What words, phrases or signs do you use and how do you get your partner’s attention?
Shaka, when the walls fell
Mirab, with sails unfurled.
Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra
Darmok! And Jalad! At TANAGRA!!!
Sokath. His Eyes Uncovered!
Riker, his face bearded.
My wife knows that if I say “Honey, I need to do that thing with my butt” she knows I have to poop, with everyone else listening blissfully unaware.
That’s pretty slick, might have to steal it
Ok but don’t use it in Canada I can’t risk people learning what it means around here
They know.
That sounds so much worse than just saying you need to poop.
If we are together one of us will use the phrase “Is there Lemon in this?” And hold up our drink which is code for get me out if this conversation/situation.
If we aren’t in the same room. We pull out our phone and text Save Me. Then the other person comes and finds you to say that So and So needs them immediately. Yadda, yadda.
You can’t just yadda yadda over the good parts.
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If you did that in front of me I would pick up on it immediately, without any prior knowledge of your code.
I swear people who use sloppy codes think the rest of us are stupid.
Both my wife and my friends know this one.
If you ever see me drinking a Bud Light Lime, talking about Bud Light Lime, or requesting a Bud Light Lime, that means I’m likely being held against my will. Come back with the police.
this a blatant ploy by Bud Light Lime to try to sell a single bottle
Nah, don’t need to actually have one. Just need to request one.
“Hey man, haven’t heard from you in a while. You alright?”
“Yeah, everything’s great man. Just sitting here drinking a Bud light lime.”
“Bud light lime? For real?”
“Yeah, man. Definitely a bud light lime kind of day.”
“You need me to call the cops?”
“Sure thing man. Thanks for checking in.”
Hell, it doesn’t even need to be in production anymore.
foiled again!
The last time we were in Paris my wife and I came down with a stomach bug that gave us explosive diarrhea. Now, rather than say we have diarrhea and need to rush home we say we’re “feeling rather Parisian”.
Russians used to go to the sea through Latvia, during the Czarist times. They often got sea sick. A case of any kind of gastric distress became a “trip to Riga.” (I learned this in a Russian language class. It may not be true, but I intend to believe it, regardless if it’s actual truth. Please correct me if I’m wrong. I’d like to know if I’m being unreasonable. It’s a sign of strength of character )
Native russian speaker from Riga here, never heard this expression in my life.
Well obviously it doesn’t mean that in Riga. You have to go farther inland to hear it.
In Russian “to throw up” sounds like "rygat’ ". So the story and the usage looks plausible (especially for some of Sant Petersburg folks).
It’s also possible it’s a hopelessly dated and archaic idiom that no modern speaker would recognize but was still fairly popular when that language course was first written, or something. It only takes a decade or two for a phrase to disappear from common usage sometimes.
Or maybe (since it references “czarist times” the phrase was already crazy dated and old but the Russian-speaking Englishman who wrote the course saw the phrase somewhere, thought it was funny, and so put it in. Wouldn’t put that past this world of ours either.
By the way, the Riga sounds like “Ryga” in Belarusian. So this idiom should not have been outdated. Just a bit artificial. But to be artificial is okay if you want to avoid direct naming of unpleasant things. I believe that “travel to Riga”=“poyekhal rygat’”=“go puke” is a meme for a lot of native Russians around Saint Petersburg.
It’s totally ok that some teacher include that meme into their course. This is totally recognizable for a native speaker (like for me in my late thirties).You will be really surprised how many local silly names exist for menstruation. “Red day of the calendar” - allusion on communist holidays. “Red army arrival day” - no explanation is needed. “Relatives from Krasnodar just come” - Krasnodar is literally “Red Gift”, so it’s obvious again. “The critical days”, “these days of the calendar”… I’ve heard all these variants in the wild by my own ears.
P.S accidentally found an independent confirmation regarding Riga https://translate.google.com/?sl=auto&tl=en&text=https%3A%2F%2Fcyberleninka.ru%2Farticle%2Fn%2Fbolezni-i-ih-frazeologicheskie-evfemisticheskie-nominatsii-v-russkom-angliyskom-nemetskom-frantsuzskom-yazykah &op=translate
Oh I wasn’t by any means intending to cast shade. I was just speculating on possibilities, from the phrase being more popular inland to the phrase being unheard-of for various reasons.
I don’t speak Russian and have never been closer to Russia than Prijedor or Zagreb, so I am by no means an authority and I’m not trying to contradict anyone.
Ha! Our trick is that we’re never with company. We are very boring homebodies.
This is the way.
What’s “company?”
I think in this context it just means “when around other people, generally in some group function, like a party or reunion.”
It was a sarcastic joke, like I don’t understand that other people are “company.”
