Pretending not to speak your native language

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I’ve never done it on purpose, though I’ve wished I could. However, it’s becoming more and more frequent for people to assume I can’t understand their language when I’m silent for a few seconds, thinking what to reply.

Ja habe ich.

The way it works for me is this:
I don't speak "the other foreign language", I speak English with a modified accent.
And people who guessed where I'm from have never guessed right.
So yeah, I've done it on purpose and it has worked like a charm.

No, but it would be too funny and like something out of a sitcom if someone really obnoxious came up to me and then I said something like, "I no speaky de Eeenglish."

As a child, people mistook me for someone who grew up in another country because I spoke English too often. And my aspie traits were dismissed as foreign.
But I never left my hometown, and I wasn't diagnosed that time.

Even at this present, some people insists talking to me in English.

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I try to only address people in human languages. English can be a problem for a lot of people in principle though it's not the trickiest.

_________________
"Standing on a well-chilled cinder, we see the fading of the suns, and try to recall the vanished brilliance of the origin of the worlds."
-Georges Lemaitre
"I fly through hyperspace, in my green computer interface"
-Gem Tos

I've never actually tried but I have thought about it more than once, to avoid having to talk to people. I pretended to not understand English once when I visited the US because someone was unpleasant so I CBB to understand

Yeah. My first language is Spanish, but I often pretend I can't speak it. I'm way too anxious to speak it. Apparently I have no accent when I speak Spanish, but I do stutter like crazy.

Link.

I'm forced to wonder if I've ever actually read this discussion.

_________________
"Standing on a well-chilled cinder, we see the fading of the suns, and try to recall the vanished brilliance of the origin of the worlds."
-Georges Lemaitre
"I fly through hyperspace, in my green computer interface"
-Gem Tos

I do this on the japanese internet everyday (:

I'm Asian and a native English speaker. I do this for the lulz because people make so many assumptions based on your ethnicity. I enjoy being unreadable. Sometimes I pretend not to speak Chinese too (I'm also native in two dialects of Chinese) because I have an impeccable Midwestern accent. I also pretend not to speak both German AND English in Germany because sometimes you have a lot of people approaching tourists and pedestrians on the streets and trying to scam them and they only speak German and English and their native language. I just look at them like an idiot and they give up. And of course, because I'm Chinese they sort of have to believe me.

Aweenda shmure da froog's legs. Yur puurt thuur chiir-ken airn der bewl.

Ja.

A beggar approached me one day so I pretended I spoke no English. The irony is that I actually used my native language which is Irish!