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Beware of "secret" languages ;-)

  Tags: Turkish | Polish | Japanese
 Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages Post Reply
173 messages over 22 pages: 1 2 35 6 7 ... 4 ... 21 22 Next >>
Karakorum
Bilingual Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6572 days ago

201 posts - 232 votes 
Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written)*
Studies: French, German

 
 Message 25 of 173
09 November 2007 at 4:39pm | IP Logged 
William Camden wrote:
Captain Haddock wrote:
Karakorum wrote:
The thing that sucks (or maybe rocks) most about LA is that there are no secret languages. Everybody is busted because nobody can count on anything. I stopped counting on Arabic being a secret language when an Asian girl asked me why I just said ass in Arabic.


Hilarious!


I never realised LA was such a melting pot of cultural awareness.


It isn't. It's actually exactly as people imagine it to be: Superficial, great weather, and a lot of badly distributed money. But it is also extremely diverse (or at least many parts are). And you simply can't tell who comes from where (although Ohio is a good default assumption). Also people have very unusual interests and very unexpected boyfriends/girlfriends.
1 person has voted this message useful



TheMatthias
Diglot
Senior Member
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6249 days ago

105 posts - 124 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 26 of 173
13 November 2007 at 10:45pm | IP Logged 
I love these!!

Just the other day my friend and I were out with a group of friends and were annoyed by some of the girls. We decided to comment on them in Spanish, then we spiraled into a 15min convo in Spanish(I spoke as fast as I could just incase the girls knew some Spanish?) Luckily they did NOT speak Spanish, One of the girls actually asked me if I was a native speaker(Which was a pretty nice complement!)
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Metacognition
Newbie
United Kingdom
Joined 6511 days ago

23 posts - 28 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Spanish, Norwegian

 
 Message 27 of 173
01 June 2008 at 7:33pm | IP Logged 
I remember overhearing a group of German girls on a bus discussing how one of them fancied me. Felt very smug for the whole journey, then got up and said something briefly to them in German as I left.

I thought it was funny, anyway ;-)
5 persons have voted this message useful



brozman
Bilingual Tetraglot
Groupie
Spain
Joined 6059 days ago

87 posts - 106 votes 
Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan*, English, Japanese
Studies: Russian, Indonesian

 
 Message 28 of 173
02 June 2008 at 6:55am | IP Logged 
Metacognition wrote:
I remember overhearing a group of German girls on a bus discussing how one of them fancied me. Felt very smug for the whole journey, then got up and said something briefly to them in German as I left.

I thought it was funny, anyway ;-)


It also happened to me in Japan when I was 16! I was introduced to a Japanese girl in Japanese:

-His name is Sergi, he is the Spanish exchange student.
-He is handsome!
-He speaks Japanese.
-Oops...

Japan is a paradise for a normal European boy. :P I had never been called handsome before in Spain.
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APerfectCircle7
Newbie
United States
Joined 6049 days ago

23 posts - 27 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: German

 
 Message 29 of 173
09 June 2008 at 1:41pm | IP Logged 
William Camden wrote:
I was attending a trial in Turkey as part of a foreign delegation. Waiting outside the courtroom, I was speaking to a Belgian in English when a Turkish man who I suspected was a plainclothes policeman sidled up to us and started listening. I said in French, "He's listening to us. Let's change languages." We carried on in French and the man walked away.


Thats just too awesome. Really, I am going to be that way one day.
5 persons have voted this message useful



J-Learner
Senior Member
Australia
Joined 6033 days ago

556 posts - 636 votes 
Studies: Yiddish, English*
Studies: Dutch

 
 Message 30 of 173
15 June 2008 at 1:25pm | IP Logged 
Being young can have it's advantages too.

While conversing with some of my friends when we are particularly trying to not be understood we can speak English to such a degree that English speakers cannot understand us. That may involve using some words occasionally from other languages and plenty of in-jokes but it sure confuses even people our age.

I have never tried to write anything of it though...some perhaps not exactly appropriate hahaha.
1 person has voted this message useful



tricoteuse
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Norway
littlang.blogspot.co
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745 posts - 845 votes 
Speaks: Swedish*, Norwegian, EnglishC1, Russian, French
Studies: Ukrainian, Bulgarian

 
 Message 31 of 173
15 June 2008 at 1:38pm | IP Logged 
I've had two of these ;)

When we were in Scotland at a Whiskey Distillery in High School a lot of my classmates were commenting on how the owner of the distillery had probably had a little bit too much whiskey, in Swedish of course, and really, almost everyone had some sort of comment on him. Later we learned that he had asked our teacher if we wanted the tour in Swedish or English, since he spoke both.

The other week in Budapest I was out with my Norwegian boyfriend, his Norwegian (male) friend and that friend's Hungarian-Swedish (female) friend (both of them studies medicine there). The girl was veeeery drunk and as we were walking across the streets they started talking about her being on the hunt for a man, and as some french looking guys walk us by they made some funny/innapropriate comments on what she could do with them. On passing us by, they go "Well she's quite drunk...", in Swedish ;)
2 persons have voted this message useful



William Camden
Hexaglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 6275 days ago

1936 posts - 2333 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French

 
 Message 32 of 173
17 July 2008 at 8:57am | IP Logged 
APerfectCircle7 wrote:
William Camden wrote:
I was attending a trial in Turkey as part of a foreign delegation. Waiting outside the courtroom, I was speaking to a Belgian in English when a Turkish man who I suspected was a plainclothes policeman sidled up to us and started listening. I said in French, "He's listening to us. Let's change languages." We carried on in French and the man walked away.


Thats just too awesome. Really, I am going to be that way one day.


I have sometimes used Turkish as a "secret language", though it would not have worked in this particular situation, naturally.


1 person has voted this message useful



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