I kinda have this weird idea where I would hypothetically visit China (where I was born) some time in the future (like as a tourist), then I would go chat up some random foreigners in China, and pretend I don’t speak English, then later reveal I do speak English, and then they’d be so surprised like “OMG this Chinese person speaks perfect English?” (because I immigrated to the US as a kid). I kinda want to do this as a prank. I mean I know it sounds silly, but its like the reverse of those youtubers that learn Chinese and surprise Chinese people. I mean, they’d probably eventually figure out that I was grew up in a English speaking country, but its still funny to do this as a prank to confuse people (especially people who’s native language is Engish) 😅.
Anyways… what’s are your stories (or even hypothetical scenarios) involving languages that you want to share?
Kinda. It isn’t a very entertaining story.
I suck at Spanish, but I do speak a little. I rarely, however, use it because I sound like an idiot 5 year old.
Back in the day, I was in jujutsu class, rolling an doing groundwork. Literally rolling, as one of the warm-up exercises was doing various types of falls and rolls. Fun as hell.
One of the newer students would come to class after work, and his household had only one car, so his wife would watch.
I’d hear her talking to him during breaks, and saying things like peludo, and mono and simio, and I can’t recall what all. I didn’t recognize all of them, but she was basically saying I was a big, hairy monkey or ape.
I’m used to it. You don’t run around as hairy as I am without folks taking notice. But I was younger then, and her doing it multiple times in a session, almost every session they were there for annoyed me.
So one day, when I heard her, I just started running around, scratching my armpits making monkey noises.
Went right back to doing what I had been, hydrating. Got a few weird looks, but me doing stupid shit for entertainment wasn’t new.
In the changing room, after class, the guy said that he guesses I speak Spanish. I told him, in Spanish, only a little, and not good. He apologized for his wife. That was the end of it. No hassles, no big drama or anything. She stopped doing it, or at least switched to words I didn’t recognize at all.
See? not a great story.
But you’d be amazed how often people that think the people around them don’t speak their language will say things out loud that you’d normally only whisper. Like I said, I suck at Spanish, but I have an okay vocabulary despite that, and I hear some shit lol