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Beware of "secret" languages ;-) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages |  | |
| mrhenrik Triglot Moderator Norway Joined 6076 days ago 482 posts - 658 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English, French Personal Language Map | Message 105 of 173 17 April 2010 at 3:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Somewhat related, a co-worker of mine told me a story from when she went off to holidays
somewhere down south (guessing somewhere like France, Greece, Spain - one of the Scandinavian tourist traps). She'd been talking liberally about everything, including the waiters and people nearby, with her friends in Norwegian the whole trip - especially while eating at restaurants. When they got back they had dinner at a Norwegian restaurant and forgot Norwegian wasn't as secret any more. Apparently they made a kind of snappy comment at the waiter which she didn't quite appreciate. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Smart Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5336 days ago 352 posts - 398 votes Speaks: Spanish, English*, Latin, French Studies: German | Message 106 of 173 17 April 2010 at 11:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
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First, awesome thread!
Second, I have yet to use secret languages :) However I have seen people who have. Best example is a Czech couple speaking in Czech outside the bagelry. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5331 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 107 of 173 22 April 2010 at 6:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Some years ago a Norwegian friend had brought over her boyfriend from Peru, but since he beat her up, they split up before I actually got to meet him. One evening we were dining in town, and she showed me her bruises and told all about the abuse she had suffered at the hands of John (which curiously enough was his name, in spite of being Hispanic)and I felt so sorry for her.
Going home on the metro I sat next to some people from Latin-America, but I did not reveal to them that I spoke Spanish, and due to my extremely Nordic look, I am never expected to. During their conversation I suddenly realized that the guy sitting next to me was in fact John! He was telling the same story that my friend had (minus the abuse, pluss accusations of her breaking up with him because she was a racist. (Given the fact that she has had 90% non-Europeans as boyfriends and is now married to an Iranian I do not think that is very likely.) Anyhow, he was trying to flirt with the young Latin-American woman next to him, and at the same time going on about the raw deal he had had. As we were approaching my stop and I was getting up to get off, he was saying to his female friend: "I do not understand why she would break up with me, how could she do anything so insulting to me!" And I just turned, looked him straight in the eye, and said in Spanish: "That is because Norwegian women don't like to be beaten up, John", and then turned to his friend: "And frankly I do not think Latin-American women like that either, or what do you say, mam". And then I left the train. Before the doors closed I turned around and looked. The first seconds he looked like he had turned into a statue of salt, such was his shock at being spoken to by name, by a complete stranger, a Norwegian who obviously knew the details of his story. Then he turned to his friend yelling, "But I did it because she disrespected me, I could not tolerate that as a man!" - and then the doors closed. I just thought "busted", and figured that at least he would probably have less chances of chatting up that woman, who seemed really nice. 49 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5332 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 108 of 173 25 April 2010 at 12:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Solfrid Cristin, that's an awesome story!
