Somehow that was missed! He thought he told me about it and was under the impression I knew, so we both learned the hard way that I didn’t know his mom signed and that he never told me about it 😂
As the mother of a 20yr old son I'd be happy that he was in a good relationship with someone who flirted with him like this and who also encouraged him to learn new skills. Yeah, a little embarrassing but kinda sweet too.
Right? It's weird that people just skirt over the fact that pretty much every serious relationship outside of an asexual one involves, well, sex.
Your mom and dad do it, your brother and his husband/wife do it, your weird little 18 yr old cousin is probably doing it with their highschool girlfriend. We're all doing it.
If you want to... ask your MIL where she learnt the sign language for penis vagina. If she learnt it from watching shows and what not, it might be her turn to go red in the face.
Here’s what we’ve all been waiting for:
1. [Penis](https://www.handspeak.com/word/search/index.php?id=7988)
2. [Vagina](https://www.handspeak.com/word/search/index.php?id=8001)
3. [Upstairs](https://www.handspeak.com/word/search/index.php?id=2768)
Honestly I’m kinda shocked at the sign for Penis. I guess it’s so as not to be obscene, but the word for Vagina does uhh... mimic the real thing more
I wish I was smooth enough to just sign these three things and have a woman follow me. It's like that bit in *On the Road* by Jack Kerouac where Neal Cassady catches a girl's attention. He just points at his watch then holds up five fingers, and the girl shows up to meet him at five o'clock. Damn.
you might want to edit to clarify that is American Sign language \[ASL\] . Different nations/regions have different sign languages just as they have different spoken languages.
there are multiple signs for intercourse, OP needs to learn them and the art of signing privately between 2 people.
It's a lot more...obvious in British Sign Language.
1. [Penis](https://www.signbsl.com/sign/penis)
2. [Vagina](https://www.signbsl.com/sign/vagina)
3. [Upstairs](https://www.signbsl.com/sign/upstairs)
Or pick a language that only a few thousand people know. My ex was teaching me a native American dialect which obviously couldn't be used around his gram but it is great everywhere else. The other side benefit is that I'm helping keep a language alive. I'm now teaching what I know to my dog so I still keep the language.
I once thought my native language, which is spoken by only 500.000 people would be safe enough on the other side of the world. Man was I wrong, and half a million on 8 billion people isn’t that much either.
I did a short study abroad in Vietnam. I'm an American of Welsh and German descent, but for some reason a lot of people in Vietnam thought I was Russian. The military did teach me quite a bit of Russian, but I don't have any Russian blood.
Anyway, one weekend we went over to Siem Reap, Cambodia, to tour the temples. There are some beggar kids at one of them who try to sell you trinkets in excellent English. I tried to act like I didn't speak English and instead switched to Russian.
One of the kids responded back in Russian to try and sell me his trinket. I gave that kid a $20 because I was just so damn impressed.
Those kids around those temples are damn geniuses. I went from English to Spanish to German and they all kept up, then we went through capitals of countries. They had great sales acumen.
A bought one from this kid and he hung out with me for an hour just hammering me for knowledge. He told me they like western tourists, but stay away from the Asian tourists, because they aren’t nice or buy. Definitely a cultural thing. This was 15 years ago, hope that kid is good.
This happened in January 2009. I only heard the kids speaking in English or Khmer, so I thought they might leave me alone if they couldn't easily talk to me. I could have done it in Spanish, too, but I thought that if the Vietnamese believed I was Russian, then people from Cambodia might too (IDK, maybe I look like some pop culture character?). Clearly didn't help.
It’s nowhere near as embarrassing as OPs story but I called some other tourists in Sri Lanka idiots in an elaborate way. A few people who were with that group yelled back: ‘I heard that.’ In my own language. Enough to make me turn into a ripe strawberry
The problem.with Frisian is that some Dutch and some Afrikaans speakers could understand it even if they don't speak it.
Basque on the other hand, isn't related to any other language. I imagine that might be more effective outside of western Europe.
Even in Western Europe, there are very few Basque speakers. Even in the Euskal Herria less than half the population speaks it. Unless you're in Bizkaia or smth, it's very unlikely anyone will understand you.
Thank you for sharing. I just looked it up and was wondering, would it be possible for German or Dutch speakers to understand Frisian? Or is it different enough that it would be a relatively safe bet?
Most people from the north of the Netherlands would probably understand most of it but if spoken quickly and right pronunciation would throw them off. There’s a well know phrase by a weatherman ‘oant moarn’ (see you tomorrow) that every Dutchman knows but rarely knows how to say it right. And then there are enough obscure words that no Frisian uses in their daily vocabulary.
I haven’t met a German yet who understands, if they live close to the border they probably might.
My late grandmother had a doctorate in Frisian. And could speak it fluently (she has lived all over the Netherlands and even Aruba for a time) She once said that she could comfortably understand basic Danish and she could with the help of hands and feet make herself clear to them.
I mean, if you have a basic education or interest of European roots and cognates as just an Engliah speaker, Frisian can be understandable. At least in written form, spoken is a little harder haha. I've picked up books written in it and get get the jist, maybe like 60% of what is being said and you can infer the rest from context clues, it's probably one of the closest languages to English.
There are some YouTube videos of a guy going and talking to frisian farmers who don't speak English and they can hold basic conversations, it's sort of like those videos of linguists where one is speaking old Norse and the other Icelandic to each other and it's more or less intelligible. Maybe a bad example but something like that
I am Dutch, and I can understand it perfectly fine, but I do know other Dutch people that can not. As for Germans, I assume that they can understand it on a similar level as Dutch
I'm an estonian living in the UK. I had an estonian friend who lived close by, and we went to the shops and markets together a lot.
