They Didn't Know I Can Understand What They Were Saying

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-18

[00:00:00]Bilingual Redditors, what have you heard that you weren't supposed to? One of my Israeli women friends told me that when she was pregnant riding a subway in New York, she asked in English to squeeze in on a bench seat next to two women. One of the women said to the other in Hebrew, "Let the cow sit down." Tini el para lasher vet. After she sat down, my friend then said in Hebrew, "The cow says thanks." Haper al mer et toda.

[00:00:27]Once heard my boss tell his wife in German what he was going to do to her when he got home. It was disturbing to say the least.

[00:00:34]I used to go to lunch with my assed manager to a Mexican restaurant next door to where we worked. My assed manager is Cuban and would usually have small talk in Spanish with the waiters.

[00:00:46]One day he tells them about how he is the manager and I'm his assistant. This conversation gets more interesting when he tells the waiter about what a lousy worker I am. This is when I interrupted to say in Spanish that he, my assistant, is full of crap and I let them know that I speak Spanish. The waiter laughed his butt off and my assed manager was very embarrassed. Ah, good times. It always shocks me what people will say just because they feel you don't understand.

[00:01:15]I was on holiday in Moscow and in the subway I heard another tourist tell his mate in my native tongue, "You know, when we speak Dutch, nobody here will understand a word of it. It's kind of a code language here." To which I replied, "Yeah, about that. It's not as effective as you might think."

[00:01:35]About 10 years ago I was on a night train going from Rome to Naples. These two addicts were discussing robbing me with a knife while I was sitting in the same cabin with them. I told them I spoke Italian and that if they wanted to rob me, I wasn't going to make it easy for them. They actually apologized, told me they thought I was German, and moved on down the car.

[00:01:57]I speak French and Portuguese and live in Brazil. One day I was walking home and this car stops next to me and this guy asks some directions in Portuguese, but in a heavy French accent. I try to tell him where is the place he wanted to go, but it's kind of complicated. He doesn't understand. The place was near my home, so I ask him if he wants me to get in the car and take them there and he accepts. Now I know this is awkward and dangerous, but hey, I trusted him and he trusted me. There is kindness after all. Thing is, besides him, there is this old couple in the car and as soon I get in the old guy, not the one who asked directions started screaming as heck in French. Something like this, "How do you let this thief get in our car? This is freaking dangerous. You don't know WHO he is. We are in Brazil for Christ's sake. You are insane."

[00:02:50]Nevertheless, the guy started his engine and followed my directions. During all the way the old guy keeps yelling in French, "You are putting us all in risk.

[00:02:59]This guy, looking at me, can be a homeless drug addict and so on." There is this one point when I say for the guy driving the car to turn left. He doesn't understand it because the other one is screaming. So I repeat and he doesn't understand again. Then I say in French, "Turn as I go, turn left." Then a few seconds pass and the nice guy, the one who's driving, ask me in French if I speak French. I say yes, a little. The other guy, the one who's complaining, turn white and stop yelling immediately.

[00:03:31]I tell him to stop the car in French because the place hotel they want to go was right there and my house was the other way. That was a fun day.

[00:03:41]Not me, but my dad. He spoke English and German. While at the zoo when I was a kid, another father and his kid were talking. The kid asked his dad, in German, "Why that man, my dad was walking with a limp. The boy's dad began answering in German, something along the lines that it was rude to ask such questions. Good thing he didn't understand you. My dad smiled at the boy and, in German, answered, because I hurt my ankle chasing after a boy who asked rude questions. The boy's dad and my dad had a good laugh. The boy looked suitably chagrined and perhaps learned a lesson. I ate ice cream. I ate ice cream. Glad happy endings can be found in this thread.

[00:04:24]US citizen here. I've lived in Georgia for 2 years, the country, not the state.

