Foreign-language eavesdropping stories

In My Humble Opinion
1

Have you ever been in a situation where someone thought you didn’t understand the language they were speaking, so they felt free to make completely inappropriate comments in front of your face? This sort of thing happens to me all the time in Chicago, and it was even funnier in NY, because of course nobody in a major U.S. metro area would possibly speak a foreign language, right? Even a relatively common one, like Russian, or even Spanish?

Leaving aside the silly ones, like people on the train commenting on my appearance under the mistaken belief that I didn’t understand them, I’ll share a couple of stories.

Immigration Court, where I worked from 1991-1994. The offices were on the same floor as a small office of an engineering company, which employed two Russian-speaking female engineers. Everyone on the floor shared bathrooms, and so I frequently encountered these two ladies first thing in the morning, chatting about the day’s events. One of them apparently had a husband who was a real loser, because I was frequently treated to colorful rants about how he had come in at 4 am, drunk, with lipstick on his collar. Over the course of nearly 4 years, I never had the heart to tell them I understood everything they were saying. Maybe I was evil, so sue me.

1988 or so, Greenwich Village, NY. My roommate and I (she was a Salvadoran majoring in French and Italian) loved to walk around scoping out guys and trying to guess their native language and compare and contrast their anatomical merits, but well, in NY it’s sometimes hard to guess what someone’s native language is, and sometimes she would get carried away in describing a guy’s anatomical merits, and sometimes a little too close to him.

One night we got a Pop-Tart craving and decided to run out to the store. She saw something she liked there (hint: it wasn’t just the Pop-Tarts) and went into particularly salacious and vivid detail about the merits of his various and sundry body parts, in Spanish. I tried to warn her, really I did, that maybe Spanish wasn’t the safest language for that sort of thing, especially as we were well within earshot of him. She insisted that no, he was probably Middle Eastern or something, so it was perfectly safe. Well, imagine her shock and embarrassment when a moment later, one of the other clerks yelled out some instructions to him in Spanish across the store. I’ve never seen my friend turn so purple, or run out of a store so quickly. I never could convince her to go back to that store after than, even though it was the closest one to the dorm…luckily she lives in England now, so the chances of her running into him again are pretty slim.

OK, please go ahead and share your stories!

2

I spent a couple summers working on the waterfront at the National Music Camp in Interlochen, Michigan. We got a few students every year from Europe, and one year there were two high school girls from Germany who were out on the raft bitching a blue streak in German about the camp. The food sucked, the uniforms sucked, their conductor sucked, they hated getting segregated from the guys (the guys were all in another camp on the other side of the highway, and the gate to the girls’ camp got locked at 9 p.m.), the waterfront sucked, the lifeguards were a pain in the ass, blah, blah, blah.

Not realizing, of course, that the guard out on the raft with them spoke fluent German…

After half an hour of non-stop bitching, they had to get cleaned up for rehearsal, so they got their stuff together and were just about to climb into the water to swim to shore, and the guard wished them luck at the concert that night… in German…

3

My husband and I were in Rome - it was late March but very warm there (60s or so), so we were dressed in light-colored clothing, unlike most of the Italians that we saw. It’s worth noting here that he looks very Italian (50% Italian in heritage), though extremely tall and broad-shouldered, far more so than your average Roman man. I stopped in a shop near the Pantheon to use the washroom, and he was waiting out on the piazza in front. While he was there, a group of American tourists walked by, loudly discussing Italian fashion and how “exotic” or “cool” it was. One guy cocked his head at my husband and said loudly something to the effect of how my husband stood out in his fashion sense compared to the others. My husband responded in English with, “Oh yeah, Mr. Wraparound-Shades-From-Sunglass-Hut is making fashion critiques.” They all stopped and their jaws nearly dropped, at which my husband said, “I’m from Chicago.” He said the others in the group nearly busted a gut laughing, while the guy stammered out a sheepish apology. My husband just laughed and said it was OK.

