Bilingual Dine & Dash Pwnage (old)

[Dave1982]

I was reminded of this story by another thread and didnt' want to hijack. This is a story my father has told many times.

I should point out that this happened long before I was born, so odds are the details of the story have become muddled over time.

My paternal grandfather (who I never met; he died ten years before I was born) was full-blooded Chinese, born in China, and emigrated to the US. He had a number of jobs over the years and ended up as a technical writer at Raytheon, but before that, he managed a Chinese restaurant in the Boston area for a while (before it went under).

Then, as now, it was typical that most of the staff at a Chinese restaurant was Chinese, and they often spoke Chinese amongst themselves. However, this hardly meant they didn't understand English. My grandfather in particular was fluent in English (as evidenced by the fact that he later had a job as a writer).

One day, a group of college students came in for dinner. Upon hearing the staff chatting away in Chinese, they somehow managed to leap to the conclusion that none of the employees understood English. They therefore felt safe in openly and loudly discussing their plans to dine & dash.

Unfortunately for them, the staff DID understand English, but these idiots didn't know a lick of Chinese, so they didn't know that the waitstaff had reported everything they heard to my grandfather, and that he'd already hatched a plan to deal with them.

After they finished eating, they all got up and headed for the door, thinking they were home free. So imagine their surprise when they discovered my grandfather standing in the doorway, holding a meat cleaver.

"Is there a problem here, gentlemen?"

I would imagine that the problem for these idiots at this point was bladder control, but they DID pay for their food that day.

[Mr Hero]

I LOVE bilingual pwnage stories because I myself am bilingual (Spanish my 2nd). I'm eagerly waiting for the opportunity when I can pwn someone with my languages.

[poofy_puff]

I once had a boyfriend who was white/American but spent his early childhood in Mexico... He worked as an EMT in Lawrence, MA (Dave you know what Lawrence is like) and had quite a few stories similar to your grandfather's experience!

[LillFilly]

Ha! A meat cleaver! He should have asked if they were volunteering for the 'soup of the day.'

I wish I was bilingual.... Sigh.

[Salted Grump]

I'm bilingual. English, and Swearing. :P

[Red_Dazes]

There is a reason one of my cardinal rules is "Never Assume You Know Something About Anyone Else." I've watched many of my friends dig themselves into holes by being stupid about languages.

[EvilEmpryss]

I'm bilingual. English, and Swearing. :P

In that case I'm... whatever it means to be able to swear in English, Spanish, Italian, German, Creole, and Korean.

[Bloodsoul]

The only other language I know is HTML. I'll never get to pwn nobody.

*sniffles*

[Misanthropical]

I don't speak Spanish, but I understand it (go figure) so I have caught people saying very rude things about the short white woman with glasses (me!). They are utterly shocked that I understood them.

It's funny to watch people come up to my very Italian looking husband and start speaking to him in Italian, which he doesn't speak. Apparently, not only does he look very Italian, but our last name is a common one in Italy which means he should speak Italian, at least according to them.

[Amina516]

Ive had spanish speaking people feign not knowing english to the mostly caucasian staff i work with when they want them to do something or answer questions they dont want to..then i walk in the room. And holy shit, its a miracle. After i walk in, they cant talk AT ALL now or they can now understand/speak english.

[Merriweather]

The only other language I know is HTML. I'll never get to pwn nobody.

*sniffles*

Same here. English, HTML, COBOL, FORTRAN, etc, etc.

I did once work in a company where most of the programmers only knew COBOL. One guy who was "multilingual" had been told a joke that the punch line depended on knowing FORTRAN, and spent an hour searching the building to find anyone else who knew it so he could tell it. Once he found me, we had a great time laughing our asses off at a joke no one else could get, though.

Yeah, I'm a geek. Been that way since the late 70's.........

[Supermarket Slave Girl]

I speak 2 languages myself, English and Australian

[DGoddessChardonnay]

Same here . . .but the two I speak are English and Redneck.

Try combining the two sometime . . .it can be hysterically funny.

[Captain Trips]

I've gotta admit, I only know two languages. English and Bad English. (badaboom?)

