Many years ago I started work for a localisation company.

I was sitting in the break room having a coffee when a few of the French translators came in.

My French was a bit rusty but good enough that I realised they were talking about ‘the new guy’, ie me.

One of them said she thought I was a bit weird.

Another said she thought I was quite good-looking, a statement which the third vehemently disagreed with.

I let this carry on for a couple more minutes before washing up my coffee mug and preparing to get back to work. I paused in the doorway and said in French: “It’s true, I am a bit weird!”

As I walked down the corridor there was a moment or two of silence behind me and then they burst out laughing.

I recently went to play disc golf for the first time and I was there with my friend whose from India and doesn’t speak Finnish so we talk English. Well some stranger saw me struggling with my throws so he came to give me tips and he probably heard us speaking english and assumed I was a foreigner too so he spoke english to me too then despite the fact that we were both Finnish. Then again, maybe he knew and just didn’t want to exclude my friend. Funny situation nevertheless.

I am not Spanish, but I learnt it while leaving there some years ago. And I like languages, so I did my best to learn it as well as I can. Years later, I met my now Spanish husband while living in Germany. When I went first time with him to Spain, to meet the family, they were having a big family dinner.

Before eating, everyone just talked with the others in small groups, and I happened to be talking with my husband’s uncle( he is one of those that strayed to the right side of politics and likes to believe conspiracy theories and I think he does not like immigrants). Anyway, I was talking to him for a while, probably about living and working in Germany, I don’t remember.

But at some point, my now husband comes into the mini group and asks him:“So? What do you think of her Spanish, it‘s really good, right?“ He got auch a face of confusion, trying to make sense of the words, I had to laugh. He finally asked:“But…is she not Spanish?!“ Oh the satisfaction! He would be the kind of person saying that he would definitely detect someone outside of Spain. I do speak as they do in the north, so I use verb tenses differently than them. And also have some regional words from the north in my vocabulary. So I could fool him easier because of that.

At work the table next to me was empty so a supplier guy from Poland sat down there for the week he was working with us in Sweden. After a couple of days he got more and more frustrated. We only spoke in English because there were always someone else around.

At the end of the week he called his colleagues in Poland and told them:

“Those Swedish guys are so stupid, they don’t get it, they want us to take 9 women and give birth to the baby in one month!”

I don’t remember where I was, but I remember waiting for something and two women across from me were talking shit in Spanish about every not obviously Spanish speaking person who came in. I didn’t say anything, but at one point one of them said something that was just spot on and hilarious about this dude who walked in and I just started laughing, which let them know I understood them. They weren’t so talkative after that.

A half-American (it’s complicated) company I worked for went on a buying spree and bought a Swiss company that had some technology they wanted. When the Swiss technical and managerial leads came by the company headquarters to work on integration they were appalled at how slack our standards were compared to theirs.

How do I know this? (I mean I was just a lowly marketeer in a tech company; the most despised class.) Well, thing is, at one lunch hour I happened to join them in the elevator. I don’t look even slightly Germanic (Mom’s genes governs about 80% of my appearance) so they took it in stride and started saying some pretty mean things about my coworkers. And i just carefully listened in as we descended to the ground floor.

When the doors opened, I turned around and said in flawless Frankfurter German (with a slight hint of an English accent), “Des war echt en faszinierendes Gespräch; villeicht sollteste dat mal mit de Geschäftsführung bespreche.” (A Hessian dialect, as I said, to hammer the point home: what you’re seeing as grammatical error is my attempt to get how Frankfurters actually speak orally.) It translates roughly to “That was a fascinating conversation; perhaps you should have it with the management.”

It was cute watching large, fit, grown men suddenly look terrified at my oh-so-threatening 160cm, slim self.

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

My brother was at a restaurant with my mom once and he overheard the table across from them say something like “look at that man with that old lady” in Spanish. My brother went over to them and was like “that’s my MOTHER.”

One time I was with some of my friend’s family and his uncle spoke to me in Spanish, and I responded in English, but that was still enough to surprise my friend’s cousins. That in a part of the US where like half the people speak Spanish, yet it somehow is that uncommon for white people to know even the basics of Spanish.

There’s an accounting of this kind of event happening in the Catch Me if You Can novel. I can’t attest as to whether it’s true and unfortunately it’s been long enough that I don’t remember details, but I believe it’s primarily the protagonist overhearing two women talking about how attractive he is during a bus ride. I think at this point he’s in shackles, which could be considered to enhance the story.