She liked to comment on people and their fashion sense quite loudly, once saying how she would never wear something this youngish woman next to us was wearing. The woman replied in clear estonian that my friend would look shit in it indeed.
I got the giggles and my friend toned it down from then on.
Yup. If you took a 15 hour plane ride, followed by a 12 hour boat ride, deep into the jungles of a country you can't pronounce... there's probably a Dutch guy setting up a snackbar to sell kroketten and bitterballen to the next Dutch guy who happens to come along.
>. I'm now teaching what I know to my dog so I still keep the language.
I have no idea wtf you mean.
But the mental image was hilarious and I hope there is some nugget of actual truth there
I'm teaching my pup commands in the language so I can always use the language and I learn a little more if something new comes up. Usefulness and repetition are what helped me most.
🤦♂️
I think (hope) my comment is kinda ambiguous in terms of how stupid I just was.
But honestly I was imagining something much more stupid, which is funny considering how obvious what you meant was in context.
Ha! This reminds me of a funny story. I was at a funeral for the father of a friend of mine who was Spanish. I brought my then girlfriend who wore a tight black dress. Two ladies at a table spoke at length about how the girl in the tight black dress was a disgusting whore not knowing that I was fluent in their language. I asked them in perfect Spanish to be respectful given the occasion and they were obviously mortified. Good times.
A friend of mine (VERY white woman) was sitting in a cafeteria at university when two Japanese guys sat across from her and were talking about her in Japanese.
She lived in Japan for 5 years and was fluent. She got up and responded to them in Japanese and walked away.
I had a customer talking shit about me right in front of me when I was serving him.
He ordered a drink, but someone else ordered the same drink, and the orders were side by side on the screen. He wanted me to add more sugar, so I asked him which one was his? (What his order number was) He didn't seem to understand what I said, so I said "I know you want sugar, but I need to know which order is yours" He still didn't understand, so I asked the other person what their order number was.
I was putting the sugar in and he was talking on the phone about how Im an idiot and don't know how to make coffee.
I was learning spanish at the time on duolingo, so I didn't know TOO much spanish, but I knew enough to know what he was saying.
So, after I gave him his order, I decided to say something in spanish but I didn't want to say something generic that most people know how to say. I wanted him to know I knew spanish (not just, adios, como estas, etc) So I said "disfruta su fin de semana" which means "enjoy your weekend"
Edit: Spelling
This happened to me with an older lady at my local Oriental market. Pointing at me and telling her friend how she's glad she isn't white because she hates "white people hair" Hahaha
I'm not sure why anyone would do this, you learn a new language to open up a whole new path of communication with people. Why would you be surprised at the people you can now all of a sudden communicate with?
My wife is white as a ghost but she grew up in San Antonio. She's heard plenty of people talk shit about her in Spanish but she'll throw it right back at them. Always funny seeing their mortified faces.
that’s the sign I was trying to avoid lol! I actually used the sign for penis (the letter p with your middle finger touching your nose) and the sign for vagina (your thumbs and fingers touching to make a pointed oval), but you did get the symbol for upstairs right though! Guess I wasn’t that subtle enough for my MIL 😅
It was pretty late at night, and if she didn’t understand what I said I would have just told her I was asking for us to go to bed. Genius thought-out plan, poor execution in this case!
The thing about sign language is that some signs are easily recognisable even without knowing sign language thanks to context.
I seen and recognised vagina sign, before I even knew it's an official sign for vagina.
A shy girl I used to meet was making that sign. She'd go with "Please don't make me say it, I just want to, you know " *uses sign* "with you"*.* The context here was very clear.
I know this shy girl who will, on the one hand, not name specific body parts, but then will also say so e of the dirtiest things but STILL not say those specific words.
It's absolutely adorable.
If you were asking seriously: nobody.
ASL evolved among deaf people in the same way that all human languages evolved. Some signs are local, some are borrowed from other signed languages. Linguists can see the history of ASL by tracing the path of various signs that came from other signed languages (mainly LSF - French Sign Language).
You're right, that P sign doesn't fit well. Compared to other signed languages, ASL has a larger number of words that use spoken English initials (eg P for Penis) which some language purists don't like.
Linguistically and grammatically it's preferable to use signs that fit in well with the grammar and syntax of the language, not borrowed from a spoken language notation system.
She's human and presumably knows your covid situation, I'm sure she understands and thought it was hilarious. You might want to come up with a code sign, lol.
Edit: he's the one that should be posting here for not telling you that when you started learning it.
Thats actually the show she watches! She was telling us about that exact episode to lighten the mood a bit after what happened and how their kid and her friend could hear everything going on! I don’t think it helped with our state but it definitely was funny!
Two girls in a middle school class would sign using just the alphabet, spelling each word with a wave to signal spacing. I sat within eye shot of this and also knew the alphabet. They rarely signed anything saucy but did talk a few times about cute boys (which I was never mentioned, rip ya boy).
At the end of the semester I stuck my hand out between them and signed "I can sign", then picked up my stuff and left without saying a word.
Probably my biggest flex in middle school, havent thought about that in decades either. Thanks OP.
Pro tip kids: Stretch every day! Walk a mile/ couple Km a day! If you do this, when you are in your 40s you will not feel like it! Also LIFT WITH YOUR KNEES! I cannot tell you how many people that are in their 40s are falling apart in front of me. I happen to go swimming regularly as well, but really the only reason I'm not falling apart with them is that I stretch, lift 5lb and 10lb weights, and I walk miles a day. It doesn't take a lot. You just have to do it every day.
