Automoderated users, Autopatrolled users, Bureaucrats, Comment administrators, Confirmed users, Forum administrators, Interface administrators, Moderators, Rollbackers, Administrators
116,216
edits
As Long as It Sounds Foreign: Difference between revisions
m
→Live Action TV: M*A*S*H pothole
m (dab Blondie (band)) |
Looney Toons (talk | contribs) m (→Live Action TV: M*A*S*H pothole) |
||
| (10 intermediate revisions by 5 users not shown) | |||
Line 4:
'''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.
Line 149:
* The execrable ''[[Wild World of Batwoman]]'' (given a sound thrashing by the guys on ''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000]]'') had the main characters' seance frequently interrupted by a Chinese spirit. Keep in mind, the spirit's Chinese mainly consisted of saying "ching", "chang" and "chong" over and over again in random combination, causing Tom Servo to deadpan "You know, that ''may'' not be real Chinese." As Mike says, "To every Asian and every ''human being'', we apologize for that last scene."
* In ''[[Blazing Saddles]],'' the Indian Chief (played by [[Mel Brooks]]) speaks Yiddish. This was done on purpose, as the movie is a parody.
** And in one of the posters, the Hebrew letters for the Yiddish [[Spoonerism]] "Posher l'Kesach" (roughly, "Posher for Kassover") worked into his headdress.
* Alien language examples abound in ''[[Star Wars]]: [[Return of the Jedi]]''. The Ewok speak Tagalog, a Philippine dialect. Huttese spoken by Greedo, Jabba and others is basically bad Quechua, spoken in a variety of dialects. Lando's copilot Nien Nunb speaks the African language of Haya.
* 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.
Line 214 ⟶ 215:
* 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.
Line 253 ⟶ 254:
== 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.
Line 297 ⟶ 298:
** 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...
Line 369 ⟶ 370:
* ''[[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 ==
Line 384:
* Boney M.'s "Rasputin", though about a Russian figure, throws in some German words: "...the kasatschok he danced really wunderbar". Partly excused by the fact that Boney M. was formed by a German.
** An especially bad mismatch as well; although both the Czar and Czaritsa had German ancestry, they ''never'' spoke German at court due to the long-standing antagonism between the two countries. Alexandra's best language was English, but most court business was conducted in French.
*
** What's even more exasperating is that they made a follow-up called "china nights." Japan is
* "Spanish Bombs" by The Clash has a refrain which is supposed to be Spanish but is not actually a complete, comprehensible phrase.
** To a casual listener, in fact, the background lyrics of "Should I Stay Or Should I Go" barely even qualify as gibberish as sung.
Line 396:
* ''Brutally'' averted on Manowar's "Thunder in the Sky" EP, which features ''sixteen'' versions of the song Father, each sung (correctly) in a different language
* "Rock of Ages" by [[Def Leppard]] starts out with a German nonsense phrase "Gunter glieben glauchen globen". This was later [[Sampling|sampled]] by [[The Offspring]] for "Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)".
** Which was, in turn, parodied with the equally nonsensical
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcUi6UEQh00 Prisencolinensinainciusol], <s>all right</s> oll raigth! The lyrics are basically what the Italian singer thinks English sounds like.
* Similarly, the opening from the ''[[Hellsing]]'' TV series, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJfeCTyTqP8 "The World Without Logos"]. Yeah, there are a few distinguishable English words in there, but most of that is just nonsense.
* The song
* The backing vocals on Paul Simon's "The Boy in the Bubble" - sung by Simon himself - consist of nonsense words that sound vaguely African.
* You don't seriously think the lyrics of [[The Arrogant Worms]]' "Gaelic Song" actually ''mean'' anything, do you?
Line 405:
* 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}}.
Line 420:
* Stephen Stills (who attended a school in Costa Rica during his youth) has [[wikipedia:Suite: Judy Blue Eyes#Final section|supposedly claimed]] the "Spanish" at the end of "Suite:Judy Blue Eyes" is meant to be incomprehensible even to Spanish speakers, and that he arranged the "doo doo doo doo doo, dat doot doo doo doo dit"s over them to obscure it and make it even more difficult to decipher.
* The [[Cocteau Twins]] built pretty much their entire career around this. Sometimes, in Elizabeth Fraser's euglossolalic vocalizations, you can hear fragments of actual words in English or some other languages (supposedly odd bits of obscure Scottish slang). Robin Guthrie says the Japanese audiences, when they played shows there, sort of inverted the trope in that they'd all actually thought she was singing in Japanese.
== Professional Wrestling ==
* [[TNA]] poked fun at this trope with the Curry Man character, who was supposedly Japanese, but was actually [[Memetic Mutation|NOT]] Christopher Daniels, an American white guy. Curry Man's Japanese was actually just Daniels reciting names of famous Japanese pro wrestlers. Late in the gimmick's life, Curry Man did pick up some English skills, but not without the over done accent.
* In [[World Wrestling Entertainment|WWE]], during the later part of William Regal's career, he was portrayed as a regal, high-class, British snob, which included mispronouncing wrestblers such as Triple "Haitch." The funny thing is, that pronunciation of the letter H is actually less posh, going against his "British Snob" persona for those in the know. It makes it sound like Corporate just told him to "sound as British as possible."
