Multilingual Redditors, What is your "They didn't realize I spoke their language" story?

Im Chinese, but i dont speak mandarin and only know the basics of cantonese (enough to pick up from context what most things mean).

I was "affectionately" called a banana (mainly because i started calling myself that) so a lot of the mainland chinese kids in my school spoke english instead of their variation of chinese to me and i never bothered to speak cantonese at all.

So thats the set up, in 11th grade i shared a table group with two mainland chinese girls who spoke cantonese to each other. For half a year I randomly listened in on their conversations and they would say things about me like how weird it was I didnt speak chinese, how i looked (not good), and howd they make me check and do some of their work in group projects. I let this go on till the end of the year and said to them in cantonese "thanks for everything". They were shocked and embarrassed and asked me if i knew all along.

Thats bout it, they were pretty so i didnt really do or say anything back, that and there was no benefit in confronting them(mainly the pretty thing though)

/r/AskReddit Thread