J, a guy I knew in college, had fair skin, light hair and blue eyes. He once told me he and his girlfriend were at a baseball game when two guys behind him started making lewd remarks about her in (I think) Farsi. J turned around and in Farsi quietly told them they’d needed to shut up. He had a good laugh as they sputtered and left.
J grew up in a neighborhood with a large Middle Eastern population. Several of his friends were either first-generation American or had immigrated as small children and spoke Farsi at home. He was nowhere near fluent but he’d learned some impolite phrases and how to tell someone off.
Not quite on topic, but a story I love sharing:
I have a friend who is a missionary in Bosnia - when she had been there about 2 years and was beginning to get confident in Bosnian, she went to the shop with a local friend and noticed that the shop-keeper was giving her strange looks as he filled her order. On the way home she asked her friend about this and she replied “Oh, he thinks you’re retarded because of your accent”. So few foreigners learn to speak Bosnian (reputed to be one of the harder languages to learn) that this was clearly the obvious assumption. 
My son and I were at the DMV and these guys behind us, who seemed to be African (dark skin, colorful dress, funny little hats) were speaking a language that, as we sat there, we realized was French. One of them was telling the other one how his brother’s wife kept throwing herself at him.
My son and I looked at each other but didn’t mention it until we got outside. These guys seemed pretty sure that nobody else was overhearing what they were talking about, or else they were testing us.
The other one, my other son–the one who studied Spanish instead of French–got, but I didn’t. We were waiting for a bus, and a guy was talking on a cell phone, not real loud, but in Spanish, and all of a sudden my son reacted to something he said, quite obviously. The guy realized it, glared at him, and went behind the bus shelter.
My son said, “I should report that.” Then he said, “Well, maybe it was some kind of idiom.” He didn’t tell me what he said until we were home; the guy on the phone was talking about killing somebody. (Or else it was an idiom.)
Yep, and some words are more or less identical in several languages.
I still remember standing in line to pass a security checkpoint at Newark airport. Early 2000’s, post 9/11. Suddenly, one of the guys I’m traveling with starts BSing (in our language) about bomb threats. My blood pressure just shot through the roof, my hair stood right up, and I whispered something along the lines of “you f…ing idiot, that damned b-word is f…ing international! Shut the f… up, I want to go home, I don’t want to spend the night in a holding cell in the US!!!”. :smack: Luckily, there were no security personnel within hearing distance
Nothing very exciting, but in my village in Bulgaria, I was well-known as the only foreigner in town. When I first arrived, I began working with some of the younger kids, teaching a summer school class, but I didn’t know any of the older kids. Many of my students were part of a local folk dance troupe and once I stopped by their little dance studio to watch them rehearse.
At one point, one of the younger kids asked me a question, and one of the older kids, who knew who I was, but didn’t actually know me, interrupted with “she’s a foreigner, she doesn’t speak Bulgarian.”
I turned to him and said, “oh, really? Thanks for speaking for me then. What would I do without you?” in my best Bulgarian (which probably wasn’t all that great, to be honest, since I’d only been studying the language for about five months at the time). Everyone cracked up and the boy looked really embarrassed.
But while I don’t really look like a Bulgarian (they’re mostly dark; I’m fair), I guess I usually passed until I opened my mouth and people heard my accent, just because there are so few foreigners in the area. Even if I looked out of place, it’d still be more likely that I belonged than I couldn’t speak the language. So I can’t remember this ever happening again. I did get a lot of weird reactions when people realized that I was a non-native Bulgarian speaker, since so few foreigners learn their language.
Pretty much everyone in China.
I’ve even had people, in the middle of a Chinese conversation, suddenly pop up with “Do you speak Chinese?!” Yeah, dude, what do you think we’ve been doing for the last ten minutes.
The most frustrating thing was that for some reason in China, the automatic thing to exclaim when seeing a foreigner is “She doesn’t understand!” Imagine every time you walk into a store, every time you want to get a meal, every time you board the bus, every person you walk by…they take one look at you and excitedly exclaim “She doesn’t understand!” Of course I did understand. Drove me up the freaking wall. Eventually I decided to think it was a traditionally non-confrontational way to ask if I did understand. But still, it will always strike me as sinisterly bizarre. Why the hell would you yell “She doesn’t understand?” it doesn’t even make sense. It’s just the oddest impulse.
Other than that, I got to hear constant physical assessment (So tall, great nose, freaky inhuman colored eyes) and endless speculation as to my Chinese comprehension level. People would stand a food away from loudly asking their friends “Do you think she has any idea what I’m saying right now?”
