Couples, what secret language do you use to tell each other details that the company you're in doesn't understand or notice?

Einar@lemm.ee to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 215 points –

What words, phrases or signs do you use and how do you get your partner's attention?

131

Shaka, when the walls fell

Mirab, with sails unfurled.

Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra

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 sounds so much worse than just saying you need to poop.

When my wife can't remember someone's name, she'll grab my hand and squeeze it with two quick squeezes "Help. Me.".

That's my cue to either work their name into a comment/question or, if I don't know them, introduce myself followed by a "And you are..?". Works pretty well all of the time.

Of course, being together so long, and loving to fuck with each other's heads when we can, sometimes I'll just stand there and give them my best Aussie "owzitgoin?", and watch my wife squirm. That's usually when the nails dig into my hand, hoping to draw blood.

Worth it.

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.

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.

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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.

But it's actually not that bad.... It's not good beer but whatever it is, it's nice 🙂

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“Do we have any pineapple at home?” is our safe word for social situations when one of us needs a reason to leave a situation or change the conversation because they’re uncomfortable. I detest pineapple.

You must really dislike it - I'd have trouble not laughing if someone asked me this.

What if they go "sure, I'll get you some"?

“Oh no, I want to bake a pineapple upside down cake later, I’m not hungry now.”

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%0A&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.

No problem, I'm glad to have such a great discussion! By the way, English teachers in slavic countries like to teach very old phrases/memes. Like "raining cats and dogs" for the heavy rain, "wet blanket" for a grinch person. Also they can trying to tell something about cockney (which will never help students in real life) So it's no wonder that some virtually non-existent russian memes could go into textbooks. But the "go to Riga" is not completely dead yet. Need to wait for a decade or two :)

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?

Yes, it's generally considered rude to switch languages specifically to hide your conversation.

It's because most will assume you are doing it to talk shit.

Sure, if people suddenly switched languages and then laughed in my face, I would feel bad.

But if it's like the other comments in this post, and it's a couple having a quick word about a private matter, I wouldn't mind. It's not like I should be a part of that conversation

This varies depending on the cultural norms of the country.

Japanese: I have been in high level meetings with a Japanese company. As soon as I walked into the room they all switched to English. Some of their English was weak but they still made the effort. When I commented on how much I appreciated it, surprised Pikachu faces all around. They responded course they would swap, to do otherwise is rude.

In France I have had business meetings with with 8 people around a table all of who all spoke english. 4 of them were native French speakers, 1 polish, 2 Arabic, and me the sole native English speaker. The native French speakers spoke French the entire time. They would swap to English to interrupt the English language conversation then swap back to French amongst themselve. If two or more native French speakers are together, they speak French and don't give a fuck if they include you or not. They then act all surprised that you didn't follow their in French conversation.

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 wouldn't even include all of America in that either. It's really just a rural America thing. Sure 99.9% of people will speak/understand English, but in my anecdotal experience, it's pretty common near big cities for people to be bilingual and grow up speaking a different language with their families.

For sure not the whole country. Don't have to go far into the suburbs to find this kind of behavior, though.

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.

Sign Language works pretty well.

We picked it up when my daughter was younger and we just kept going. Now we use it to speak to each other from across the room during loud events.

"Paying bills" == having sex

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!"

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Married 30 years. Eyebrow position and, "eh?"

"Eh."

And we are pretty much on the same page.

Not 30 years, but usually just looking at each other says enough, with maybe a head motion if it's time to go. Facial expressions say a lot on their own, and if you know someone well enough, even subtle differences can say a lot.

Yup, we're only at 12, but a look is enough, we're usually thinking the same thing.

But the other additional one, three squeezes, hands, or whatever can be touched without being obvious, is I love you. Seems sweet, but most often used when one of us is getting pissed off (at something/someone else, not each other).

We do the same three taps on the shoulder or hand squeezes for “I love you” too. Hon, is that you?

Any fizzy lemon & lime drink is now Sauvignon.