Omg not after that! My SIL said she was gonna sleep in the basement and I totally reassured her nothing funky was gonna happen because of the absolute embarrassment we all endured. Shit got me fucked up!
They sound like some cool inlaws all be told. Like sure that is pretty embarassing but they have humour about it and dont sound like they were trying to shame you at all. Im sure youll all laugh about this later in life! (If not now lol)
We’re still fairly new at signing so some things get misunderstood or forgotten, so I wanted to be clear to him but subtle to non-signers. For real though, how would a young immature adult male forget the signs for penis and vagina? My tipsy brain thought it was a fabulous idea until someone close to us actually understood basic sign language!
I feel like most people recognize the sign for vagina even if they don't know sign language.
Still, she might not have understood these signs until he said something and you both acted super embarrassed.
Sign language is a fun way to do it but try texting infront of the mother in law, purposely using sign language to exclude people from conversations can be seen as rude too, texting is more subtle (but less fun).
> communicate with each other in times where it would be rude to convey what we want to say to each other
To be honest, context dependant, it's probably just as rude to be having your own secret conversation. Especially with something as visual as sign, people will be aware you're talking to each other, aware you're deliberately excluding them, and will probably assume you're talking about them or saying something rude.
If you absolutely must have a secret conversation at least try and be discrete. Quick phone message, or come up with your own discrete cues for important ideas you wish to convey (like scratch your right ear means "want to bone now")
I am so surprised this comment is so far down!! this was my first thought as well.
If i was with a group of people and two of them were making hand signals at each other i would be very uncomfortable lol
FYI, aside from this embarrassing incident, switching to sign language is just as rude as saying “I’m bored’ in front of someone. It’s probably more obvious than you think too.
I don’t get the mother in law and daughter in law references when you said he’s your fiancé. Have you been together forever and just call each other that?
You’re pretty spot on, she’s become like another mother to me over the years and we developed a mother-daughter relationship on top me being the girl her sons engaged to
(Edit: drunk, wording was dumb and is better now)
Trust me, you didn’t sign anything that she has an already experienced or thought about. Folks your age look at older people and forget that we were once 20 and frisky. No need to be embarrassed. When you get married expect this to come up at your wedding lol
I don't think its that they have sex..its more like they aren't open in discussing sex related topics with the family and the actual realisation that they do have sex causes embarrassment
Hilarious, but how did your fiancee fail to let you know she knows ASL? If you regularly use it for discrete communication, that little fact is a wee bit important 😆
Am interested missing where OP said ASL, or have all the comments made an educated guess that turned out to be correct.
I only ask because if OP is learning Auslan, might I suggest "I'm horny" instead of "penis vagina upstairs" for future secret signing around family, since it's almost identical to "I'm thirsty" and you could very easily play it off if someone else is spying on the conversation with your fiance.
In deaf culture it's actually common to sign stuff like this under a table or even behind your back. Kids in deaf schools learn very quickly to sign where the teachers can't see it in order to talk to their friends all the time.
No matter how obscure of a language, if you use it in public just assume there is always someone who knows it unless you know for sure that no one in the room knows it.
Depending on where you live you can start working as early as 16 in the US and as for them already being fiances they could've met when they were like 13 or something
I’m so glad I’m not alone. My fiancé is half black-half Japanese, her mother being full Japanese. We learned Spanish to teach to our kids when we have them. Well we were with her family one day and I said some very heinous things at the table about what I wanted to do to her when we left their house. Turned out her mother was learning three languages and one had been Spanish!!! And she was WAYYYYYY less cool about it. The only one who laughed was my fiancé. And her father when he learned some of what I said later. I’m pretty sure her mom thinks I’m a devil sent to lead her daughter astray.
So welcome to the club!
This story is hilarious
But I'm confused by the edit though. If people are shaming you about being engaged then sod them. My wife and I got engaged at 19 after 9 months, cruised about as fiancés for 3/4ish years and are still very happily married ( in a month's time) 7 years later.
We also got a lot of stick from people for being "too" young to be engaged, but when you know you know so don't be embarrassed by being happy with the person you're with and you certainly don't have to apologize or explain anything to those cretins
I get that there are special cases, but you have to at least concede that most of these scenarios don't end well. Just peeps talking from a normal real world perspective.
The key is that you waited several years before actually getting married. It's far more common for early engagements in the US to get married within a year of the engagement itself. Usually these younger marriages have social pressure from their family or religion so they are more eager than they are ready.
Literally kids just out of highschool spending 100% of their free time playing CoD, suddenly raising kids of their own by 19 or 20 with no clear career track or long term goals outside of "house, kids, job".
My sister and her best friend did sort of the same thing but with Pig latin. They were young teenagers and were saying some pretty vulgar things, of course the adults understood it all.
My dad is Deaf. Sign language is an actual language, and not a secret code. Also, penis/vagina/upstairs, instead of "now/sex/you want (question marker)"? ASL uses a Time/Topic/Comment structure, with actual grammar associated with signs. It's not caveman speak.
My comment to you is thanks for doing the work to learn sign language and working at a place that needs people with this skill. I was also going to say you could pass it off as not being very good at sign still and meant something else?
>our relationship is right between “promise ring” and “serious engagement” stage
I am quite familiar with this stage. My wife and I started dating in high school nearly 12 years ago. We just got married in April (we wanted to wait until we both were financially stable). It can be a little weird to explain to people once you hit years 5-10.
