Is it strange to hide a language-speaking ability?

Maybe you’ve been in a situation where someone is speaking a different language in order to hide secrets or private information. This is a pretty common tactic, and it helps form bonds between people who speak the same language. If you’re an interloper, though, you might bristle at being left out of the conversation. You might even fantasize about secretly learning the language so you can shock everyone when the time is right. That’s not quite what happened in this story, though. In this story, someone conveniently left the truth out of the situation and was then surprised when it caused a little bit of distrust. 

Just because someone didn’t ask you specifically about something doesn’t mean you just get to keep a secret. There are things that should come up over the normal course of a relationship, even if questions are specifically asked. The man in this story had fluency in a language that connected him to his girlfriend‘s family, but he chose to keep those skills to himself. In his mind, it never came up. To everyone else, it was a super strange thing to not be up front about. They, after all, were native speakers. There was plenty of time to bring up the fact that they had something in common.