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As Long as It Sounds Foreign: Difference between revisions
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'''Sol Dibbler''': Well technically, but I think it's [[Darkest Africa|the wrong part of Klatch]] and maybe "effendies" or something...
'''CMOT Dibbler''': Just so long as it's foreign.
|'''''[[
Many shows and movies don't bother getting a foreign language right when they portray them. The incidence of this increases along with the obscurity of the language. It is easily explained as native speakers are hard to get, especially if the country of origin is on the other side of the globe and the language is fairly obscure. And that's assuming any native speakers are still living, as many languages have died out for one reason or another.
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* Apparently those Westerns which cast Native Americans in speaking roles told them to speak their own language to add some authenticity, which would either be subtitled or translated by another character. The actors complied, but said whatever they felt like, often saying obscene or insulting things about the director, the other actors, etc. There are apocryphal stories of Native American audiences (in)explicably cracking up laughing during scenes that were meant to be dramatic.
* Trey Parker's college film ''[[Cannibal! The Musical]]'' is a film set in Colorado in 1883. At one point, they come across some "Nihonjin" Indians who are clearly Japanese people masquerading as Indians. "Nihonjin" literally means "Japanese person/people." At one point, the chief tries to assure the dubious main characters that they are, indeed, legitimate Indians by pointing out their teepees, one of which is made out of a Japanese flag.
* Movies made during [[World War
** Parodied by [[Terry Pratchett]] in ''[[
* In the ''[[Blade (film)|Blade]]'' films, [[Esperanto, the Universal Language|Esperanto]] is used for the street signs and posters in "foreign" cities to make the locale seem "generically European". Kris Kristofferson seriously studied speaking Esperanto for his brief scene buying a newspaper. In another scene, Hannibal King rests in a hospital watching ''Incubus'', starring [[William Shatner]], one of only two Esperanto feature films in existence.
* The Libyan terrorists from ''[[Back to the Future (film)|Back to The Future]]'' speak some vaguely Arabic-sounding nonsense language.
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* Subverted in the Russian translation of ''[[Dune]]''. The original novel contains a Fremen funerary hymn, which is actually a real-world Serbian song. The translator mistook it for garbled Russian, and, in the preface, he chastised Frank Herbert for "picking up the most pleasant-sounding words out of a Russian dictionary"; to convey the purported As Long as It Sounds Foreign effect, he translated the song into (gramatically-correct) Hindustani.
* Nanny Ogg of the ''[[Discworld]]'' novels usually manages to make herself understood no matter where she goes, although her linguistic approach is described as "gabbling away in her own personal [[Esperanto, the Universal Language|Esperanto]]". "Excuse me, young homme! Trois beers avec us, silver plate", or 'Mein herr! Mucho vino avec zei grassy ass'
** A straight example in ''[[
*** In the Dutch version, he is named Tweebloesem (Twoblossom) the literal translation of Twoflower would be 'Tweebloem'.
*** Possibly the "Rjinswand" discrepancy is justified, as he's also said to have been raised in New Jersey. Ethnic naming conventions are so intermingled in the United States, he could've had a Dutch-American dad and a Swedish immigrant mom, who happened to give birth to him while visiting her family.
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== Live
* In ''[[Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23|Don't Trust the B---- In Apartment 23]]'', the first season's final episode title "Shitagi Nashsi ...", supposedly means 'tall girl no panties' but in reality it's a made up word designed to sound Japanese. It's something like Senotakai on'nanoko inai pantī in real life.
* Parodied, like so many other things, in [[Whose Line Is It Anyway?|Whose Line Is It Anyway]]? during their subtitle games. Two players are given a language to speak while the other two repeat their lines in English. It's always just gibberish that sounds barely like the language in question.
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** They would often use well-known words and intentionally mistranslate them.
* ''[[Have I Got News for You]]'': On this topical news quiz Paul Merton felt that the trick to speaking French was 'all in the shoulders', probably referring to a French stereotype of shrugging while speaking.
* ''[[M*A*S*H (television)|
*** The character of Nurse Kellye was self-described in one episode as "part Hawaiian and part Chinese," but in a later episode she mocks Charles (who is wearing a kimono) in Japanese.
**** However, given that before WWII, there were many Japanese immigrants in Hawaii, it's conceivable that she might have picked up a Japanese insult or two...
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* ''[[Castle]]'' features a female Czech victim called Eliska Sokel. While both names are legitimate Czech names - lacking diacritics and misspelled, respectively - the latter one is male. The female verson of the Czech surname Sokol is Sokolová.
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKbw9YMHUiI This skid] about an international radio show co-moderated by several european radio hosts. Except for the first German sentences, everything is pure gibberish. Hape Kerleking used a lot of fake accents and As Long as It Sounds Foreign in all his shows.
== Music ==
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** The writers mangled the title of the episode "Burns verkaufen der Kraftwerk", which should be "Burns verkauft das Kraftwerk".
** "Endut! Hoch Hech!"
** "Die Bart Die." Sideshow Bob tells the parole board that this tattoo on his chest is German, although in this case, he's obviously lying.
** "Dingamagoo", a food Fat Tony's henchman Legs mentions in "A Fish Called Selma"; most fans assume this is some sort of Italian pasta dish, but according to writer Josh Weinstein, he made the word up. Although he does say he might have intended it to suggest [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasta_e_fagioli pasta fazool.]
* In ''[[King Arthur's Disasters]]'', when thanking Sir Martyn in his "language," King Arthur makes random Japanese-sounding noises.
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** In an aversion, German car company Mercedes-Benz uses a "Kompressor" (German for "turbocharger" or "supercharger") badge to designate its turbocharged or supercharged car models.
** The "Deora", Chrysler's concept pickup from 1965, was given that name because they thought it was the female form of "golden" in Spanish (it's actually "Dorada"). Maybe they got confused when they heard "de oro", which means "(made) of gold", and simply exchanged an "o" for an "a".
* In the [[Canis Latinicus|Latin language]], hardly any words at all end in a long E, an "o" isn't masculine, and "-orum" signifies possession. Adding "-us" and "-um" at the the end of every word also does not make it Latin. On the subject of those Sses-yeah, double letters are pronounced as both letters side by side, and they
** On this topic, ''mandamus'' is a Latin verb form conjugation; it means "we order". Omnibus is a dative plural (meaning "for all"). A lot of [[Delusions of Eloquence]] involve omnibi, mandami, and other idiocy.
*** Shouldn't the plurals of ''caveat'' and ''imprimatur'' be ''caveant'' and ''imprimantur''?
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{{reflist}}
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[[Category:Naming Conventions]]
[[Category:Did Not Do the Research]]
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[[Category:Hollywood Style]]
[[Category:Truth in Television]]
[[Category:Word Salad Tropes]]
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