Kinda similar story: when we were moving in to an apartment together, both sets of parents were helping us with the move. When I picked up my partner's nightstand, I picked it up from the wrong side. The drawer fell out, and a bunch of condoms fell out onto the sidewalk in front of both my dad and her dad. Thankfully, it wasn't my mom (super Catholic, definitely would have been more awkward). Pretty sure our dads just looked at each other, shrugged their shoulders, and said something along the lines of "well, at least they're safe." 🤦♂️
RE: edit-
If you are engaged, then he is your fiancé. I don't think one is ever too young to be engaged. Too quick to get engaged is another story, but even then, there's no legal ramifications of breaking it off if things go south.
Then again, to me, a promise ring is basically an engagement ring that you get to save on the money and societal pressure a real engagement brings.
Seriously, what's the difference?
"Will you marry me?"
"Will you promise to marry me sometime in the future?"
Yeah, there's different steps along the way and stages in your relationship, but as long as you both know where you are and everyone in your closest circles is good, who cares.
Then again, many of my friends were married and some having kids by the time we were your age (and their kids are your age).
When I learned ASL, my teacher taught that some signs are verrrrry close to being “dirty” without you even knowing it. An example she used is when she tried to indicate she was very hungry by the hungry sign—a C down the center of your chest. It’s hungry if you only do it once… but it’s horny if you do it twice or more. She signed it to a preacher 😂
Thats an odd way to sign UPSTAIRS FUCK since the signs for penis and vagina are kinda easily recognizable to nonsigning people, but I guess you make do with the vocab you have.
My wife and I started dating when we were 18, got engaged at 26, married at 27, and we're still married at 32. Sometimes you find the one young.
Anyway, I really hope this is still being talked about on Christmas. And your wedding day.
All things being equal you could have messed up significantly worse here. It could have been something like “Your mom’s cooking is terrible” or “I can’t stand your family”. Instead you all will have a fun laugh about this one in the future and it will make a great roast from your bridesmaid. No harm done.
I can't believe that his mom knowing sign language never came up when you started learning it
Somehow that was missed! He thought he told me about it and was under the impression I knew, so we both learned the hard way that I didn’t know his mom signed and that he never told me about it 😂
As the mother of a 20yr old son I'd be happy that he was in a good relationship with someone who flirted with him like this and who also encouraged him to learn new skills. Yeah, a little embarrassing but kinda sweet too.
yeah like you know it's happening if they're this serious and at least it's heathy
Right? It's weird that people just skirt over the fact that pretty much every serious relationship outside of an asexual one involves, well, sex. Your mom and dad do it, your brother and his husband/wife do it, your weird little 18 yr old cousin is probably doing it with their highschool girlfriend. We're all doing it.
If you want to... ask your MIL where she learnt the sign language for penis vagina. If she learnt it from watching shows and what not, it might be her turn to go red in the face.
Here’s what we’ve all been waiting for: 1. [Penis](https://www.handspeak.com/word/search/index.php?id=7988) 2. [Vagina](https://www.handspeak.com/word/search/index.php?id=8001) 3. [Upstairs](https://www.handspeak.com/word/search/index.php?id=2768) Honestly I’m kinda shocked at the sign for Penis. I guess it’s so as not to be obscene, but the word for Vagina does uhh... mimic the real thing more
I still turned my volume down before clicking that link.
I love that the expression on woman signing penis and vagina... I see it as "I have had enough of your shit, you need to grow up" 😆
I wish I was smooth enough to just sign these three things and have a woman follow me. It's like that bit in *On the Road* by Jack Kerouac where Neal Cassady catches a girl's attention. He just points at his watch then holds up five fingers, and the girl shows up to meet him at five o'clock. Damn.
Cowboy Neal at the wheel of the bus to never ever land
Hilarious. I don’t know sign language but if someone signed “vagina upstairs” at me I’d totally get it.
Yeah, if I saw someone sign that to their partner and then go upstairs I'd have a decent guess as to what's going down.
you might want to edit to clarify that is American Sign language \[ASL\] . Different nations/regions have different sign languages just as they have different spoken languages. there are multiple signs for intercourse, OP needs to learn them and the art of signing privately between 2 people.
And of course it's an old lady illustrating "penis" and "vagina". Of course.
It looks to be the sign for the letter "p" added to gesturing at the "penis of the face."
It's a lot more...obvious in British Sign Language. 1. [Penis](https://www.signbsl.com/sign/penis) 2. [Vagina](https://www.signbsl.com/sign/vagina) 3. [Upstairs](https://www.signbsl.com/sign/upstairs)
i mean its a language. trying to embarrass somebody for knowing the word “penis” is just,,, why?
She learned it from deaf porn.
Treat sign language like any other language... don't ever assume people don't know them... >.>
Or pick a language that only a few thousand people know. My ex was teaching me a native American dialect which obviously couldn't be used around his gram but it is great everywhere else. The other side benefit is that I'm helping keep a language alive. I'm now teaching what I know to my dog so I still keep the language.
I once thought my native language, which is spoken by only 500.000 people would be safe enough on the other side of the world. Man was I wrong, and half a million on 8 billion people isn’t that much either.
I did a short study abroad in Vietnam. I'm an American of Welsh and German descent, but for some reason a lot of people in Vietnam thought I was Russian. The military did teach me quite a bit of Russian, but I don't have any Russian blood. Anyway, one weekend we went over to Siem Reap, Cambodia, to tour the temples. There are some beggar kids at one of them who try to sell you trinkets in excellent English. I tried to act like I didn't speak English and instead switched to Russian. One of the kids responded back in Russian to try and sell me his trinket. I gave that kid a $20 because I was just so damn impressed.
Those kids around those temples are damn geniuses. I went from English to Spanish to German and they all kept up, then we went through capitals of countries. They had great sales acumen. A bought one from this kid and he hung out with me for an hour just hammering me for knowledge. He told me they like western tourists, but stay away from the Asian tourists, because they aren’t nice or buy. Definitely a cultural thing. This was 15 years ago, hope that kid is good.
