Heh. I live in a part of China with a large Russian population. I’m often accosted by Russians on the street babbling at me in Russian thinking I’m a comrade from the Fatherland. Funny thing is, many of them can speak English and Chinese, but will continue speaking Russian to me even after I tell them I’m not Russian.
I get it all the time. Even if I’m talking to them in Spanish, they’ll keep talking to me in English, thinking it’ll be easier. I eventually have to start swearing at them and insulting their poor sweet grannies to get them to stop, think for a second, and realize I DO know the language (it’s my native language!!!).
OTOH, occasionally Brazilians don’t realize I know Portuguese until I reply to something they say in Portuguese. But that’s expected, and usually all I overhear is boring work conversation.
The one time it did annoy me was at the airport. I can tell if they’ve read my passport because they look at my last name, look at my visa, and then just rattle off in Portuguese. But one time, a poor guy at the airline checkup, just saw my passport (U.S), and started speaking to me in broken English. I tried telling him he could ask me the questions in Portuguese, thinking that it would help him, but nope. He insisted on using broken English. Which was probably more difficult for me to understand than if he had just use proper Portuguese.
I speak French with a German accent (hey, I learned in Metz). Even today, this is not good. Once they twig that I’m British, things improve rapidly.
While I did actually try to learn a little Arabic for my trip to Cairo (which I made sure the cab drivers knew I knew was just “tourist Araby”), it was actually the little bit of German I have which came in handiest.
At Giza on a Friday afternoon, there are approximately as many school children as there are grains of sand in the Sahara, and I really don’t much care for children. I especially don’t care for them practicing their little third-grade English on me, when all they’ve learned how to say is “What’s your name?,” “Where are you from?,” and “What’s your name?” again.
So after about three rounds of that, I suddenly stopped being Knead from Canada* and became Dale** aus Deutschland.
Little Cairene kids may not know English, but they damn sure recognize not-English when they hear it. “Guten tag, meine kleine KinderCairene. Wie heist du?” was about all I had to say, and suddenly my immediate vicinity was completely devoid of curious young minds.
- On the recommendation of a tour guide we had hired earlier in the week.
** Yes, as in Gribble. You should hear my Texas Deutsche.
I had a similar experience in Holland where I was working on an archaeological site in a very small town. Practising their (very good) english on the hapless Brits stuck down a hole in the ground was evidently the most fun the local youth had had for ages. Until I had the brainwave of speaking very bad French (or Franglais) back at them.
Nice thread. As an incredibly white person who speaks Spanish pretty well, I get this a lot. I have never had a single negative response; in general people have been pretty flattered that I know their language.
One memorable time I was on campus in an elevator alone with a woman and a man and they began a pretty involved conversation about the merits of the man’s ass. I couldn’t help but smile and the guy’s eyes got big and he said, ‘‘You speak Spanish, don’t you?’’ When I affirmed the girl gushed and said, in English, ‘‘It’s okay, iI didn’t mean it like that! He’s my gay best friend!’’
My Spanish isn’t perfect, and I definitely struggle with understanding certain accents more than others, but my own accent is pretty damned near flawless. If I can get through an exchange without making a grammatical error I can easily fool people over the phone into thinking I’m a native speaker. Just last week I got a phone call meant for someone else (I work at an agency by and for Latinos.) After a short discussion it became clear the woman did not speak English, so I busted out my best customer service skills and said, ‘‘La extensión de Ana se ha cambiado. Pero si quiere, le puedo transferir.’’ (Ana’s extension has changed. But if you want, I can transfer you.’’)
It was the first time in four months working there I actually had the opportunity to use Spanish. My Latina coworker stood up in surprise and said, '‘I had no idea you spoke Spanish! I was like, ‘‘Who is that at olives’ desk?’’
My favorite story though, with me on the assuming side, is when I was sitting at an airport in Frankfort, Germany waiting for a transfer. I’ve had a whopping one semester of German, so when he turned and said something to me (which I did not hear very well), I responded, ‘‘Ich spreche keine Deutsch’’ (probably a very butchered version of ‘‘I don’t speak German.’’ He said, ‘‘Keine Deutch, eh?’’ and then turned to the woman next to him and started speaking in Spanish. :smack:
Something similar happened to me in Bulgaria once - I was at the market in my village and for some reason had a small exchange with a guy in line. He turned out to be originally from my village, but had emigrated to Germany years ago. I had only been in Bulgaria for a few months and my language skills weren’t great, so he asked me if I spoke German. I don’t - at all. As lousy as my Bulgarian was, it was infinitely better than my German.