[00:04:29]So, I have a rudimentary grasp on Georgian. I was at a hostel in Istanbul a few months ago and fell deathly ill within a few hours of arrival. I'm the only person in my four-bedroom. I proceed to spend the entire next day in bed. Never left the room. Day three, I'm both still deathly ill and starving. I have a transatlantic flight the next day. Frick. For the first time, the cleaning staff come into the room, two women. I want to somehow get them the message that I'm sick and need an English-speaking staff member to come to the room. Unfortunately, I don't speak a word of Turkish. But then, in my half-conscious state, I hear some chatter that sounds like smells bad. I see the other worker glance my way. Then I hear what I'm absolutely certain is yes, he smells bad. Praise Jesus. They are Georgian. And you should have seen the look on their faces when I rolled over and blabbered, I'm extremely sick.

[00:05:25]I need medicine from a pharmacy. I had exactly what I needed an hour later.

[00:05:30]Soup on a regular basis and fresh hot tea every 30 minutes until I left. They were awesome. Good times. This is a refreshing change among the mountain of stories of people being dongs.

[00:05:43]Nothing too exciting, but it helped. In Canada, I was buying some clothes in a Chinese-run store and I asked the lady at the counter how much something was.

[00:05:52]She yelled back to her husband in Chinese, "How much is this shirt?" And he yelled back in Chinese, "$5." She told me $10 and I said, in Chinese, "But he said it was $5." She laughed and gave me it for five. I probably still overpaid by 90%.

[00:06:10]Not really something I wasn't supposed to hear, but I was bringing my child to a French school. The teachers always are talking to one another in French in front of me. Then one day a kid randomly asked me what this is a picture of. I replied "le bœuf", which I know because a street near my house was named that, and then all of a sudden they stopped talking in front of me in French. They all seemed embarrassed or ashamed. Makes me wonder what they were saying before they thought I didn't speak French.

[00:06:39]Sounds like they had some le bœuf with you to sort out.

[00:06:43]I speak primarily English, but my family comes from a bilingual French part of the province, New Brunswick. So many of my family members communicate in French primarily. During one visit to my grandparents' house, I was looking over the shoulder of my cousin as she wrote a note to one of her friends. This would have been over 10 years ago now, if memory serves. So it wasn't very common for school-aged kids to have phones and text each other. Anyway, she made no effort to hide her note from me because she didn't know I could read French. But she was writing about me and my brother, writing that I was annoying. Her exact wording was "man il est talent".

[00:07:22]Frenchlish FTW. And she wrote that my brother was cute. So I proved her right in judging me annoying by abruptly shouting out, "Hey, I'm not that annoying, and you think my brother is cute. That's gross. He's your cousin."

[00:07:37]Priceless reaction. "le cousin dangereux".

[00:07:41]Some little girl on the ski slopes was laughing at me in Italian because I'm a man with hot pink snowboard boots. B, I own those boots.

[00:07:50]I speak fluent English and German, plus a few other languages where I can speak the basics. I was sitting in a hot tub while on vacation in California. These two German girls came a little while later and got in the hot tub. The hot tub overlooks the pool and the public beach since the hotel was on the water.

[00:08:08]I made some small chat in English when they got in and they assumed I only spoke English. So, they started talking among themselves in German. They started commenting on people that would walk by with all sorts of things. she has breast implants. He is probably her bae. ETC. I was just listening and holding anything back. Then they started narrating the seagull who kept asking for scraps and were making some horrible remarks. Hey, you fat sea. You're already fat enough.

[00:08:35]Throw me some food, you fatty. They cracked a few good jokes considering they were German humor, I still found them really funny. Before I knew it, I lost my crap and started cracking up.

[00:08:46]They knew instantly. Their faces turned bright red from shame. I just laughed even harder. I then said, "Thanks for the laughs. I'll leave you two. Have a good day." in perfect German. I was sitting in a hot tub while on vacation in California. These two German girls came a little while later and got in the hot tub. I had higher hopes for this story. Still good though.

[00:09:09]I am bilingual but none of my stories are good. I love a particular story from my mom, however. When my mom was in her 20s, she was in line at a mall and she heard two Arabic men behind her making fun of all of the S American woman and talking about her. For your information, she was not dressed badly. She was even super modest by today's standards. But in Saudi, the women cover everything but their eyes. She grew up in Saudi, so she not only spoke the language, but she was very familiar with the beliefs there.

[00:09:39]She then turned around and chewed them out in Arabic for disrespecting her and told them they should be ashamed for so boldly acting outside of their belief system at the expense of strangers in a country that does not have the same restrictions.

