jjimm, I hear ya. For some reason the honkies assume that non-chinese don’t understand “gweilo” whereas it is often the first and only word of canto that most “gweilo” do understand.
Hookay, I get this on an almost daily basis. However, one of my best stories was back in 1986 in Sichuan Province, when China hadn’t been very open to the west for long. I was with two college buddies travelling around. I forget where we were exactly but a whole crowd of people were talking about us. Quite rude actually, pointing, gesturing. For some reason, they were pretty interested in the size of my buddies nose. He had a pretty big Greek schnoze and the crowd, there must have been 20-30 people, were just going on and on. “Look how big his nose is” blah blah blah.
My buddy was getting pretty agitated. He didn’t even speak Chinese but knew they were talking about his nose. It was really getting uncomfortable.
Finally, I said really loudly:
“Where we come from in America, a big nose means a giant dick.”
That shut up the crowd. I told my buddies what I said, and they laughed and weren’t so pissed off any more.
Then, I hear one old guy in the crowd say to his friend:
“You know, I could just swear I heard that foreigner say In American, Big Nose Means a Giant Dick”
Then a shriveled old lady jumped in and said:
“You dumbass, that guy said in Chinese in American a big nose means a giant dick.”
When I was in Xian, I stopped to have lunch in a restaurant that had a fairly complicated way of operating their buffet. When I finally understood the system, a group of Japanese tourists walked in. The poor waiter tried to explain how everything worked in broken English, but he was obviously going nowhere and the Japanese tourists started mumbling to each other to try and piece together the pieces of sino-english they managed to understand into a coherent whole.
At this point, I interupted everybody and explained, in Japanese, the over-compicated buffet system. Everyone was kind of startled, but the worst came when they decided to not take my word for it and convened that they would wait another fifteen minutes for their tour guide to arrive and translate for them.
I also heard of two girls from the Irish-speaking part of Ireland (bear in mind that next to nobody speaks the language, even in Ireland), who were on a Tube train in London, eyeing up a good-looking fella opposite them. They were conversing in Irish and discussing his looks and his physique. Imagine their embarrassment when, as he was leaving the train, he turned to them, grinned, and said “go raith míle maith agat!”
yes, it if for that reason I plan taking up Irish.
My SO speaks it fluently (gone to all irish school), so we’d always have a language to speak between the two of us when abroad.
My native language is Flemsh, which in itself is a dialect version of Dutch. My regional dialect is called “Brugs” (meaning from Brugge, town where I was born), or “westflemmish”, as Brugge is the capital of West Flanders, the county. This particular dialect is very hard to understand, even other flemish speaking people have trouble understanding it. So if I learn Irish, and my SO learns my dialect, then Bob’s our uncle
OK my story isn’t as good as some of the ones I read, but hey! I might as well share.
I was on the airplane and I was waiting to go to the bathroom (What do people do in there for 30 mins?) So I was standing there and these two stewardesses were talking to each other in Dutch about the pilot and other gossip and then they were talking about me. “What is she still doing here?”, “Is something wrong with her?”
[Although this flight goes to the Netherlands there are usually only a few to none Dutch people onboard]
I then replied in Dutch that “I was fine and was waiting for the bathroom.” This made them VERY quiet, I dont think its very good publicity if onflight personal is gossiping about the pilot in front of passengers.
I have been waiting for another shot at something like this (It’s hilarious!!!) but nothing has happened yet!
Please tell me you had a snappy comeback to make this woman shut her face. PLEASE!
(I was born in Hong Kong, but I don’t have any particular loyalty to it. A stupid person is a stupid person no matter where they’re at.)
I refuse to have anyone in my house use the term “gweilo.” I don’t care if no one who can be offended by it is in earshot, it’s an ugly term and I won’t tolerate it under my roof.
Anyway, here’s my eavesdropping story, tangentally related but not as scandalous…
My wife and I were in Hawaii on our honeymoon. While driving around the islands one day sightseeing, we stopped in at a local dive shop, to consider going scuba diving. The shop owner comes out – a blond-haired blue-eyed tanned guy – and we start asking various questions. My wife’s English was rather poor at the time, so she would ask me questions in Cantonese, I’d ask them in English, then translate the answers back for her.
Anyway, after three or four times around, the guy figures out we’re speaking in Chinese, and talks to my wife directly. Needless to say, we were both pleasantly surprised, just because (a) I’ve gotten used to translating everything for my wife, and (b) she hadn’t ever met any Caucasians who could speak fluent Chinese before. But the really wacky part was that he only spoke Mandarin – which I don’t know. So we ended up in a three-language triad, with Cantonese, Mandarin, and English bouncing back and forth.
Ok not a Foreign language and I was not the ease dropper but the one to embaress the ease dropper.
Here is the scoop.
I am in Blockbuster looking for a movie, two younger men and walking all up and down the store jabbering away in what is obviously not english. The whole store heard their conversation but could not grok the words.
The two men grab a few movies pay and are out the door. I am in line behind another patron who pipes up loudly to the clerk, “I wish those people would just go back from where ever they are from!!!”
I of course being a smart ass and in a town I do no live was glad to lay into the lady in the effect of… “Shut up lady, I am sure they are going back to their moms basement as we speak.”
