to repeat because he didn't even register that she could be speaking Turkish and assumed he misheard English that's when she said for the tattoo opinion it was funny from there the guy apologized and said he has never felt so much shame in his life his friend was saying at least buy them my so and I some beers this was in a small town outside of Dublin City so I can understand why they didn't think there would be any Turkish speakers around I went to a psychiatric emergency ward once and asked for help and if they were comfortable to speak English I understand Danish but have a hard time making myself understandable in it and didn't really feel like an idiot at a crucial time of my life I stayed there for four days without anyone realizing I knew what they were saying about me right in front of me two of the nurses thought I was cute one doctor thought I was lying all the time a patient thought I was a spy for the staff a lot happened in those four days it made my stay way more enjoyable than it should have been come on I understand Danish but have a hard time making myself understandable innit don't worry so do the Danish my husband is the bilingual one not me he's from Colombia so he speaks Spanish fluently but grew up in the US and has been here most of his life he also has a really fair complexion most people think he's just Caucasian anyway we were in Cabo San Lucas Mexico looking for a place to eat but we get to a restaurant and he asks in English how much it would cost for all-you-can-eat tackers the guy at the door said it's $15 his friend next to him said to the guy in Spanish I thought it's $12 and the first guy responded yeah but they don't know that my husband of course understood everything he told them in Spanish that they're lying reports and we be going somewhere else the guy's expression was priceless I'm an extremely white American man I was stationed in Korea and a buddy and I went into a store that was slightly off the beaten path my buddy was in a different section of the store and found something he liked he asked the shopkeeper how much it was the shopkeep said in Korean well you're American so $65 translation and currency exchange provided for ease of reference I looked over and saw a sign on the wall that said the exact item he wanted was $40 I approached the shopkeep and asked him in Korean how much it'd cost to which he replied $40 so I responded in Korean why are you charging him $65 he got rather embarrassed and apologetic offered to sell the item for $35 and gave us each a soft drink for free I lived in Riga for a short while and went out almost every Friday to meet girls rigor has a lot of visitors from UK and I've spent a chunk of my time in US so I generally speak English in the center I feel more comfortable using it however I also speak Russian perfectly well so I'm drinking a beer in a bar and all of a sudden some cute Russian girl comes up to me and starts speaking English to me she invited me for a beer with her and her friend I didn't really have anything else going for me that night so I agreed what followed is an hour of them trying to make me buy them a dumped Iranian bottle and some really dirty talking about what one of them would do to me if I agreed they also talked to the bartender who knows me fairly well how they are going to rip me off big time and that I'm a foreign idiot I ended up buying them for beers total out of decency it was a lot of fun for a while I'll give them that eventually I got really tired of it all hand my friend hit me up so I just switched to Russian thank them for a nice evening and left their faces were red from embarrassment and anger oh well don't scam people my neighbors went on holiday with her sister's family in Spain the sister can speak fluent Spanish they are Irish apparently a to a guidance Spain started talking about them referring to them as those English s they were never once to let anything slide so an argument broke out very quickly in my limited experience nothing pees off the Irish more than being confused with the English my dad from Tennessee knows Chinese and goes to China often for work etc one time he was driving and hit a bird getting it stuck in the front of his truck a Chinese man saw the bird and says to his friend in Chinese he drove too fast to which my dad says no he flew too slow that's awesome and the dialog reads like a Chinese proverb that I can't quite figure out the moral off though the cooks at my job still don't know I'm fluent in Spanish law yes I know everything you're saying Alejo same except I'm the exact instructions on Epis usually I just try to help them with their English it blows my mind how anyone could expect that a 30-plus year kitchen veteran wouldn't know Spanish especially in the US I live in Austria but my dad is from Brazil all my Austrian aunts and uncles married a Brazilian my grandparents from my mother's side opened and led a factory of our family company in Brazil that's why everyone was there but some eventually came back to Austria just like my mom with my dad me and my siblings were raised multilingual but lived most of our live in Austria so once when I was around 10 my mom and me were on a tram in Vienna with my little brother who was around 2 at the time in a stroller and he starts crying really loudly then one Brazilian lady starts speaking really loudly and in an obnoxious tone something in the lines of well these European folks don't know how to treat their children with love how can someone be so cold and unaffectionate to a child as tell SM scream without taking them out of the stroller and holding them we were standing bTW there was no seat big enough at the time where we could leave the stroller so I was getting worried we were doing something wrong I wanted to comfort my brother and get him out bid my mom stopped me and really loudly said in Portuguese leave him it is too dangerous to take him out of the stroller while we are standing here and the tram is moving you could see the woman's face go from red to white and back to red get up and get out so fast at the next exit that we just started laughing and my brother ultimately calmed down not really exciting but I find it funny when I think back happened to my wife when she worked at McDonald's she looks a little on the asian side but is from guatemala group of spanish-speaking people pay at the drive-thru and try shortchanging her driver says he smelled it at China no save contr that dang asian lady can't count wife takes the money and very politely says they are short in Spanish driver turns red while passengers couldn't stop laughing this was during the Christmas season I was walking with my friend to a local bar there were a few Russians standing outside their home smoking and one or two had a drink in their hand as we walk past the gentleman says what are you looking at handsome guys in Russian it's meant to come off like what are you looking at I turn around and say I completely understand Russian suddenly they get cheerful the gentleman gives me a hug handshake I was then offered a drink and cigarettes it was hilarious especially to my friend who didn't understand Russian my wife is Indian and her family speaks good jarate I've spent many years trying to pick it up and have found it to be very difficult as there are no great resources that I am aware of to learn it you just have to listen and try to guess the context anyway over the years I've gotten pretty good and when my wife's aunt was visiting from Indians she went right into my wife about how much weight I'd gained and how bad my diet must be I understood every word and stopped her about two minutes into her rant turns out it didn't stop her from continuing I lived in Japan when I was little and we took Japanese in college so I didn't sound like a child when I spoke but to solidify my new language skills I went to my home town for about six weeks a summer in college it was a small town so most people remembered me or my family but some people I stayed with six weeks 11 families that at least wanted me to spend a night in their home were new to the area since we left 15 years or so earlier one of these families had a high school-age son who wanted to borrow me for his high school's International Festival no problem I'd go and let other high schoolers practice their English with me and do carnival games and stuff however the guy apparently did not get the message that I spoke Japanese and proceeded to introduce me to all his friends as his girlfriend I let him have his moment for the night without leading him on it on the train ride back to his home he was talking to his friend in Japanese and I joined in on the conversation also in Japanese the embarrassment on his face was worth knowing all his friends thought I was his girlfriend you have been visited by the money bird it'll bring you good fortune but only if you subscribe in 42 seconds or less if you are new to the channel you can subscribe I publish new videos every day until then check out another video or don't either way have a great day you magnificent people [Music]

Channel: On Tap Studios

Views: 274,290

Rating: 4.9159641 out of 5

Keywords: #updootst, updoot, reddit, r/askreddit, askreddit, ask reddit, r/, \r, r\, best of reddit, reddit stories, reddit story, top posts, funniest posts, funny, funny posts, funny askreddit, reddit funny, askreddit funny, askreddit stories, sub, reddit cringe, memes, comment awards, dankify, toadfilms, updoot everything, updoot reddit, chill, story, stories, reddit on tap, reddit multilingual stories, reddit multilingual, reddit i can understand, reddit they dont know, spreak the language

Id: VY5B61ml79Y

Length: 18min 16sec (1096 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 05 2020