4

Well, gee, it looks like that’s exactly what these stories are! So, can I tell mine about the two hispanic dudes in the laundromat commenting on my “nice ass”, oblivious to the fact that a blue-eyed blonde might actually know Spanish?

5

Most of the time it’s happening on the bus or metro(train/tube/monorail…take your pick, it’s underground) that i end up listening into conversations. I’m not a nosy person, but sometimes the languages you understand stand out the most umogst the noise and other chatter.

But one time, as i was working in a store,placing stock, when 2 Polish girls came in. They were the stereotypical girls that are girly-girls,hair &makeup, the whole trip. Anyways, they saw me and started commenting about my looks.
Do you think i’d dress up, do my hair and make-up like a modle/prostitute like them?especially since i’m a cashier a a pharmacy? heh…that’s a laugh.

Well when they finished their colourful conversation, one came to me to ask where a product was in english. I answered her, then as she joined her friend, i said out loud in Polish: oups, sorry i forgot, we’re out.
gave a warm smile then went back to whatever i was doing.

I never seen a simultaneous blush. I think they started a dust cloud as they hurried their little tushies outa there.

6

I was playing the Original Diablo online late one night. (One of many) I was hopping from one game to another trying to gaine levels. My characters name is japanese for the F word and I find it amusing that Blizzard allowed me to use it while preventing me from usinf the english version of it. That night, 2 players were talking in my native language (filipino) I was about to say hi when I realized they were plotting to kill my character. One guy was talking nice to me in english perpetrating like we was just trying to level up with me while he relayed our position (in filipino) to a higher level character waiting to ambush me.

The trap was supposedly at the foot of the next stairs we were going down on. The old diablo allowed us to become hostile while outside of town. (great PK fun) I readied my hostile button before descending, hit as I appeared downstairs, a full second before the other guy did, killed him with 2 spells. I tried to kill the other guy but he put on a God-mode.

I picked up the ear of the other guy, said, “Maraming salamat” (Thank you in filipino) and watched both of them go “WTF??!” and I left the game.

7

I knew someone (Eric, the Garth Algar/Tom Nissen crossing described in this thread) who had one of these moments too.

One Friday night soon after his arrival in Mexico we were out in the San Angel commercial district looking for something to do (which in Eric’s case was sure to involve water, yeast, hops and malt). We took a pesero, which at that time was typically a VW minibus with forward- and rear-facing bench seats. In the bus with us were four or five young women of varying phenotypes. Eric described in English–and in loving detail–what he’d like to do with each of them. Everyone on the bus pretty much ignored him; I suppose they were used to having obnoxious foreign students speaking in strange tongues of the liberties to be taken with their several orifices. Except one woman, who was looking out the window, clearly stifling laughter.

Of course, when she got off the bus, she said to Eric, in rather accent-less English, “Good niiii-iiight”. He was embarrassed, but his embarrassment didn’t stop him from proceeding to scan memory for which carnal adventure was to be had with her.

8

When I was at university, my friend Rupert dedided to learn Hindi. This plan was ditched after a few months because first of all, his Indian girlfriend dumped him, and second, he’s English, he’s from Yorkshire, and therefore is genetically programmed to be unable to learn foreign languages. He is forever one of those people who think that if you speak English loudly and clearly enough to the Kalahari bushman, he’s bound to understand you eventually. That said, after all these years in London he still insists on calling dinner “tea”.

Anyway, he had progressed as far as learning the alphabet, and could read and write phonetically, if not actually in Hindi. Now one day, during a particularly boring and drawn-out lecture about shear flow or something, he became mesmerised by what our friend from New Delhi was up to. Out of utter boredom, Ashok was writing with Tipp-Ex on his calculator. And compared to shear flow diagrams, this was pretty fascinating.

As it happens, he was writing in Hindi. Well, Indians are wont to do that. Suddenly, it dawned on Rupert that he could read the graffiti. It wasn’t actually in Hindi. For some unfathomable reason, Ashok was writing phonetic English in the Hindi alphabet.