It’s a cultural thing. There is this idea that Chinese is just too difficult for a foreigner to learn (and the truth is that many foreigners in China never do bother to.) Cultural integration is a totally unknown concept in much of China, so nobody really even think there is any reason for a foreigner to learn Chinese. I’d had more than one person ask me in all seriousness why I bothered (and this was a small town with few English speakers.)
I was once telling a student about how I studied Japanese in high school for a year before starting on Chinese in college for a few years and how I thought Chinese was easier for an English speaker than Japanese as Chinese largely follows the same sentence structure as English and Japanese doesn’t. She couldn’t grasp the concept of Chinese being easier than any other language and told me Chinese was much harder than Japanese. “Have you ever studied Japanese?” I asked. You can probably guess her answer.
I don’t think it’s sinister or rude on the part of most Chinese to assume that foreigners can’t speak Chinese, just that it never occurred to them that we might want to. I can’t really blame 'em…as you said, it’s cultural.
Not exactly, but rather funny.
Back in 1976 or so my mom and I were wandering around sightseeing and some german lady was trying to get directions from a gendarme who didnn’t speak german. My mom speaks german, but not french. I speak french, but not german.
We played telephone [more or less] and managed to get the lady sorted out and in a cab to her destination so it all worked out well.
I’ve been in a Mexican cab and heard the cabbie say a few unflattering things about Anglos to his buddy over the radio, but my Spanish wasn’t (and isn’t) good enough to pick up all of it, and nowhere near good enough to compose a witty retort.
[(Somewhat) Funny Story]
Many years ago I was teaching English in Japan, working for an ESL school run by an American husband and wife. My boss and I were at some sort of town festival and overheard a couple of Japanese boys say “Ookii Amerikajin” (loosely translated as “what a big American!”) My boss, without missing a beat, turns and says “Chibi Nihonjin” (loosely translated as "what a couple of Japanese runts!’).
[/(Somewhat) Funny Story]
Backstory: My old bosses were a husband and wife. She was German born and spoke German/French/Dutch and bits of a few others. He was American. After 45+ years of marriage, he never bothered to learn German as his wife did all the talking. (They met during ww2)
The Story: We are in the office one day and we had a young intern who had a Greek last name. My boss (John) asked her, “Can you speak Greek?”
She replied with some greek line.
HE replied something back in greek.
She said something and back and forth in GREEK for a good minute or two.
The entire office, but most importantly, his WIFE were all thunderstruck. Our mouths hit the floor.
“John!” his wife whined. " You speak greek?"
“Yes. I learned it when I was a teen working at ( x) from the dock workers who were from ( some Greek City.)”
His wife, " We’ve nearly been married 46 years AND you JUST TELL ME THIS! All the years I’ve wanted to go to Greece on vacation but didn’t because of the language…"
He became a God that day.
It was pretty f’n awesome.
I was on the Paris Metro with my friend and boyfriend, on our way to a museum or something else touristy. We were discussing our travel plans in English, and two French women were listening in from a few feet away. Then I heard them say something about stupid American tourists coming over and being rude to everyone (we were talking quietly and discussing a train schedule, so I’m not sure where that came from).
As we approached our stop, I turned to them and said “Actually, ladies, only one of us is American. I’m Canadian, she’s Czech, and you’re rude idiots.”
Their jaws dropped, and it felt awesome.
I hate when that happens, although I understand the impulse and I’ve done it myself. But sometimes you’ve worked very hard to be able to at least ask for the bathroom in another language and it sucks when someone switches to English to make it easier for you, because then you don’t get to use it. That happened to me in Germany and Italy. I guess my accent was so bad they felt the need to rescue me.
I have a friend from New Brunswick who gets people switching to English all the time when he’s speaking French in Montreal - his accent makes them assume he’s an anglophone, I guess, and they switch to be nice, but in reality he’s totally fluent in French and gets a little insulted when that happens.
Of course. I know this my head, but I still had that visceral reaction to “Ta ting bu dong!” each time. Couldn’t get used to it.
I know, right? 
Right. To describe my spoken Spanish as “broken” would be pure flattery, but I do understand quite a bit. I’ve over-heard many a conversation that I assumed were only being conducted so openly in my presence because they were certain I would not understand.
