If you speak more than one language – especially if you are fluent in many languages – you’ll likely have come across this situation at some point or another.

You are minding your own business when you hear someone speaking a language that you know.

So of course, you speak it back to them.

For many people, this meeting of languages can be a delightful experience.

But depending on what the people were saying to make your ears prick up, it can also be very embarrassing.

Read on to find out what happened to the old ladies in this story.

My nice family tries to let two old ladies go first in line

Ten years ago, my family traveled across the world to Finland.

We flew out from Toronto airport, and it was quite a scene with my parents and their six kids who were all ten and under.

My family is Finnish through and through. All four grandparents were born there, as was my dad.

Let’s see how this went down.

We were lining up in security all speaking English to each other when suddenly two old Finnish ladies started speaking to each other loudly in Finnish.

One of the old ladies said to the other, “I can’t believe how rude they are! This whole family went right in front of us! My goodness, how rude!”

However, we did not cut them in line – they had been standing to the side and away from the line, and made no attempt to do anything other than complain in their “secret” language.

Read on to find out how the bilingual family responded to their assumption.

My dad replied to them in perfect Finnish, “oh I’m sorry we didn’t know you were standing in line!”

Then, he continued to us (also in Finnish), “kids, let them go in front of us!”

We all started cheerfully clearing the way for them. We were just excited to be flying in an airplane!

And the old ladies really hadn’t been expecting that!

The old woman, clearly embarrassed, said, “oh no no no, that’s fine go ahead we’ll wait!”

My dad replied, “as long as you’re sure!”

And off we all went with my dad cackling internally. He loves telling the story and letting us know how horrified the old ladies were when they found out all of us spoke Finnish!

This is a tale as old as time – people assuming that others around them simply do not understand their language.

The truth is, plenty of people around the world speak two, four, or even more languages, so you can never be sure whether or not the people near you know what you’re saying.

A lesson to learn from these old ladies: perhaps don’t make that assumption.

Let’s see what folks on Reddit made of this.

This person shared some solid life advice.

While others thought it could’ve been a stereotype that didn’t translate.

Meanwhile, this Redditor shared another story of a fortunately situated language-speaker.

The old ladies must have been very embarrassed, particularly as they themselves were talking about politeness.

It’s never safe to make assumptions about anything, but this is one of the worst.

On that day they totally learned a lesson!

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.