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. |
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Hilarious! |
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I never realised LA was such a melting pot of cultural awareness. |
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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.
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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 ;-)
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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 ;-) |
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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. |
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Thats just too awesome. Really, I am going to be that way one day.
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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.
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tricoteuse Pentaglot Senior Member Norway littlang.blogspot.co Joined 6681 days ago 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 ;)
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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. |
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Thats just too awesome. Really, I am going to be that way one day. |
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I have sometimes used Turkish as a "secret language", though it would not have worked in this particular situation, naturally.
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