[00:09:53]I was once at a grocery store with my mother. As we were browsing through the fruits and such, I overheard a conversation between a Hispanic mother and her son. He seemed about 10. His mother was telling him to go to the next aisle and to buy some chips and soda pop so that they would look more American. I felt so bad after hearing that because obviously they were illegal immigrants and I remembered my mom and brother doing the exact same thing when they came here. They're all citizens now.

[00:10:21]Not me, but my girlfriend. She speaks English and Dutch. There have been numerous times that she has been in England and heard people speaking in Dutch about things you wouldn't usually talk about in public. For example, when she was on the bus she heard two guys talking behind her describing this lump he'd found on his dong. Now, because they assumed no one could understand them, they were talking at normal levels. I was next to her at the time and she told me and I burst out laughing. When we got off the bus, we turned to them and said "Doei", which is bye in Dutch. The looks on their faces was brilliant.

[00:10:55]I've told this story before, but I'm conversational in ASL, American Sign Language, and while on the train two rather distinguished gentlemen were having a conversation in ASL. I try not to pay attention, but I see guy one sign B. So, I start paying more attention and apparently they were two older gay men talking about anal sex, calling each other S, and graphically describing dongs. When they got up to leave, I signed to them "Have fun." Their faces were priceless. Sign language has swears. I must learn this now.

[00:11:29]I was on the train in Brisbane on my way home from work and there were some male French tourists on there plus the usual gaggle of school girls from the local Catholic schools. The guys started talking and pointing to some of the girls, clearly kids in uniform, and saying some disgusting crap along the lines of old enough to freak and I bet that one shaves her pee. Bear in mind these girls are like year 8-9, so like 13-14 years old and definitely underage.

[00:11:58]I was getting increasingly peeved off at the comments and turned to them and yelled, "Honte a vous! Vous pervers rampant! Shame on you, creepy old perverts!" I've never seen someone look so shocked in my life. They got off at the next stop, but not before practically melding into the walls. It's the French.

[00:12:18]All the fun I've had being able to speak Indonesian. My family and I, like most Australians, go to Bali in Indonesia quite a bit. I learned the language for 12 years and was fluent enough to pass tertiary entrance exams. The Indonesians just aren't used to tourists making much of an effort to speak their language, so as a consequence, they say a lot. My two favorite moments would be from my first trip. We were being driven from our hotel to a really popular restaurant. We were being driven by three young guys.

[00:12:49]They were happily chatting away, blissfully unaware that I understood every word. One of them cracked a joke about taking my mother home. They were very much just cracking a joke, no real ill intent, and when they all laughed I laughed really loudly. They stopped immediately and said in Indo, "How long have you been learning Indonesian?" Was a pretty quiet car ride after that. The other time would be at the markets. I was buying some crappy jewelry from a small stall by the side of the road and I made a point of bartering in English for a change. In the middle of our transaction, she turned to her daughter, who was sitting next to to in the stall, and says, "Make sure you never barter much when the young ones are alone.

[00:13:29]They're easier to make more money." To which I said, "Could you please repeat yourself, but slower?" And her face. It was magical. I had never seen someone so shocked. Her daughter ended up giving me the things for their cost price and we chatted and hung out quite a bit, too.

[00:13:44]All in all, victory is all around.

[00:13:48]I learned quite a lot of Pashto in Afghanistan and I was able to overhear an interpreter telling a locally employed civilian who arrived at Camp Bastion daily, where we don't search on vehicles. He was essentially telling him how to hide things. So, yeah, he got sacked.

[00:14:06]Not me, but I have a story to share.

[00:14:08]When I was in middle school, there was a group of kids, like three or four of them, who would sit in the back of class and speak in Creole, chatting and laughing, but nobody could understand what they said. The teacher would tell them to stop speaking in Creole since she couldn't know if they were saying something offensive, which was usually met with them saying something to each other in an obviously mocking manner and then the whole group breaking out in laughter. So, one day, this guy shows up in the class. He says that he's training to be a teacher and he's going to be shadowing the class that day. So, he's sitting in a chair in the corner of the room, jotting things down in a notebook.