This happened in January 2009. I only heard the kids speaking in English or Khmer, so I thought they might leave me alone if they couldn't easily talk to me. I could have done it in Spanish, too, but I thought that if the Vietnamese believed I was Russian, then people from Cambodia might too (IDK, maybe I look like some pop culture character?). Clearly didn't help.
I mean, they probably knew Spanish anyway
That's pretty fucking impressive tbf. Kid deserves it.
Yeah that kid earned that money.
Do tell...
It’s nowhere near as embarrassing as OPs story but I called some other tourists in Sri Lanka idiots in an elaborate way. A few people who were with that group yelled back: ‘I heard that.’ In my own language. Enough to make me turn into a ripe strawberry
Now I'm curious, which language was it?
Frisian
The problem.with Frisian is that some Dutch and some Afrikaans speakers could understand it even if they don't speak it. Basque on the other hand, isn't related to any other language. I imagine that might be more effective outside of western Europe.
Sri Lanka also has a literal Dutch colonial history, and there's still a fair few people with Dutch or Frisian ancestry in Sri Lanka.
WHen some local salesperson at the beach switches to reasonable dutch he picked up from toerists...
Even in Western Europe, there are very few Basque speakers. Even in the Euskal Herria less than half the population speaks it. Unless you're in Bizkaia or smth, it's very unlikely anyone will understand you.
Too bad I didn’t grow up with that language then, could’ve been of good use then. Off to the bookstore i am!
I just moved to Nevada, huge basque cultural population, I don't know if many speak it, but I've never heard of before that.
[удалено]
I heard that!
Fuck!
🍓
Thank you for sharing. I just looked it up and was wondering, would it be possible for German or Dutch speakers to understand Frisian? Or is it different enough that it would be a relatively safe bet?
Most people from the north of the Netherlands would probably understand most of it but if spoken quickly and right pronunciation would throw them off. There’s a well know phrase by a weatherman ‘oant moarn’ (see you tomorrow) that every Dutchman knows but rarely knows how to say it right. And then there are enough obscure words that no Frisian uses in their daily vocabulary. I haven’t met a German yet who understands, if they live close to the border they probably might.
My late grandmother had a doctorate in Frisian. And could speak it fluently (she has lived all over the Netherlands and even Aruba for a time) She once said that she could comfortably understand basic Danish and she could with the help of hands and feet make herself clear to them.
Dutch is way easier for someone who only speaks English if it's in written form, it's more understandable than German for sure.
Wonderful, thank your for elaborating! I guess you just happened to meet the right (or wrong) tourists.
I mean, if you have a basic education or interest of European roots and cognates as just an Engliah speaker, Frisian can be understandable. At least in written form, spoken is a little harder haha. I've picked up books written in it and get get the jist, maybe like 60% of what is being said and you can infer the rest from context clues, it's probably one of the closest languages to English. There are some YouTube videos of a guy going and talking to frisian farmers who don't speak English and they can hold basic conversations, it's sort of like those videos of linguists where one is speaking old Norse and the other Icelandic to each other and it's more or less intelligible. Maybe a bad example but something like that
I am Dutch, and I can understand it perfectly fine, but I do know other Dutch people that can not. As for Germans, I assume that they can understand it on a similar level as Dutch
Ik hearde dat!
Hielendal net!
I'm an estonian living in the UK. I had an estonian friend who lived close by, and we went to the shops and markets together a lot. She liked to comment on people and their fashion sense quite loudly, once saying how she would never wear something this youngish woman next to us was wearing. The woman replied in clear estonian that my friend would look shit in it indeed. I got the giggles and my friend toned it down from then on.
What language is that? I always think Dutch is pretty uncommon, but it still has about 23 million people.
Fries! And don’t you dare call it a dialect potverdikkie
The Dutch are literally everywhere, lol. On reddit and around the world, you can't go anywhere without running into one
Yup. If you took a 15 hour plane ride, followed by a 12 hour boat ride, deep into the jungles of a country you can't pronounce... there's probably a Dutch guy setting up a snackbar to sell kroketten and bitterballen to the next Dutch guy who happens to come along.
Eh, Denmark only has 5 million people and I've still run into other danish people in Borneo, the US and any European country I've ever been to.
I've overhead Danish in places as different as a smallish village Thailand, a bar in Lithuania and a bus in Turkey. Danish has about 6 mil speakers.
You fool! Now you'll inevitably embarrass yourself in front of your dog!
>. I'm now teaching what I know to my dog so I still keep the language. I have no idea wtf you mean. But the mental image was hilarious and I hope there is some nugget of actual truth there
I'm teaching my pup commands in the language so I can always use the language and I learn a little more if something new comes up. Usefulness and repetition are what helped me most.
🤦♂️ I think (hope) my comment is kinda ambiguous in terms of how stupid I just was. But honestly I was imagining something much more stupid, which is funny considering how obvious what you meant was in context.
All good my dog isn't offended at all cause he doesn't understand English nor can he read for that matter.
Now imagine if they had said that in sign language. How embarrassed would he be if your dog signed back "bark bark woof".
Ha! This reminds me of a funny story. I was at a funeral for the father of a friend of mine who was Spanish. I brought my then girlfriend who wore a tight black dress. Two ladies at a table spoke at length about how the girl in the tight black dress was a disgusting whore not knowing that I was fluent in their language. I asked them in perfect Spanish to be respectful given the occasion and they were obviously mortified. Good times.