Puzzled? everyone there was, except my friend who was in the know.
Everybody had a good laugh after I explained the two men were speaking Klingon.
This is about a friend and not hilarious, but sort of neat.
This friend was working at a factory with a lot of recent immigrants and others from all over (he is blonde and blue eyed Central NY german stock). His foreman and his foreman’s wife were spanish-speakers (apparantly few others were) and would talk together in Spanish quite a bit, occasionally venting about the stupidity of various employees (my friend included).
He had taken 5 years of Spanish classes in school, and unlike most of us he actually retained enough of it to understand and carry on conversations 4 years later. He never let on that he could understand the couple, mostly because he liked them and didn’t want them to be embarassed (he’s like that).
One day, though, he cut his hand badly and shouted for help loudly in Spanish to the foreman on the other side of the floor. This got attention quicker than a random shout, and from the right person. My friend got a kick later out of the fact that the couple never insulted anyone in Spanish again (at least when he was around).
On a totally different note, when I was in college, there were a lot of Korean (as in Korean citizens studying in the US, not students of Korean ancestry) students in the design department, and for some reason many thought that it was OK to carry on loud conversations and SHOUT into cellphones in the computer labs as long as this was not done in English. Really used to cheese me off. I don’t want to hear other people jabbering, whether I understand them or not!
Okay, this is totally off topic, but I have to ask. X~Slayer(ALE), is the (ALE) part of your name a Diablo guild/clan tag? I seem to recall a clan in the ULGD with that tag and your name seems familiar.
Sorry for the hijack.
I was waiting in line at a bakery in Germany when some teenage boys walked in and stood behind me. They sized me up and one said to the rest, “Check out the tits on her”, at which point I shot them a look of death and hissed, “I understand what you’re saying!”. They slunk out, not a moment too soon!
Once, while in Playa del Carmen, Mexico (our cruise ship stopped there), my family and I approached a cab stop, obviously looking for a cab. A couple of cabbies were standing around, smoking and chattering, as we approached. When one saw us coming, he beckoned to us and then turned to speak to his friend. He probably just thought we would think he was saying goodbye, when he actually said something to the effect of “Not very many Gringos around this week-- maybe I’ll get a big fare from these people.”
When we sat down in the car I told him our destination in perfect Spanish! The look on his face was priceless.
Another one took place while I was in Japan. My boss (another American) and I were walking through a local park. A couple of boys looked at my boss and stared (my boss was about 6’9" tall). One of them said “Ooki Amerikajin” (“Giant American.”). My boss turned and said “Chibi Nihonjin” (“Little runt Japanese kids”). Priceless.
I forgot another one, though this wasn’t really eavesdropping. My husband is a letter carrier, and was talking with a Japanese woman who lives on his route; they get along very well and stop to chat now and then. She speaks pretty fluent English, but occasionally uses a Japanese word or two if there’s something that she can’t come up with the English word for. They got on the topic of height, and she was talking about how she didn’t really know of any Japanese men who were the height and build of my husband - over 6’ tall plus very broad in frame. She used the word “oni” to describe him, and in mock horror, my husband said, “You think I’m an ogre?!” She started laughing a little, and insisted that she meant it in a good way - which she did, she was just trying to come up with an analogy.
I just remembered one. I was teaching English to some little kids in Korea. They were under the impression that I couldn’t understand any Korean, so they would flat out curse and be disrespectful in class.
While they were technically right in that I can’t hold a decent conversation in the language, I am pretty proficient in my basic words, my foods, and, of course, the curses. So the first time I heard them mutter a “ssshi’pal!”, I whipped quickly around, and in my very best Korean shouted, “Ya! What did you say, bastard child?” That shut them up.
From then on, they couldn’t be sure if I really could understand them or not. They tested me by throwing random inappropriate words into their conversation, and I caught on to a lot of them, but not all. I mostly spoke to them in English, but made sure to look exasparated when they didn’t understand some things, and finally explain it to them in Korean. By the end of the semester, they were quite confused.
I lived for two years in Budapest, Hungary. My sister came to visit and we took her to an out-of-the-way place to eat not in the tourist areas.
My son asked a foolish question to which my sister answered an old saying of my dads:
“Why don’t chickens pee?”
“What?” said my wife.
I didn’t want my son to learn this so I said so I did what I always do in from to the kids; I answered in Hungarien:
“Miert nem chirke pisi?”
Suddenly the resturant got very quiet around the table. I guess they were waiting for an answer.
I was stationed there for a year in the army. My roommate was a KATUSA (Korean Augument to the US Army–basically a Korean soldier working for–but not under the command of–the Americans), and he taught me how to read and write. I taught myself a few phrases, and whenever I hung around Seoul, I used to get stuff from the food stalls on the street.
I’d look and smile as they’d yammer to each other in Korean. Upon leaving, I’d thank them, I thanked them in Korean. More than half the time, they looked flustered and embarrased, which probably meant they were talking about me. I never let on that I didn’t understand and had a grand time.
Oh, and as for . . .
Actually, this is pretty funny. Not racous laughter funny, but funny in a cute sort of way.