[00:14:46]Of course, the Creole-speaking kids were chatting away as usual. So, the guy gets up out of the chair and walks over to this group of Creole-speaking kids who all sat nearby me, so I could hear them pretty clearly. The guy leans over to them and very calmly says, in plain English, "Yes, my dong is huge and no, your hot teacher ain't going to suck yours. By the way, I'm your new English teacher and y'all got detention." They never spoke Creole in class again.

[00:15:15]I'm Polish-American, born and raised in NYC. I speak Polish fluently. It was my first language, but people always naturally assume I'm American. I don't look very Polish, it seems. I was once donating blood. I was sitting in the waiting room of a New York blood center with three teenagers, students from a local high school. This high school is exclusively for international students.

[00:15:40]Two of the teens were rapidly speaking Polish to one another. I didn't let on that I could understand them. One said to the other, "Well, if he says that to you, you can tell him from me that he can kiss my butt." I couldn't help but laugh and betray myself. They were actually amused to find out that I was listening in the entire time. Zesk.

[00:16:01]I have told this story before, but here it goes again. I am white and I live in an Asian country. So, while I was walking in the supermarket, I had this kid point at me and tell his dad in Chinese, "Look, a white person." So, I waited till his dad left and I walked past the kid and hushed in a jokey way in Chinese, "I know I am white." He looked terrified.

[00:16:21]Oh, I have a good one. I'm Asian and I live in France, so my French is pretty fluent, spoken at least. I was visiting some friends in London last summer and on the tube, there were a group of five French tourists standing around and pretty much bitching about everyone else in the tube, saying that Brits are so ugly, dissing how they dressed, really petty crap. I was already side eyeing the crap out of this group, but pretty much kept to myself and my friends. Then the tube started getting really crowded and we had to move a nearer to said French group. I accidentally bumped shoulders with one of the guys in the group and he proceeded to groan loudly, then turned to his friends and say, "All these freaking Asians, they are everywhere. Go back to China, what a bee." His group started laughing and looking at me. At that point, I saw white and completely lost IT. I turned around and addressed his whole group, calling them out on their ignorance and racist bulls, telling them off for being the exact stereotype of French tourists that ruined the reputations of the decent French people out there, and assuming that no one else can speak their language while traveling around in Europe, FFS. Ended by saying if you don't want to see any other races or ethnicity, you should probably stay in that hole you call a home and not travel abroad if you're going to act like a massive douche. Everyone was looking at me at this point. My friends were like, "WTF?" and trying to get me to stop. I just said loudly in English to everyone else that this group of French people were making racist statements and deserved to be called out. They all pretty much turned red and one of the other people in the group mumbled a quick apology and they got off the tube at the next stop. And just as a bonus, yeah, yeah, that felt good to finally share. Voice.

[00:18:04]The only story I've got is from a friend, and it's the exact opposite situation. Our friend is from Palau, and he had 15 minutes to get coffee and get back to work. A woman cut in front of him in line, which was enough to make it unlikely he'd make it back in time. So, he swore at her in his native language.

[00:18:23]It was basically "Frick you. Don't cut in front of me." but her face went completely white and she ran away screaming in terror about how he'd used a voodoo curse on her. TL DR, he got some coffee. 10/10 would read again.

[00:18:38]This didn't happen to me, but I still think it's a good story. Every Afrikaans woman I know living in England, including my sister and mother, love to gossip and insult strangers in Afrikaans to their fellow Afrikaners. Once a family friend was riding the underground with her daughter, and she was criticizing literally everything about a man sitting opposite them, his hair, his clothing, his weight, etc. Now, he says nothing the entire journey, doesn't as much as look at them, but when the train stops, he stands up, walks past them, smiles, and tells her to enjoy her day in perfect Afrikaans.

[00:19:18]In high school, my dad and I went backpacking through the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California. We were in the small town named Lone Pine, which is about 4 hours north of LA. There were tons of German and French tourists there who had been visiting the Redwood forests. I speak both English and French fluently, and I overheard these two French girls talk about me in a convenience store. One of them nodded in my direction and said, "What about that one?" To which the other one replied, "He seems kind of dumb, but he's cute.