People assume my mother doesn’t speak Spanish all the time, I can only assume because she is black. Well I have news, folks, my mother is from Costa Rica, and likely speaks better Spanish than you do. Also, I worked with a Mexican woman who was married to an Armenian man. She once relayed a story to me of some Armenians she worked with calling her an “idiot,” which she let go at the time. Later, those same people complimented her on something she did well, and she replied with something like, “Not bad for an idiot.” They were embarrassed and apologized.
I grew up speaking Low German and switched in high school and college to High German. It amuses my family to visit Amish stores or restaurants near here and listen in on their comments about us. Old Amish women, like most Germans, are blunt as a log, and they will discuss your hair, weight, clothing, and choices in food. Cracks me up to listen to them. Usually I don’t say anything, although my children have occasionally called out “Danke, Oma!” (Thanks, Grandma!) as we were leaving. Ruffled their feathers a bit.
How about the time I visited my friends’ cousins in the boondocks of Pennsylvania and we went out for a ride and they were in the backseat talking about beaver hunting? But, you know, beaver hunting? :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:
Does that count?
My mother is French-Canadian. She married an English guy and us kids were raised (mostly) in the US. We spoke a mix at home, my dad was pretty fluent in French and my mother proficient in English. I took French in high school and a couple of semesters in college, so I practiced on family. I understand the language much better than I can speak it, but I can speak it well enough, especially after hanging around the family for a day or two, it all seems to come back pretty quickly, although one could probably easily tell I am not a native speaker.
Anytime I go to Quebec with my husband there are always remarks in French about American tourists, since he speaks not a lick of French and I am always talking to him in English. What I don’t get is that at least some of the time and I translating for him, so they have to have some knowledge that I can understand what they are saying.
My father, sister and I were in Montreal once on the Metro going to visit an aunt after going to some museum and heard some rather lewd comments about “American Girls.” My father let a few remarks about their mothers fly and that ended it and they looked rather embarrassed.
I have a work colleague from Australia (white guy) who spent a lot of time in Korea as a child. People are always shocked that he can speak and read Korean rather well. The closest chinese restaurant here at work is owned by Koreans, and they have both an english menu and a korean one. He walked in one day and saw the Korean menu and ordered off of it. They now remember him and we always get great service and better food than what is on the English menu.
We happen to work at a large University with a significant foreign student population. There have been a couple of times when he has overheard conversations that probably weren’t meant for his ears. He is a very attractive man and a couple of times he has heard some Korean girls say that they find him attractive. Only once did he turn around and tell them he was married.
I have told this story before.
On my first trip to Paris, I was walking down the street when a guy was coming the other way, and said something to me in French. I speak a little French, but had no idea what he was saying, so I said (in French) “I don’t understand; I don’t speak French well.” So he repeated himself, slowly, as if this would enable me to understand. Again I said “I don’t understand; I don’t speak French well.” So he repeated himself again, and was obviously getting angry with me. And I repeated myself also, with growing anger. Then, on a hunch, I asked “Parlez-vous anglais?” (“Do you speak English?”).
The guy turned out to be another American. Each of us assumed the other was a rude Frenchman who didn’t speak English.
Happens all the time in Miami; when the average store clerk there realizes you don’t speak Spanish, you will be treated to sighs of exasperation along with much eye rolling.
My failure to speak french has elicited similar responses in certain parts of Canada as well.
I was on the opposite side of such an incident, once. It was 1977 and I was flying home, unescorted, from a college-visiting trip. First time flying at all. Had to change planes in National Airport (Washington DC).
I was accosted by something like 4 different Hari Krishna-types within 3 minutes of exiting the plane. Blew the first 3 off fairly well. The 4th, I decided to get cute and pretend I didn’t speak English.
Turns out her French was as good as mine! I gave her fifty cents or some such. 
I usually get the opposite. People assume I speak languages that I don’t. I’m Asian, so when I was on vacation in South Korea, people just automatically pegged me as Korean and spoke to me in their language. This happened all the time - when I was frequenting the street food stalls, department stores, and basically everywhere. I had this old man sit next to me in a park and just go rambling off to me while I nodded and pretended to understand what the heck he was saying.
With all these people claiming that they can distinguish amongst east Asians, you’d think they wouldn’t. But no, happens here in Japan too. It just so happens that I do speak Japanese, but people just assume I can before I open my mouth. I have an accent when I speak it though, so when I get asked about it, I tell them that I’m from America, I’m actually an ABC, etc. They get all shocked and go off on their own monologues about how you just can’t tell who is an actual Nihonjin these days. Well, duh.