Anyway, the guy took a shine to me and basically followed me around my village as I ran my errands, followed me home, and then stood outside my house (he left for awhile, and then returned in the evening), the whole time talking at me in German. I was like “go the fuck away! Also, I DON’T SPEAK GERMAN.”
I was on the way back from studying abroad in St. Petersburg and had lucked my way into an overnight in Amsterdam. It wasn’t more than an hour after the plane hit the tarmac that I was in the back bar of a coffeehouse with a prime selection of Moroccan blonde and some skunky leaf, high as a kite.
Three dudes walk in to play some pool and start talking about me in Russian. It helped that I was already well-roasted, so I had a pretty convincing blank look going on. (Nothing nefarious was afoot, they were just trying to figure out if they should ask me for matches or a cig or something; also trying to figure out where I was from.) Finally one of them asked me “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” and I replied “Нет, не говорю по-немецки” and was treated to three pairs of bug eyes. We hung out for a little bit and then I took off, but that was a fun moment.
This one technically doesn’t count, since I don’t speak the language, but it’s a good story just the same. I’m in a pizzeria in New York partying with some comrades; walking by the counter I hear a few words in Albanian I recognize. So I turn to the speaker and introduce myself in Albanian (the two phrases I know); not only do I get the bug eyes from the assembled staff but I get a free beer out of the deal. Beer for language skills!
Something like this happened to me and some friends. I did my year abroad at the University of Vienna, and I was with some Americans on the subway platform waiting for the train and chatting in English. A couple of Austrian teenagers were standing nearby, and one of them muttered (in German) “Stupid English speakers.” So we immediately switched to German and started talking about what kind of an asshole you have to be to talk about someone when you think they can’t understand you. The teenagers got red in the face and moved down the platform.
Not technically the same as the OP, but in the same spirit:
I was vacationing in Dublin, and was walking from my B&B to the hotel where my friends were staying. A group of young Irish teens stopped me and asked me if I knew where Blackburn Rovers sport club was. Well, I walked past it every day I was in Dublin, so I was perfectly able to direct them to it. In mah Southern accent.
They gave me some looks that suggested that they weren’t expecting an American to give them directions in their own city. It was nice.
Yup, when I lived in Taunton, MA it happened at work quite often. A huge precentage of people in that area of the state are Portuguese (mostly by way of Bermuda, not Portugal or Brazil) and they still speak Portuguese. Portuguese and Spanish aren’t identical, but I can understand a lot of the former because I speak the latter. So it was always fun to hear Portuguese coworkers saying nasty things about the others. As an added bonus, I got to hear the others bitch about them too…since they had no idea that most of my family there is at least 1/2 Portuguese as well.
God, that was frustrating.
That one doesn’t worry me…my Chinese is only a few hundred words, and my accent is truely atrocious.
What does bug the ever loving shit out of me though is when people get all surprised that I can use chopsticks - I mean, WTF, it’s not that difficult you now.
Then one of the best things was going to a graduation dim sum dinner with my wife’s classmates parents - when I took some siew mai from the mother from across the table - chopstick to chopstick
A few of my own…
- Working in a service station in New Zealand, I had been studying Chinese for around six months, retired Japanese chap comes in to pay with his ATM card. His PIN was written on the card - in characters, which I read to him upside down. He almost fell over.
- My colleagues (in Singapore) related the story of coming through an Australian airport and discussing (in Cantonese) a rather good looking chap, he turned round and answered them in Cantonese - turns out he was returning to Hong Kong for work.
- My wife is Chinese (I’m not), when shopping at night markets she knows that the stall holders will try to overcharge me, so we normally separate when there are things we specifically want. I ask the price on an item to “signal” her I want to buy, then she comes behind to ask again. One chap said to her "I told the angmo (white guy) $xx, but for you its only $yy)
In all my years as an undercover Spanish-speaking gringa, I have not once overheard anything offensive or titillating. And not once has anyone had a conversation about me in my presence. I guess I’m just not that interesting. 
However, when I lived in Spain my mother (who had come to visit) and I went out to an Irish pub for dinner. The waiter greeted us in Spanish and I ordered our drinks in Spanish. When he came back and asked us what we would be having to eat, I turned to my mother and conferred with her in English. The (Irish) waiter burst out with a relieved, “Oh, thank God you speak English, I hardly speak any Spanish at all!”