[00:19:47]So, yeah, I'd probably sleep with him."

[00:19:49]I thought I would try my luck and approach them about it. In French, I said, "So, I'd like to take you up on that offer if you're up to it." They were clearly pretty embarrassed and just walked away giggling.

[00:20:01]Once I walked past a group of Hispanic construction workers and overheard them talking about my little sexy butt. I'm Myra Lamarena. Kitsune had the same happen when I was 15. Not construction, though, just people walking by on the street. I was with my father who speaks Spanish as well. Those guys looked terrified.

[00:20:22]I'm white, but I speak Mandarin and Japanese fluently. I've overheard a lot of things. The most memorable was when I went to the Yokohama Chinatown with my Japanese friends. A group of Japanese tourists and a group of Chinese tourists were in an argument. So, my friends and I tried to diffuse the situation. While we were listening to each side's story in Japanese, there was talk on both sides about me from both groups in their native tongue. So, once we finished hearing each side's case, I tell the Japanese group in Japanese the other side's point of view. Their eyes bulged.

[00:20:57]Then I told the Chinese group in Mandarin the other side's story.

[00:21:01]Everyone's eyes bulged, including my friends. I didn't tell them I spoke Mandarin, too. Everyone's eyes bulged.

[00:21:09]B.

[00:21:10]Jesus, the French get a bad rap here.

[00:21:13]Speaking of which, I was in Krakow, Poland with a few friends, all French, including me. Now, Krakow is an amazing city, but one of our friends, actually a friend of a friend of a, you get the idea, was a born and raised Parisian. I know, it's a stereotype, but they do tend to look down on people, even by French standards. In a ho, there's five of us in the tram standing awkwardly in the middle aisle because all the other seats are taken. We're the only ones standing though, so we attract people's looks to begin with. And for some reason, Paris girl starts rambling about how everyone just looks so depressed and tired here compared to Paris, which wasn't true at all. And considering our steady diet of just vodka while we were here, we were certainly the most zombie looking on the bunch. After a while, I say, Paris girl, tune it down. Who are you to say that? What? They can't understand it anyway. Like freak they can't. How would you know? And just because they can't understand doesn't mean you get to insult them. Geez. By now I could see a few frowns in our direction, probably from how loud we were. Anyway, Paris girl stops for a bit and all of a sudden starts again with a massive, loud and clear, they're all ugly anyway. At this moment, two friends of mine and I all at the same time screamed variations of shut the freak up for the love of God. She did. And I swear that when we got out of the tram, a younger guy sitting looked at me, nodded in approval and mouthed messy to me. Polish person with two other languages in my repertoire, I always make a point not gossip on another another language in their presence. It's freaking rude. My mother-in-law, worldly lady, freaking gossips about other all the time in the restaurants how fat, ugly, bad hairy, TC. I get so embarrassed.

[00:23:09]My mother is Korean by blood, but was adopted and grew up in the US. When she was in her 20s, she and many other Korean adoptees took a trip to Korea.

[00:23:18]One day, they were all waiting for a tour when my mother overheard a couple of Korean soldiers talking nearby. They were speaking in English, obviously assuming that no one else there would be able to understand them. They were ogling the women, verbally assessing them and so forth. After speaking explicitly about one of the women in my mom's group, my mom turned around and told them to stop it in English.

[00:23:42]Apparently, the looks on their faces were priceless.

[00:23:46]Mostly related. I've shared this before.

[00:23:48]My wife and I have adopted two kids from China on two separate occasions. We had some time to wait before the first one, so we learned some basic Mandarin to help with our trip and connect a bit with our daughter's birth culture. While there, a day or so after we got her, we were in the Walmart. Yes, Walmart in Jeonju when a younger woman walks by, sees a large American guy with a pale red-headed wife carrying a Chinese toddler in a sling, doubles back and with a fake smile says, "Nee bu shi huan nee de mama." Ma, which works out to you don't like your mom, do you? My wife spins around and in Mandarin basically says, "Oh, yes, she does." The look on that woman's face carried me through the day. Bu dui yu ai tai ai de mama.

[00:24:33]Speaking Mandarin, poorly, has done nothing for me.

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[00:25:17]>> Bye for now.