As Long as It Sounds Foreign: Difference between revisions

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== Fan Works ==
* In ''[[Naruto Veangance Revelaitons]]'', the only vaguely Japanese name is a character based off the author's best friend Danny. The character's name, Tadashiharakumaie, clearly falls into this trope.
* Similarly to ''[[Looney Tunes]]'', in ''[[Avatar: The Abridged Series]]'' Spanish is rendered mostly as English with "El" tacked on. "El Gasp!" Sometimes they also add "-o" to the end of words and maybe put in a real Spanish word in there.
** "I challenge you to an Agni Kai!" "Don't you mean a duel?" "No, an Agni Kai!" "Why don't you just call it that then?" "Because it sounds Asian... ish?" (FYI, Agni is the Hindu god of fire, and Kai means meeting in ''Japanese'').
*** That's because the Fire Nation basically [[Fantasy Counterpart Culture|is Japan with Indian names]].
 
 
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* You don't seriously think the lyrics of [[The Arrogant Worms]]' "Gaelic Song" actually ''mean'' anything, do you?
* Request-a-Song's [http://www.request-a-song.com/songs/viewsong.php?songid=99 "Ancient Chinese Secret (from Japan)"] contains a line of pseudo-Japanese and two lines of pseudo-Chinese, but it's all genuine gibberish.
* Somewhat inverted with Adiemus. The language for this series of albums was deliberately stylized, ''not'' to be in any recognizable tongue. Instead, the intent was for the listener to percieve the voices as instruments, as [[wikipedia:Adiemus|The Other Wiki]] explains.
* [[Billy Joel]]'s song "Don't Ask Me Why" inexplicably drops "parlez-vous francais" ("Do you speak French?") for no other reason than it rhymes with the word "away".
{{quote|''Yesterday you were an only child''
''Now your ghosts have gone away''
''Oh, you can kill them in the classic style''
''Now you parlez-vous francais ''}}
** The song is basically one big "I know what you ''really'' are", so that's probably intended to mock the subject for learning French and using it to pretend she's ''from'' France or at least grew up there.
* German metal Band ''Knorkator'' is well known for hilarously silly lyrics and the song ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCmbXcJW49U&feature=relmfu "Maj Khao Djaj"]'' is only an exception in so far that it's entirely in Thai. However [[Bilingual Bonus|when translated]], the lyric starts with {{spoiler|i'm thai and have a german boyfriend / he asked me writing a songtext}} and later directly references the trope with {{spoiler|it's no problem if people can't understand the lyrics / so then they wont realise that it's a bad text}}.
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== Web Original ==
* While ''[[Ilivais X]]'' has this in abundance. Iriana and Seyne Estchell are supposed to come from Serbia, but their names are vaguely French if anything, and Estchell doesn't come from anything. Essen Dywell isn't an English/Chinese name at all, Sura Verandis is more nonsense than Scandinavian or Arabic, and plenty other examples that come from vague backgrounds. Mille Chanteau, while a bit archaic in French, is perfectly valid though.
* Similarly to ''[[Looney Tunes]]'', in ''[[Avatar: The Abridged Series]]'' Spanish is rendered mostly as English with "El" tacked on. "El Gasp!" Sometimes they also add "-o" to the end of words and maybe put in a real Spanish word in there.
** "I challenge you to an Agni Kai!" "Don't you mean a duel?" "No, an Agni Kai!" "Why don't you just call it that then?" "Because it sounds Asian... ish?" (FYI, Agni is the Hindu god of fire, and Kai means meeting in ''Japanese'').
*** That's because the Fire Nation basically [[Fantasy Counterpart Culture|is Japan with Indian names]].
* As Long As It Looks Elvish... [[J. R. R. Tolkien]] invented the tengwar script as a writing system for Middle-earth. The rules for writing in tengwar are complicated, and vary depending on where you are, when you are, and what language you're writing; one sign could stand for different sounds depending on the writing mode. So when people started making fonts to let them write tengwar on the computer, they usually mapped them to the keys in the tengwar's "grid"-formation. This is relatively easy to use, if you know what you're doing. Unfortunately, there are still people who ''don't'' know what they're doing who make fanart/fansites/whatever with little decorative bits of tengwar floating around, and who get the tengwar just by grabbing a font and typing things in literally. This leads to drawings of Elwe Singollo that are labeled, in beautiful and elegant Elvish lettering, "Febw Gywnghweehw".
** Approximately the same thing happens to Hebrew, Cyrillic, and katakana/hirigana fonts. Some characters represent sounds that require more than one character in the Latin alphabet, and some sounds simply don't exist in the other language. Complicating things further is that in some modes the Elvish languages use accent marks to represent vowels rather than having separate characters for them... something that looks like an m with a dot over it could be intended to be read as the equivslentequivalent of in, en, ni or ne depending on mode.
* Does de [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqWXO87TlH4 Puffincat] count? ''[[Adventures of the Puffincat]]''
** "Puffincat have clever-smart-mind-concept!"
* There was (and possibly{{verify}} still is) a fad on [[YouTube]] for taking a scene from ''[[Downfall (film)|Downfall]]'' and subtitling the German to make [[Those Wacky Nazis|Hitler]] appear to be ranting about ''[[World of Warcraft]]'', his [[Xbox]], shoes, Fords or whatever the author feels like laying into. It's a sort of inverse [[Godwin's Law]], in that you start with Hitler, ''then'' begin the discussion.