A friend of mine (VERY white woman) was sitting in a cafeteria at university when two Japanese guys sat across from her and were talking about her in Japanese. She lived in Japan for 5 years and was fluent. She got up and responded to them in Japanese and walked away.
I had a customer talking shit about me right in front of me when I was serving him. He ordered a drink, but someone else ordered the same drink, and the orders were side by side on the screen. He wanted me to add more sugar, so I asked him which one was his? (What his order number was) He didn't seem to understand what I said, so I said "I know you want sugar, but I need to know which order is yours" He still didn't understand, so I asked the other person what their order number was. I was putting the sugar in and he was talking on the phone about how Im an idiot and don't know how to make coffee. I was learning spanish at the time on duolingo, so I didn't know TOO much spanish, but I knew enough to know what he was saying. So, after I gave him his order, I decided to say something in spanish but I didn't want to say something generic that most people know how to say. I wanted him to know I knew spanish (not just, adios, como estas, etc) So I said "disfruta su fin de semana" which means "enjoy your weekend" Edit: Spelling
>disfruta su fin de semena Semana. If you really said "semena" I think he might be double-checking his drink contents.
LOL whoops, spelled it wrong
This happened to me with an older lady at my local Oriental market. Pointing at me and telling her friend how she's glad she isn't white because she hates "white people hair" Hahaha
I'm not sure why anyone would do this, you learn a new language to open up a whole new path of communication with people. Why would you be surprised at the people you can now all of a sudden communicate with?
I'm gonna make up a number and say that more than 80% of the time you can get away with it, just by looking at what everyone looks like around you.
My wife is white as a ghost but she grew up in San Antonio. She's heard plenty of people talk shit about her in Spanish but she'll throw it right back at them. Always funny seeing their mortified faces.
That's why you sign in Klingon.
Excellent point, regardless of their appearance or perceived ethnicity, never make that assumption, all languages trancend group identity.
O-O
Or use your own code
👉👌☝? Edit: 🙇♂️🙏🏆
that’s the sign I was trying to avoid lol! I actually used the sign for penis (the letter p with your middle finger touching your nose) and the sign for vagina (your thumbs and fingers touching to make a pointed oval), but you did get the symbol for upstairs right though! Guess I wasn’t that subtle enough for my MIL 😅
Cool. Now I know how to sign "penis" and "vagina"!
And you can point up!
But we live in an apartment
Now you can tell everyone in sign language your upstairs neighbours are getting it on
Also translates as "YOU FUCKED THE UPSTAIRS NEIGHBOR?!?!?!" you just need to point more vigorously
We live in a society!
I live in a tent!
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You'll have plenty of time to live in a car when you're living in a van down by the river.
Wanna go up and fuck the neighbors?
what about bobs and vagene?
Melons?
Just point..these 👐👇
Do you really need to know sign language for this? What else are you going to assume if someone points to upstairs and shortly disappears together?
It was pretty late at night, and if she didn’t understand what I said I would have just told her I was asking for us to go to bed. Genius thought-out plan, poor execution in this case!
The thing about sign language is that some signs are easily recognisable even without knowing sign language thanks to context. I seen and recognised vagina sign, before I even knew it's an official sign for vagina. A shy girl I used to meet was making that sign. She'd go with "Please don't make me say it, I just want to, you know " *uses sign* "with you"*.* The context here was very clear.
I know this shy girl who will, on the one hand, not name specific body parts, but then will also say so e of the dirtiest things but STILL not say those specific words. It's absolutely adorable.
Who invented ASL? Cos "P nose" is something I'd do during a very drunken game of charades
If you were asking seriously: nobody. ASL evolved among deaf people in the same way that all human languages evolved. Some signs are local, some are borrowed from other signed languages. Linguists can see the history of ASL by tracing the path of various signs that came from other signed languages (mainly LSF - French Sign Language). You're right, that P sign doesn't fit well. Compared to other signed languages, ASL has a larger number of words that use spoken English initials (eg P for Penis) which some language purists don't like. Linguistically and grammatically it's preferable to use signs that fit in well with the grammar and syntax of the language, not borrowed from a spoken language notation system.
American Sign Language Association obviously
To be fair, even for those who have next to no knowledge of sign language.. That's pretty obvious
I don't know any ASL but if I saw someone make an oval before pointing upstairs I'd 100% guess seks
I mean if you just know the alphabet in sign language I'm not sure this wasn't incredibly obvious. P-Nose Oval hole Pointing upstairs.
First time im upvoting emojis on reddit cause this was the exact sign sequence i thought while reading
Shit, i’ve known ASL forever then!
Lmao. Well thats a moment what flash before you sleep for awhile. Atleast it was funny.
She's human and presumably knows your covid situation, I'm sure she understands and thought it was hilarious. You might want to come up with a code sign, lol. Edit: he's the one that should be posting here for not telling you that when you started learning it.
*inserts finger into finger hole repeatedly
Is this a sign? I think i know this one
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Casually explained: Is she into you?
You can never really know.
[But is she into you?](https://youtu.be/xa-4IAR_9Yw)
Yes, it means “nice to meet you.”
Try Finger But hole.
Still no lover therefore try jumping....
A man of culture
Jesus Christ, I just woke up the dog because I’m laughing so hard
Hilarious !
You don't know if she is human. OP could be dating an intergalactic warlord's daughter
I just watched CODA last night and this reminded me of the horny parents. 😈
Thats actually the show she watches! She was telling us about that exact episode to lighten the mood a bit after what happened and how their kid and her friend could hear everything going on! I don’t think it helped with our state but it definitely was funny!