Crap, I failed at Internet today. Even after I started with a joke…
Lol, no prob. I do the same occasionally.
My spouse and I lived in a bunch of countries over the years. We speak Quebec French, English, and Spanish, as well as a smattering of Chinese, Bulgarian, Korean, and a few odds and ends here and there.
We basically speak whatever we think people around us won’t understand. Very colloquial Quebec French in non-French-speaking countries, Chinese around white people, Bulgarian around non-white people, or even a cryptic mix of everything when we’re not completely sure.
We figure anyone who understands is probably someone we want to know… Hasn’t happened very often, but it does happen. So far we weren’t saying anything overly embarrassing when we got caught, but we sure as hell have no filter between us because of this!
I’ve taught my husband to speak a bit of Japanese, but we don’t use it this way because that’s extremely rude.
I wouldn’t say we speak in people’s faces, but we make comments to each other about random stuff. I would never say something rude about somebody in their faces, but my spouse might go, “Can we go back to the hotel, I really need to take a shit” or something silly and unfiltered like that.
I get it, I just still think it’s rude and avoid doing so myself.
It’s rude for spouses to have a private conversation? Would whispering be better? Would it be better if they hid in a cupboard where no one could see them?
It is rude to intentionally speak in a language that the people around you don’t understand (especially if you’re doing so specifically because they don’t understand it), yes.
That’s probably a cultural thing, isn’t it? In diverse areas, people don’t expect to understand what they hear others say, so there’s no “Speak ___; we’re in ___” culture.
I’d say it’s more of a context thing. If you’re hanging out in a group of people chatting together and you code switch to speak to someone so nobody else can understand, that’s rude. If you’re just speaking to someone in another language on your own, nobody cares (except xenophobic bigots).
Oh, that makes sense. I didn’t consider anyone would do that.
Definitely an American thing. Wide swaths of the country have issues with any kind of diversity.
I love those videos where people are caught trying to have a private conversation by someone who speaks an unexpected language! Also it’s shocking to me how many people loudly speak common dialects of Chinese and don’t expect anyone to follow… literally over a billion humans can understand Mandarin, someone is listening.
Haha, I’ve caught plenty of Chinese speakers having what they presume are private conversations in my presence, and sometimes even about me. People just automatically assume non-Asians can’t speak Chinese, even when these non-Asians live in China.
This happens to me sometimes as I lived in enough places that I understand a lot of common stuff in various European languages even though I don’t speak them beyond ordering a beer or whatever.
We never use each other’s first names in normal conversation. If one of us were to address the other with our actual name it would immediately set off an internal alarm.
“my significant other did not address me as Mr. Bananapoopblender, something is seriously wrong!”
“Paying bills” == having sex
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So once a month?
Uh, different bills have different due dates, yeah that’s it
Logic checks out.
Instead of spelling it out or code, my wife and I will use increasingly obscure synonyms to hide our conversations from the kids.
They figured out “frozen confection” meant ice cream, so I need a new one.
Hypercooled dairy sugar blend
Lacto-saccharine sounds better
I do this as well. I can’t say I’ve kept a lot of secrets, but at least the kids have a large vocabulary.
This is how we started too, but as our kid gets older it just all becomes part of his vocabulary. He already has a really peculiar vocabulary to begin with so add our code words to it and it’s just… very interesting.
Chilly Cattle?
‘ice cold milk.’ Could be talking about a glass of dairy, or a delightful dessert.
Subzero dairy
Dinosaur noises, typically when we’re trying to find each other.
My dad would meow loudly when him and my mom got separated while shopping. Mom would rush over as fast as possible to shut him up.
My wife would pretend she doesn’t know me go the other direction.
If I tell my partner that something drains the color out of a room, she knows that whomever I’m talking to is a bigot/phobe and we leave. More often than not though, she’ll ask me who it is and tell them off.
None. My wife doesn’t know about tact, or the polite white lie or anything like that. She doesn’t have time for that bullshit. It’s one of her endearing qualities.
Movie quotes. It’s amazing how many questioning looks we get from other people when quoting movies to each other.
Get in there, you big furry oaf; I don’t car what you smell!
Who’s “Scruffy-lookin”?!
During the pandemic, my wife and I became more expressive with our eyes, because of our masks.
If I notice her going neutral face with her eyes, I know she’s about to get upset. Where if my eyebrows pretty clearly tell my mood to her.
Apparently my eyes go soft when I’m being silly. I enjoyed hearing it but I have no idea what it means
Been told almost verbatim the same thing, no idea what it means either. Friend in question said they knew me for years before they were able to notice it.
That’s interesting! Glad someone can share my confusion hahah