I never really used a secret language to insult someone but I have noticed that whenever my family and I used to be in France during our summer holidays we would talk about a bit more personal things in public in Dutch and we also were more frank about what we thought of the price and quality of things in shops and stuff. This never turned into anything embarrassing though. I've also been insulted in Papiamentu once which my best friend translated word for word for me afterwards. The funniest one to ever happen to me ironically featured a couple of Britons who thought we (me an my friends) didn't understand English. We were on holiday in England and we were on a tiny little train station waiting for our train. We were speaking Dutch amongst ourselves and a couple of kids our age sitting close to us started talking about us, thinking we were German. They were daring each other to impersonate Hitler in front of us (one eventually did) and saying how ugly our language sounded and more insulting things I don't quite remember. Eventually one of them addressed us and when I said "We're from Holland" her face fell and she asked "You speak English" which was met with a resounding "YES" from all eight of us. They all fell silent for a couple of seconds until a guy sitting next to the girl, who had been the most vocal of them all, turned to her and said "which means they understood every word of what you just said". They then asked us whether Holland was a province in Germany (NO) and whether we spoke German in the Netherlands (NO). Their ignorance was quite staggering. What really surprised me was how often this kind of thing happened during the week we were there, albeit less hilariously. Every time we opened our mouths in shops people standing right next to us would announce to their friends "They're German" and proceed to tell each other how ugly they thought our language sounded. The English seem quite unaware of how widely they are understood by people of other nationalities. 15 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| psy88 Senior Member United States Joined 5588 days ago 469 posts - 882 votes Studies: Spanish*, Japanese, Latin, French | Message 109 of 173 25 April 2010 at 11:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
I am impressed that you can consider what happened to you to be "the funniest" and "hilarious." You seem to be extremely patient and/or forgiving. Is that just your personality or a national characteristic? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6139 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 110 of 173 26 April 2010 at 12:35am | IP Logged | |||||
I agree! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5332 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 111 of 173 26 April 2010 at 3:50am | IP Logged | |||||
Thank you for the compliment. I don't consider myself to be all that patient or forgiving though, I just try to be open minded and not too sensitive about things. I thought the situation was funny because those kids thought they were embarrassing us but they ended up being extremely embarrassed themselves. I was also with friends so that makes it easier to laugh something like this off together. I wasn't offended by the situation because basically, when someone is rude enough to march around in front of me while holding two fingers underneath their nose like a mustache and the other hand raised in the Nazi salute, all I can do is just be completely flabbergasted at their complete lack of civilization. I mean, these were ignorant and rude people who could not have pointed out my country on a map if their lives had depended on it; it wasn't worth getting upset over. Besides, I like to think this encounter with me and my friends effectively rid them of any ideas of Holland being part of Germany. :P As for being called German; I'm kind of used to it by now. Of course I dislike being mistaken for another nationality because I'm rather proud of where I'm from but it is what it is and I can't really blame people for confusing German and Dutch because though it's easy for me to hear the difference I understand it isn't for people who don't speak either language. As for the Dutch in general, I think we do have a bit of a reputation for being laid back (that may have more to do with the drugs though :P). On general, the Dutch are very unpatriotic and we strongly believe in freedom of speech so we don't easily take offense because we believe everything should be discussable. We also have a sense of humor that's rather like the English one: everything is to be mocked, especially ourselves. Taking yourself too seriously is considered wrong because it limits your vision and mockery is a good way to cut to the core of things in a lighthearted way. I've heard comedians make rather cutting jokes about Dutch colonialism (i.e. the robbing of other countries) and sensitive issues like immigration, Islam and racism and everybody loves them. Edited by ReneeMona on 27 April 2010 at 12:20am 8 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| ruskivyetr Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5478 days ago 769 posts - 962 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian, Polish, Modern Hebrew | Message 112 of 173 26 April 2010 at 4:53am | IP Logged | |||||
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I love this thread :)! I have a bunch of stories that fit perfectly here.
One day I was walking around a store while on vacation in the Caribbean. There was a German girl and her boyfriend about my age right near me. They were talking and she teased him: "You're not getting into my pants tonight...", followed by some VERY interesting, detailed conversation about their sex life. I was trying the whole time not to laugh out loud. I revealed the fact that I spoke German when the girl accidentally spilled some water on the floor and said sorry in English to me, to which I replied: "Oh it's fine, it's just water" in German :). She turned really red because she was just talking about her escapades in bed with her just as red boyfriend. Another time was a week ago actually, when I was on a train. I sat down in my seat when a group of Russian teens about my age filled the seats around me. They were jabbering away and one said something along the lines of "Nobody here can understand us." (I only caught it because he was the only person speaking, and he wasn't speaking very fast). They started talking and making remarks around the people in the car. Well, they made a slight comment about me (I know it was about me because they said "The guy in the black jacket" about 5 times, and I was the only one wearing a black jacket). I didn't understand specifically WHAT they said, but I geared up, turned the them, and said: "Вы знаете, что я вас могу понимать." I got up and moved cars just in case they tried to pry any more conversation out of me, which I wouldn't be able to participate in, and then they would know I didn't really understand them. It was still fun though :). 9 persons have voted this message useful |
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