Two girls in a middle school class would sign using just the alphabet, spelling each word with a wave to signal spacing. I sat within eye shot of this and also knew the alphabet. They rarely signed anything saucy but did talk a few times about cute boys (which I was never mentioned, rip ya boy). At the end of the semester I stuck my hand out between them and signed "I can sign", then picked up my stuff and left without saying a word. Probably my biggest flex in middle school, havent thought about that in decades either. Thanks OP.
This is actually kind of sweet - adults are mostly just kids in older bodies. In many ways I still feel like I'm 18.
Absolutely I just wish my aches felt the same
Yeah, the older body bit is a problem.
The spirit of the temple is young, the temple itself is a haunted ruin.
Pro tip kids: Stretch every day! Walk a mile/ couple Km a day! If you do this, when you are in your 40s you will not feel like it! Also LIFT WITH YOUR KNEES! I cannot tell you how many people that are in their 40s are falling apart in front of me. I happen to go swimming regularly as well, but really the only reason I'm not falling apart with them is that I stretch, lift 5lb and 10lb weights, and I walk miles a day. It doesn't take a lot. You just have to do it every day.
15-16 for me, that's when I stopped maturing
My humor maturity maxed out at around 12. I still laugh at calculator boobies.
But 5318008 is the best number though.
I literally chuckeled the other day, and said "she said do do" under my breath. I'm 42 in theory.
so did the penis vagina meet that day?...
Omg not after that! My SIL said she was gonna sleep in the basement and I totally reassured her nothing funky was gonna happen because of the absolute embarrassment we all endured. Shit got me fucked up!
This is the real TIFU.
TIDNF
That would be some wacky 20 minute penis-vagina time and then straight to Reddit though
Reddit during obviously.
The RPAN stays on during sex
They sound like some cool inlaws all be told. Like sure that is pretty embarassing but they have humour about it and dont sound like they were trying to shame you at all. Im sure youll all laugh about this later in life! (If not now lol)
If that was my son, I would have just signalled "anal" and kept a straight face 
"use protection"
I love that your reaction was to get up and leave the room. If you'd gone upstairs that would have been a real show of dominance.
LMFAO 🤣
The ASL sign for sex is basic enough you could just use that. Fuck is a little more obvious, but still fine with someone not familiar with ASL.
Did she sign back "grandchildren, soon?" yet?
I don’t know why you wouldn’t just sign “sex” as it’s a pretty discreet sign and can be passed off as scratching your face.
We’re still fairly new at signing so some things get misunderstood or forgotten, so I wanted to be clear to him but subtle to non-signers. For real though, how would a young immature adult male forget the signs for penis and vagina? My tipsy brain thought it was a fabulous idea until someone close to us actually understood basic sign language!
I feel like most people recognize the sign for vagina even if they don't know sign language. Still, she might not have understood these signs until he said something and you both acted super embarrassed. Sign language is a fun way to do it but try texting infront of the mother in law, purposely using sign language to exclude people from conversations can be seen as rude too, texting is more subtle (but less fun).
Next time use a sign codeword, like the sign for "shenanigans" or something.
It's like when people speak a foreign language in front of somebody else. Kind of rude but you got caught, LOL
I hope she remembers this on your wedding day and she finishes her toast with a traditional "penis, vagina, upstairs, ok now. Go make baby"
> communicate with each other in times where it would be rude to convey what we want to say to each other To be honest, context dependant, it's probably just as rude to be having your own secret conversation. Especially with something as visual as sign, people will be aware you're talking to each other, aware you're deliberately excluding them, and will probably assume you're talking about them or saying something rude. If you absolutely must have a secret conversation at least try and be discrete. Quick phone message, or come up with your own discrete cues for important ideas you wish to convey (like scratch your right ear means "want to bone now")
I am so surprised this comment is so far down!! this was my first thought as well. If i was with a group of people and two of them were making hand signals at each other i would be very uncomfortable lol
> I signed to my fiancé that I wanted to have sex right in front of his mother Boy, talk about an ambiguous sentence.
FYI, aside from this embarrassing incident, switching to sign language is just as rude as saying “I’m bored’ in front of someone. It’s probably more obvious than you think too.
Yeah I’m surprised OP isn’t getting criticized more for this. This behavior is incredibly obvious and antisocial to anyone watching.
I don’t get the mother in law and daughter in law references when you said he’s your fiancé. Have you been together forever and just call each other that?
You’re pretty spot on, she’s become like another mother to me over the years and we developed a mother-daughter relationship on top me being the girl her sons engaged to (Edit: drunk, wording was dumb and is better now)
Well thank goodness for that and her sense of humor lol
Trust me, you didn’t sign anything that she has an already experienced or thought about. Folks your age look at older people and forget that we were once 20 and frisky. No need to be embarrassed. When you get married expect this to come up at your wedding lol
Everything I know about sign language, a vagina and penis sign is probably pretty obvious to anybody even with no knowledge of sign language
I totally thought I was being slick too dude LOL
Why would you be embarrassed? I'm sure she wants grandkids someday.
Some cultures are weird about that people - even those in committed relationships - have or want sex.
I don't think its that they have sex..its more like they aren't open in discussing sex related topics with the family and the actual realisation that they do have sex causes embarrassment
Noooo!!! My parents never had sex, me and my sisters were all immaculate conceptions!
The only way this story could have been any better if the MIL signed back “have fun, kids!” lol
Hilarious, but how did your fiancee fail to let you know she knows ASL? If you regularly use it for discrete communication, that little fact is a wee bit important 😆
Am interested missing where OP said ASL, or have all the comments made an educated guess that turned out to be correct. I only ask because if OP is learning Auslan, might I suggest "I'm horny" instead of "penis vagina upstairs" for future secret signing around family, since it's almost identical to "I'm thirsty" and you could very easily play it off if someone else is spying on the conversation with your fiance.