Rupert leaned over and asked: "Ashok, why have you written 'I hate f*ing Pakis on your calculator?". The look on Ashok’s face was well worth seeing.

Apart from that, whenever I’m here in London I overhear lots of French visitors commenting on ces especes de cons d’Anglais. When I’m in France, it’s all English types going on about filthy Frogs and their filthy toilets. I’m a stranger in both my countries… Interestingly, Germans never seem to denigrate their hosts. They’re usually just lost and trying to find out how to arrive to where they want to be. Except when they’re in restaurants where they will all mumble for for half an hour, and some guy will bellow “Und ich hab’ gesagt: 'Horst, alles hat ein Ende, nur die Wurst hat zwei!”, then they all explode into raucous laughter. I don’t know, their jokes are always really rubbish.

Also, I hate it when they come up to me in Alsace and ask for directions directly in German. Go to hell, how many times do you need to be reminded that Alsace is France, not Germany? In those cases I always put on my worst French accent and direct them to completely the wrong place.

9

I was in Germany, staying at a little hotel in the country. Right in front of the hotel was a street sign giving the speed limit for tanks (or so I assume, it was a symbol that clearly represented a tank, and a “50”). This was something I had never seen in America, or elsewhere in Germany for that matter, so I went and took a picture of it. While I was standing there, some teenagers on bikes cruised past and one made a snide comment to the other about the nerdy American tourist taking pictures of street signs. So I yelled after them in (not fluent, but clearly understandable) German if they knew of anywhere I could go to watch the World Cup playoffs that night. One of the kids just about fell off of his bike, but neither of them said anything back to me.

10

I was walking once with my husband, who is Asian and slightly shorter than I am. I was wearing high-heeled platforms that day, so I was even taller than usual.

The neighborhood we were in has always been predominately Polish, but lately there’s been an influx of twenty-something hipsters from the Lower East Side. The two middle aged Polish women walking towards us must have assumed I was one of those fashion-victim Manhattanites, because they started commenting very loudly on how ridiculous it looks that such a tall white girl is with a short “yellow” guy. They seemed to be really disturbed by this.

I have never been taken for anything BUT Polish, so I was downright shocked. I didn’t really want to say anything mean, though, because: a. They probably knew my Grandmother and b. I didn’t want my husband to find out what they were saying and feel bad about it. So when they were about to pass us, I slowed down, turned my head and gave them my ugliest stare. I think they realized what was going on, because they shut up mid-cluck and remained silent at least until they were out of earshot.

11

I was at a park/popular teen hangout with one of my friends, who was born in Puerto Rico and moved to NYC, then CT, when she was in high school. However, she’s light-skinned with green eyes and light brown hair, so most people don’t immediately guess her background. The place we were at was in an area with a high Spanish-speaking population, but she was from out of state and didn’t know anyone there. A couple of guys walked by us and said something about us in Spanish, and my friend basically ripped them both new ones right on the spot.

Unfortunately I don’t speak Spanish, so she’d never tell me what was said. I could guess from the inflection though that whatever they said was of a sexual nature, and her reply was, well, not printable anyway.

12

When I was living in NYC I used to go to some piano bars in the Village. One night I was at on on Grove street and after a few minutes I realized the couple next to me was from Germany. They went on and on how great the music was, and then the woman started to rag just a bit how the woman certainly were not dressed all that well to come into such a nice place.
The woman turned to me and asked in English if she could have the ashtray on the table next to me.
I handed it to her and then said in German, “The reason the women don’t dress up to come here is because it is just considered a local neighborhood bar.”

The German woman went three shades of red, the two of them sat in silence for the next song and then they left.

Living in Berlin, I often overheard Americans making an ass of themselves and usually I would steer clear and let them fend for themselves - unless it was truly an emergency.

13

Well this isn’t really an eavesdropping story but it’s close. When I was in college I was a Spanish major and one day a guy gave me a letter that had been written to him in Spanish and asked if I could translate it. It started out “I’m really sorry I led you to believe we could be anything but friends.” I felt so bad I told him I wasn’t fluent enough yet.

