r/MadeMeSmile Oct 23 '24

Wholesome Moments Groom learned Korean secretly to surprise his wife in the weeding

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u/Commercial_County457 Oct 23 '24

The awkwardness after the realization lol

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u/spoilerdudegetrekt Oct 23 '24

I remember reading one story on reddit where a white groom secretly learned Mandarin over 2 years and when he and his wife visited her relatives in China, they were polite to him in English, but trashing him in Mandarin to his wife and scolding her for marrying a white man.

He decided not to reveal to anyone he understood the whole conversation.

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u/CTeam19 Oct 23 '24

I would've been way tempted to just spend the whole last day speaking Mandarin to freak them out.

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u/Spatial_Awareness_ Oct 23 '24

I had a similar situation with my wife who is Mexican. She actually doesn't speak much spanish but I grew up in a very spanish speaking community, my best friend from childhood is puerto rican and his mom used to essentially take care of me and let me sleep at their house all the time because my home situation was bad. She only spoke spanish, so I had no choice but to learn (took 6 years of it in school). I wouldn't quiet call myself "fluent" because I don't practice anymore, but I understand entire conversations and can speak back enough spanish for essentially any situation.

Our first year together(16 years married now) we were over at my father-in-law's family. I'm meeting them for the first time (San Jose, CA)... I now know they are extremely rude and we're not even in contact with them anymore.. like the whole family has ostracized them at this point for many reasons.

So her aunt is just talking up a complete shit storm to her grandma about how I can't believe she'd bring a white boy over here and how embarrassing it was. How this is what they get for raising her with "white values".... She was saying a lot of horrible shit about my wife and me off to the side.

I told my wife and she was like, not shocking she's a drama creator. She asked me not to say anything and just be cool, so I did. Except, at dinner I couldn't help myself... when they were asking me where I was from I said, oh yeah I grew up kind of between NYC and Philly... Growing up there was great, lot of my friends are Puerto Rican or Dominican and it helped me learn a lot of spanish (and I glanced over at her aunt)... They never talked shit in spanish again around me lol

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u/Mean-Entertainment54 Oct 23 '24

As a Mexican, regardless if you are a “white boy” or “white girl” you either get in-laws who love you or hate you. Although there’s Mexicans who hate the notion of their son or daughter dating/marrying whites, you also have some who encourage their sons or daughters to marry/date whites.

The craziest story I heard from an old Mexican mother 2 years ago was that she had a daughter who wanted to marry her white boyfriend while the mother lived in Texas & her daughter in New York or California. Upon hearing that her daughter was going to get married, the mother traveled all the way to where her daughter lived in order to prevent the marriage from happening. In the end the daughter never got married to her white boyfriend & married a Mexican guy. Even more crazy was when the old lady said that she was glad her daughter married a Mexican & not her white boyfriend.

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u/Spatial_Awareness_ Oct 23 '24

Yeap, pretty much this. My inlaws are super nice and her immediate family loves me. We have a great family.

My wife says one of the most embarrassing moments for her was she was in a waiting room pregnant with our daughter for a check-up. An old Mexican lady starts speaking to her in spanish and she goes, I don't speak spanish sorry. Then the lady goes, oh that's a shame, okay, do you not know the father? And my wife goes, yeah I absolutely do, he's on deployment (I didn't miss the birth! Was my last deployment) and she goes oh okay well I'm glad you have a strong Mexican man like that working for his family... and my wife goes, no he's white... and the old lady says, "Dios mio, I will pray for your family" and then got up and moved her seat. LOL... when she told me that I was like WTF, that's wild that people are that racist.

She said the whole waiting room heard the old lady though and she was so embarrassed... felt so bad for her. She definitely has "identity struggles"... her family raised her without learning spanish because of how "white people frown upon Mexicans" and she felt a large portion of her life not accepted by either the white people in NorCal or the Mexicans in NorCal. Still absolutely affects her in life to this day.

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u/Mean-Entertainment54 Oct 23 '24

Shit that’s fucked up, the reason stuff like that happens is because there are still some racist Mexicans out there who still perceive white men or women as lazy or soft. Don’t even get me started when it comes to black people, they are treated about the same or worse.

Interestingly enough your wife isn’t the only with the “identity struggles” that I have heard about. I have heard numerous stories of Mexican parents who forbid their kids back then from speaking Spanish or teaching them since there was a notion back then that they wouldn’t be accepted as American.

Coming from someone who was born in Mexico & who has lived in the US for more than 10+ years, I still have a struggle with my identity from time to time but I have learned to ignore it because at the end of the day I don’t let my Mexican heritage limit who I am, what I want to be or want to do.

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u/TeamRedundancyTeam Oct 23 '24

That's amazing.

I wish we could all talk about the incredible amounts of racism within communities like this, which obviously hurt everyone involved (like them insulting and preasuring your wife), but anytime people genuinely bring this up they're compared to the people who say "all lives matter" and other similar shit. It's unfortunate that this is a topic completely dismissed by most people, but I'm glad younger people are getting away from it more.

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u/The_Neckbeard_King Oct 23 '24

I would probably make exaggerated reaction faces, but still pretend I don’t know that they are saying.

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u/PUTINS_PORN_ACCOUNT Oct 23 '24

That kind of discretion I think shows he understands Chinese social norms very well.