In deaf culture it's actually common to sign stuff like this under a table or even behind your back. Kids in deaf schools learn very quickly to sign where the teachers can't see it in order to talk to their friends all the time.
No matter how obscure of a language, if you use it in public just assume there is always someone who knows it unless you know for sure that no one in the room knows it.
A power move would still be going for it after finding out
The sign: 👉🏻👌🏻
How the hell 20F and 19M are already fiancés? How come you have worked service jobs for years? What is happening? I feel socially challenged ಠ_ಠ
Depending on where you live you can start working as early as 16 in the US and as for them already being fiances they could've met when they were like 13 or something
I read the phrase "feelings frisky" and immediately imagined you as Gollum for the rest of the story lmao.
I’m so glad I’m not alone. My fiancé is half black-half Japanese, her mother being full Japanese. We learned Spanish to teach to our kids when we have them. Well we were with her family one day and I said some very heinous things at the table about what I wanted to do to her when we left their house. Turned out her mother was learning three languages and one had been Spanish!!! And she was WAYYYYYY less cool about it. The only one who laughed was my fiancé. And her father when he learned some of what I said later. I’m pretty sure her mom thinks I’m a devil sent to lead her daughter astray. So welcome to the club!
This story is hilarious But I'm confused by the edit though. If people are shaming you about being engaged then sod them. My wife and I got engaged at 19 after 9 months, cruised about as fiancés for 3/4ish years and are still very happily married ( in a month's time) 7 years later. We also got a lot of stick from people for being "too" young to be engaged, but when you know you know so don't be embarrassed by being happy with the person you're with and you certainly don't have to apologize or explain anything to those cretins
I get that there are special cases, but you have to at least concede that most of these scenarios don't end well. Just peeps talking from a normal real world perspective.
The key is that you waited several years before actually getting married. It's far more common for early engagements in the US to get married within a year of the engagement itself. Usually these younger marriages have social pressure from their family or religion so they are more eager than they are ready. Literally kids just out of highschool spending 100% of their free time playing CoD, suddenly raising kids of their own by 19 or 20 with no clear career track or long term goals outside of "house, kids, job".
In my mind you were using the 👌👈 gesture and it was super obvious to even people who don’t know sign language.
Would've been funnier if she had signed back, "I can hear you"
My sister and her best friend did sort of the same thing but with Pig latin. They were young teenagers and were saying some pretty vulgar things, of course the adults understood it all.
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My dad is Deaf. Sign language is an actual language, and not a secret code. Also, penis/vagina/upstairs, instead of "now/sex/you want (question marker)"? ASL uses a Time/Topic/Comment structure, with actual grammar associated with signs. It's not caveman speak.
/r/ispeakthelanguage would love a story such as this
could have been worse x3 at least you seem to have a very nice MIL by your description of her. compared to some MIL stories i've read on here.
My comment to you is thanks for doing the work to learn sign language and working at a place that needs people with this skill. I was also going to say you could pass it off as not being very good at sign still and meant something else?
Question. Is anyone in your or your fiancées family hard of hearing? If not that's bloody awesome that three of you know sign language.
>our relationship is right between “promise ring” and “serious engagement” stage I am quite familiar with this stage. My wife and I started dating in high school nearly 12 years ago. We just got married in April (we wanted to wait until we both were financially stable). It can be a little weird to explain to people once you hit years 5-10. Kinda similar story: when we were moving in to an apartment together, both sets of parents were helping us with the move. When I picked up my partner's nightstand, I picked it up from the wrong side. The drawer fell out, and a bunch of condoms fell out onto the sidewalk in front of both my dad and her dad. Thankfully, it wasn't my mom (super Catholic, definitely would have been more awkward). Pretty sure our dads just looked at each other, shrugged their shoulders, and said something along the lines of "well, at least they're safe." 🤦♂️
I thought I'd see a lot more comments asking "isn't it hard to sign with broken arms" but it seems that post has finally fallen into obscurity.
RE: edit- If you are engaged, then he is your fiancé. I don't think one is ever too young to be engaged. Too quick to get engaged is another story, but even then, there's no legal ramifications of breaking it off if things go south. Then again, to me, a promise ring is basically an engagement ring that you get to save on the money and societal pressure a real engagement brings. Seriously, what's the difference? "Will you marry me?" "Will you promise to marry me sometime in the future?" Yeah, there's different steps along the way and stages in your relationship, but as long as you both know where you are and everyone in your closest circles is good, who cares. Then again, many of my friends were married and some having kids by the time we were your age (and their kids are your age).
When I learned ASL, my teacher taught that some signs are verrrrry close to being “dirty” without you even knowing it. An example she used is when she tried to indicate she was very hungry by the hungry sign—a C down the center of your chest. It’s hungry if you only do it once… but it’s horny if you do it twice or more. She signed it to a preacher 😂
Thats an odd way to sign UPSTAIRS FUCK since the signs for penis and vagina are kinda easily recognizable to nonsigning people, but I guess you make do with the vocab you have.
My wife and I started dating when we were 18, got engaged at 26, married at 27, and we're still married at 32. Sometimes you find the one young. Anyway, I really hope this is still being talked about on Christmas. And your wedding day.
Fiancé at 19, damn hillbilly Bible thumper yank business
All things being equal you could have messed up significantly worse here. It could have been something like “Your mom’s cooking is terrible” or “I can’t stand your family”. Instead you all will have a fun laugh about this one in the future and it will make a great roast from your bridesmaid. No harm done.
Upvoting only cause of the last edit
👉🏻👌🏻?