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

  • Windex007@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • DeltaTangoLima@reddrefuge.com
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • LrdThndr@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • redeyejedi@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • sara@lemmy.today
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    1 year ago

    “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.

  • 1bluepixel@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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!

    • Drusas@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I’ve taught my husband to speak a bit of Japanese, but we don’t use it this way because that’s extremely rude.

      • 1bluepixel@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

          • putoelquelolea@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            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?

            • Kepabar@startrek.website
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              1 year ago

              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.

              • putoelquelolea@lemmy.ml
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                1 year ago

                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

              • The_v@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                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.

            • Drusas@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              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.

      • radix@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • AstridWipenaugh@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          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).

        • Ashtear@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Definitely an American thing. Wide swaths of the country have issues with any kind of diversity.

          • Zangoose@lemmy.one
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            1 year ago

            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.

            • Ashtear@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

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

    • digitalgadget@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • 1bluepixel@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • grabyourmotherskeys@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          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.

  • Subverb@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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”.

    • guleblanc@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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 )

      • pcwlls@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Native russian speaker from Riga here, never heard this expression in my life.

        • Jojo@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Well obviously it doesn’t mean that in Riga. You have to go farther inland to hear it.

          • Uncle_sure@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            In Russian “to throw up” sounds like "rygat’ ". So the story and the usage looks plausible (especially for some of Sant Petersburg folks).

            • Jojo@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              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.

              • Uncle_sure@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                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

                • Jojo@lemm.ee
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                  1 year ago

                  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.

  • Dylan@lemdro.id
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • SBJ@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • Opafi@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      “my significant other did not address me as Mr. Bananapoopblender, something is seriously wrong!”

  • CoconutGirl@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • davidgro@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

  • Wojwo@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    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.