I’m a rather average looking american of english descent. I also happen to speak Farsi.
So I’m in a taxi cab in Las Vegas last year and the driver is talking on his cell phone in Farsi. The look of confusion on his face was priceless when I asked him in Farsi if he was Iranian.
The really funny part was that after that he started telling me this joke about an American who goes to Iran and basically visits different monuments and tells the people why they suck. It never had a punchline. It just kept going. Maybe the funny part is that there is no funny part.
I was waiting in line at Chipotle ten minutes before closing. My wife ordered the chicken burrito. No Chicken. The manager lays into the crew, asking why the hell they did not have any chicken. Someone from the back said “Because your fat ass ate it.”* in Spanish. The manager did not speak Spanish. I do. I tried very hard to not laugh. I failed, but the trying is important.
- I can verify that he did in fact have a fat ass.
I never got VERY good at Arabic, but I was good enough that when, coming in to interview an executive at a company about something-or-other, I heard him finish his previous phone call, “and tell them that __________ is a fucking thief!”, I knew what he was on about. Couldn’t really follow it up, more’s the pity.
I’ve actually had people ask me if I was able to eat Chinese food. No joke, not if I could speak Chinese, not if I could use chopsticks, but if I could actually eat Chinese food. “Neng chi Zhongguo cai ma?” Uh, yeah, I think I can manage. :rolleyes:
After a club meeting, a bunch of us were at the restaurant chattering away in Esperanto. I didn’t hear this, sitting too far away, but one of my friends swore she heard the people at the next table saying in English, “What language is that?” “I don’t know, but it sure is loud…” 
Some great stories in this thread. Here’s mine (sorry, there is a lot of background information; I’ve tried to be as succinct as possible but it can only be fully appreciated with the context):
In 1986 my husband was an advisor to the Congress of the Federated States of Micronesia, and the FSM was considering starting a national airline (terrible idea, but that’s a different discussion). Somehow they got hooked up with Indonesia, whose national government had decided to skip over several stages of economic development and overnight become a first-world manufacturer of airplanes. (Also a terrible idea.) Problem was, no country was interested in buying their aircraft, and the nation’s prestige - in particular that of BJ Habibie, the Minister behind the manufacturing push - was on the line.
So when the FSM senators contacted the Indonesian government officials, they were ecstatic - they were going to prove to the world that yes, Indonesia could sell airplanes internationally.
A fabulous fact-finding mission was set up for the FSM Congressional committee and my husband. I came along because I had a long-standing interest in Indonesia and had begun studying the language.
The Indonesians luxuriously wined and dined us (none of which we understood at the time, as we were unaware of the political forces holding sway in Indonesia) and did everything in their power to convince us of what a wonderful, reliable nation Indonesia was - definitely the kind of country you’d trust to build your airplanes.
Although the business discussions revolved around Jakarta and Bandung (where the engine factory was), the Indonesians paid for us to visit Bali as well and tour facilities related to economic development - including a tuna canning factory.
At the tuna canning factory, we were first seated in a meeting room to await the arrival of the company president. He clearly had not been prepared for our visit and had no idea what was going on, a situation he revealed by talking to his staff in Indonesian right in front of us. My understanding of the language was still rudimentary at that point, but like some others up thread I got lucky, and the conversation happened to revolve around words I could understand. The president asked “What is the FSM - is it a company?” His minions hastily corrected him - “No, no - it is a country!”
Throughout the tour we then took, our Indonesian guides kept up a steady chatter among themselves, not a word of which I understood. But given the setting, I can just imagine the conversation: “What’s going on here?” “Oh, we’ve been roped into showing these guys how impressive we are because that crazy BJ thinks this crew is gonna buy airplanes. They look pretty dorky to me, do you believe it? Well, let’s behave and be nice to them, because we’ll get in trouble if we don’t.”
When we left, I managed to say “Thank you for the tour” in Indonesian. You should have seen the look on our hosts’ faces. They were shocked and silent - finally one managed to say weakly, “You - you speak Indonesian?”
I answered (in Indonesian, of course) “oh, just a little bit.” In fact this was true, but the polite thing to say even if I was fully competent would be to modestly respond “oh, just a little.”
The FSM of course never bought any airplanes. I wonder if the president of the tuna canning company took any blame for that.