This stems from a meal nearly 20 years ago where she asked for "Sprite or 7-Up" and was given a large glass of Sauvignon Blanc by a slightly hard of hearing waitress.

A “look” is usually enough to let each other know something is up.
We haven’t really figured out how to communicate what that “something” is though and always end up more confused than informed.

Around the kids, when they were young, we used French for those things we didn't want them to know about. She's fluent and I don't really speak it at all, but took it back in High School and remembered enough vocabulary to make it work.

Today, both our boys have taken years of Spanish and they speak in Spanish for those things that they don't want us to know. LOL

Around other adults, my wife and I have a system of looks that we give each other. We can have an entire conversation just by giving each other looks.

Might just be cus we're both neurodivergent, but we have a lot of non verbal cues, though he's nowhere near as showy as I am.

Whenever I end up overstimmed and go non-verbal, I tug at his shirt gently, or paw at him. From then it's simple ASL. For him, he genuinely just has simple phrasing or wordings that are kind of "key words" between us. The both of us are high functioning in our 20s, this is just kind of how it ended up and we're both super not subtle about it. It's great.

Edit: we literally do pigeon noises at each other at random. One of us says coo and the other goes roo. It's literally just a "thing" between us and it started because of us watching pigeons together and it stuck.

Ready to go home?

Steve is just a jackoff today. Right?

Yep. 😘 fuck him. Let's go home.

Swiss-German is a pretty good secret language.

Perhaps more useful is to silently make your mouth into an "o" like you're saying "go" if you want to go, or a line like you're saying "stay" if you want to stay.

Most people around us usually get it so isn't really a "secret" language, but my wife and I are big Simpsons fans so we talk in quotes all the time.

One that gets a lot of play is "I'm going... to... stalk... Lenny and Carl" for when we're going somewhere but really sure what we're going to do

when one of us says something to someone else (usually our kids) that is going to screw both of us over the other says it "shut up, net face"

I handed my girlfriend a hair tie once while at my parents house. Good times were had.

Very rudimentary Japanese, or incredibly elaborate/old Englishy stylized speech

I just text; don't have to worry about someone else picking it up.

This was taught to me,

Snuggle and cuddle. Tell the person you want to cuddle, means to curl up together under a blanket and watch a movie. Tell the person snuggle when you want to fuck (but your being discreet). And if your hair looks a little messed up or someone asks what y'all been doing... snuggling 🥰

My wife and I have a couple of terms that we frequently use.

  • SET - "South Eastern Twat", used to describe a pretend-farmer, with gilet, flatcap and Landrover, who are so frequent in this part of England. We used to live in a more down-to-earth part of the country, so have allergic reaction to the stealth-wealth and snootiness you find down here.
  • "There's no need for buttering the pan" - a description for ovulation days, when my wife gets quite randy :)
  • ALTHAB - "At Least They've Had a Bath", which we use as a short-hand for "the kids had baths yesterday, won't need one today and therefore, if we push through, we can get them to bed early and might have some calm time together, in front of the TV, playing a boardgame or whatever is required to reconnect.
  • HPS - "High Pressure Sex", a joke used to get us both to relax about those moments when you feel like you ought to have sex (you finally have a night away or whatever), but neither of you can be bothered (too tired, too stressed etc.).

I wouldn't call either of these particularly secret, but whatever, they're fun.

Excess material = a very large shit, often multiple shits.

Trip insurance = using the bathroom before getting in the car, whether it's needed or not. I came up with this one as a child, and it's now in widespread use in my extended family, especially with the nieces and nephews.

My AuDHD self went and married another ADHD person, and we are both full of little non-verbal cues we give each other, and they range from Significant Glances to discreet groping. We communicate well (and I 100% think the reason we get along so well is because we communicate) and non-verbal is just part of it.

When we travel: speak japanese. Else, we've been together enough to know each other pretty well and often don't need to say much aloud to communicate something

We have a code for when we're ready to leave a party. One of us will go to the other and do the finger walking up the other's arm. This means "I want to go home."