[Shalom]

Never assume that someone doesn't understand you.

Arnold Fine, editor of the Jewish Press, once wrote of an Italian immigrant who moved into his neighborhood in the Lower East Side, back in the thirties. Everyone else in the building was Jewish, so naturally he and his family learned to speak perfect Yiddish long before they learned English. This was useful to him, as he was a cloth merchant; most cloth was made by Italians then, and most clothing factories were Jewish-owned, so he could communicate with both his customers and his suppliers. So his wife and daughter were in a clothing store, looking at coats and discussing them in Italian; having made a decision, they asked the salesman in broken English how much it would cost.

Salesman hollers at boss in the back, in Yiddish: "Hey Chaim, how much for this green coat for these Italians?" Boss hollers back, "Tell her $45, but if she looks like running away, you can go down as low as $15."

I'll omit most of the bargaining, (he filled up a whole column with the original story) but finally she got him down to $30. Then she switches to fluent Yiddish and snaps, "How come you are asking me so much? I heard the boss tell you $15!" Salesman is about to swallow his false teeth. Meanwhile the boss, who hasn't heard her say this, hollers again "You can even go down to $10, I think the lining is torn!" and the salesman shouts back "Chaim, shut your mouth! She hondles [haggles] better than you!"

Another example. I remember a story told me by a friend who is a Sephardic Jew. The Middle Eastern counterpart to Yiddish is Ladino, which is essentially 15th century Spanish written in Hebrew characters. There is much rabbinical literature written in Ladino, and many Jews from North Africa and the Middle East are quite fluent in it, which means that they can generally understand modern Spanish (and Portuguese) as well.

So this fellow was driving up to a bungalow colony in the Catskills from his house in Brooklyn to stay for the summer. (People got into the habit of this years ago when air conditioners were rare and expensive, to get out of the heat of the city, and it's become a tradition even though now there's no real reason for it. I used to go as a child, and so did most of the people we knew.) He was taking along his live-in babysitter, who was Hispanic, and another babysitter employed by a friend of his who was at the same colony. These two women were chatting in Spanish in the back seat, not realising that he could understand them perfectly. One of them says to the other, "You know I don't understand these Jews. They have such beautiful houses in Brooklyn, and then they take themselves up to these miserable little shacks in the mountains and stay there for two months. What's up with that?" and the other one says "I don't know, maybe they're trying to keep themselves humble..." He was trying so hard to stifle his laughter at this that he nearly drove off the road.

Same fellow also told a story about a friend of his who was a jewelry wholesaler. He was visiting a jewelry store in the Bed-Stuy area of Brooklyn, which was run by another Sephardi, and they were chatting in Hebrew. Suddenly the door opens and in walks this enormous man, visibly not Jewish, with a huge gold ring in his nose. Salesman nudges the storekeeper and comments, quoting Proverbs 11:22, "נזם זהב באף חזיר" (nezem zahav be'af chazir, "a gold ring in a pig's snout").

Big guy grins at him and says, "מה נשמע?" (What's happening, dude? in Hebrew.)

Turns out Big Guy knew Hebrew. My friend said the salesman wanted to just die right there on the spot, so he wouldn't have to feel it when the guy was pounding him into the earth. Good thing the big guy had a good sense of humor, so the salesman didn't wind up as a greasy spot on the floor of the store, but he seriously wanted to fall into a hole and pull it in after him.

So it's never a good thing to assume you can comment without being understood. It tends to lead to embarrassment.

(Oh, one more. A friend of ours from my parents' synagogue is as religious as I am and also speaks perfect Yiddish, but he's a tradesman of some sort, so he typically dresses in a flannel shirt and a baseball cap. He was in a grocery, in line behind a woman with a full cart. The cashier says to the first customer in Yiddish, "Maybe you can let the sheygetz go first, he's only got a few items." (Sheygetz is a derogatory (and offensive) term for a non-Jew, and is occasionally used to refer to an irreligious Jew, which usage is every bit as offensive.) So he gets up to the counter, and she asks him in English what she can get him. He replies in Yiddish, "The sheygetz wants two pounds of rye bread...")