14

I’m at my school, a wasteland after 2:15, staring into my locker. Three of Russian girls walk by. I don’t speak a word of Russian. Two, I suspect, are saying something insulting about me. I whip my head around, realizing a second later that I was giving them an unintentionally deadly stare (I was in a bad mood). They turn white, and Third Russian girl yells apologies back at me as they’re walking away.

15

It was a coffee shop in Seoul, where I was having a coffee with a Swedish-Korean friend of mine. As we were leaving, the waitress said to my friend “You are very pretty, what are you doing with that American, you could find yourself a much nicer Korean boyfriend”.
I was so suprised that I could think of nothing to do but laugh.
I think the waitress caught on.

16

I don’t know if this counts as eavesdropping or not, but one day back when when my wife and I were still dating, we bumped into one of her old school friends. Her friends wants to know all about me, but assumes I can’t speak any Japanese (this was in rural Japan). The conversation went something like this:

friend: how old is he?
me (in Japanese): 25
friend (still looking straight at my wife): where’s he from?
me: America
friend: (still not making eye contact): what kind of work does he do?
me: I teach English

The kicker was when, still talking directly to my wife not even slightly acknowledging that I’ve been answering her questions, she then said:

“wow, he speaks Japanese really well.”

17

The last few years I’ve begun the school year by flat out telling my students I speak Spanish since a lot of them think the ‘no profanity’ rule only applies to English. Year before last, a couple of weeks into the new semester, one of my students came to class with quite a lovely drawing started. I was surprised since the work he’d been doing indicated this improvement was the difference between a Yugo and a Rolls Royce in quality, never mind the shift in style. I didn’t say anything, just hovered, trying to see if he’d maybe gotten some major pointers in technique. Ha! The goof started telling his seatmate all about how his uncle had drawn the whole thing for him, how he was going to ace this stupid class and not break a sweat, such an idiot teacher, she couldn’t tell he was cheating, there’d be no problem keeping his sports eligiblity now, etc. all in Spanish with me standing not a yard away. He fell off his stool when I told him to go stand in the hall while I wrote him a referral for cheating. I told him the bad news in Spanish, of course.

18

Sublight, that one cracks me up! (Actually, they all do.)

The same once happened to an ex of mine. He had been in the U.S. for almost 20 years, and had graduated college here and been working ever since. His English was perfectly fluent, if heavily accented (and well, foreigners are certainly not an unusual phenomenon in the Chicago area).

We were at the house of an old friend of the family, and for an entire afternoon she insisted on talking to him using me as the English-to-English interpreter, asking me how long he’d been in the U.S., whether he wanted another hamburger, that sort of thing. (And, well, foreigners are certainly not unknown in the Chicago public school system, where she has taught for the past 20+ years.) If I hadn’t been so mortified, I would have been laughing hysterically. Luckily, he was laughing hysterically about it afterward.

19

In Hong Kong, walking round a market browsing stuff. Beaming little old lady behind the counter motions me to admire her merchandise and then says to her husband in Cantonese “Typical fucking gweilo, they’re always picking stuff up and never buying”.

A blonde friend in Tokyo heard a yakuza guy in a karaoke bar say “look, he’s got yellow hair. I wonder if his pubes are yellow too.”

20

Years ago, my aunt and I were out shopping and we stopped at Friendly’s to get an ice cream. My aunt is from Italy and even though she does speak basic English, we’ve always spoken in Italian. She’s also pretty funny and we have a tendency to give each other crap and just generally have a good time busting on each other and the rest of the world. So we stood there debating in Italian about whether to sit down in the restaurant part or just get something to go. She finally says, “Well, if we just get it to go we don’t have to pay a tip.” And we went off on some kind of wise-ass discussion about tips and restaurant service, laughing away. We get our ice cream, give the guy behind the counter the money and as he’s handing back the change, he looks at us with a smile and a twinkle in his eye and says, “grazie (thank you)” in a perfect Italian accent. Yep, ya just never know.