* [[Mitsuharu Misawa|Mitsuharu Misawa's]] powerslam [[Finishing Move]] is sometimes written as "Emerald Flowsion" and sometimes as "Emerald Frosion". There's no one correct way to spell it, since the second word is not actually English.
== Radio ==
* Internet radio show ''[[
* The [[Reduced Shakespeare Company]]'s radio show included a purported Japanese film version of ''Hamlet'' by [[Akira Kurosawa]], which included phrases like, "Ah, Subaru!" and "Sony tapeplayer!"
Line 442 ⟶ 441:
* The ''[[Warhammer Fantasy]]'' RPG called the [[Big Bad]] of the "Enemy Within" campaign "Zahnarzt". Yes, that's German for dentist. The first edition was full of [[Bilingual Bonus|such jokes]]. It had a family named Untermensch (Sub-Human), an inventor named Kugelschreiber (Ballpoint-Pen) who lived in a house called Geflügelsalad (Chicken Salad), a fire wizard named Hals Roch...The bad guy is named "Klaus P. Verräter" (Traitor). Allegedly, there is also a good guy named Goebbels in the same publication.
* ''[[Kindred of the East]]'' has the authentically Chinese character 氣 ("life force") on the cover. On all other interior illustrations though all the Oriental writing is represented by meaningless scribbles.
* The ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!]]'' card [https://yugioh.fandom.com/wiki/Des_Volstgalph Des Volstgalph]. "Des" is used in place of "Death", but while "Volstgalph" sounds German or Russian, it actually doesn't mean anything in any language, only done to make the monster's name [[Rule of Cool|seem cool]]. Indeed, the card isn't very useful in a deck, just collected because of its neat artwork.
== Theatre ==
Line 513 ⟶ 512:
* ''[[Arc Rise Fantasia]]'' has a handful of very short songs sung by Ryfia and another Diva, which they use for various purposes, including as their attacks in battle. Each one of these is in a significant-sound and very pleasant, but completely gibberish "language."
* Originally Kim Kaphwan from ''[[Fatal Fury]]'' and ''[[The King of Fighters]]'' was going to be called Kim Haifon, which admittedly sounds cool but is not a possible Korean name.
* ''[[
** The residents of Facade also speak in a language that was apparently created by shuffling hiragana around, which sometimes makes it sound like actual Japanese.
* ''[[Pokémon Colosseum]]'' has characters whose names go from just slightly off normal names to a random string of letters.
Line 579 ⟶ 578:
** 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.
* The ''[[Daria]]'' episode ''Of Human Bonding'' features a Danish
* ''[[King of the Hill]]'': The Souphanousinphone family often shouts what is supposed to be Laotian, however, it is actually just foreign sounding gibberish.
** Used in-universe in the earlier Khan episodes to show how little the guys knew very little about asian cultures, which is in contrast to Cotton, who can tell Khan's nationality just by looking at him due to having fought asians in the war.
* Any signage shown in ''[[Aladdin (Disney film)|Aladdin]]'' is either English in a [[Foreign Looking Font]] or meaningless scribbles that resemble Arabic. (There's a possible exception in a sign above Jafar's door that ''might'' possibly have his name and the word ''wazir'' on it, which leads to a bit of [[Fridge Logic]]; why would he need a sign that nobody else sees to just have his name and title on it?)
* There is an ethnically Hawaiian character in ''[[Rocket Power]]'' named Tito. [[Did Not Do the Research|there is no letter "T" in the Hawaiian alphabet!]]
* There is an African character in ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'', a zebra named Zecora. In her first episode, she speaks a few lines of what is supposed to sound like Swahili. [[Word of God|Lauren Faust]] explained that they were originally going to find someone who actually knew Swahili, but due to time constraints, Zecora's voice actor was told to just say some Swahili-sounding jibberish instead. Points for trying.
* [[Played for Laughs]] on ''[[South Park]]'' when Chef joins the Nation of Islam.
Line 591:
* Given an interesting spin in the previous [[Star Wars: Clone Wars|Clone Wars]] series. The Nelvaan language is a mix of Russian and Hungarian, read phonetically by voice actors who don't speak the language, to give it a non-natural "alien" sound.
* [[Viva Piñata (animation)|Viva Piñata]] had a scene with sumo hippos who are implied to be japanese. The words they spoke were japanese alright, but they spoke it completely out of context, especially since the words were like "Sushi" and "Sashimi" that most western audiences would know anyways. It's a funny steath pun considering what comes out of a pinata, but given that they speak perfect english, it's a bit of a [[Mood Whiplash]].
== Real Life ==
Line 599 ⟶ 598:
** 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''?
Line 648 ⟶ 647:
* The hot dog restaurant chain Wienerschnitzel was originally called "Der Wienerschnitzel", but they dropped the "Der" part in 1977 because it's a masculine article ("Das" should be used to refer to neuter nouns). Even so, "Wiener schnitzel" (as it should be written) doesn't refer to hot dogs, but rather a breaded Viennese-style veal cutlet, which the restaurant ironically doesn't sell. "Wiener" is actually short for "Wiener Würstchen", loosely translating to "little Viennese sausage".
** Schnitzel is best known in the US as chicken-fried steak, which was invented when Austrian (or perhaps Bavarian) immigrants in Texas decided to make it with a different piece of beef.
* Japanese composer Kouji Makaino has used foreign-sounding pseudonyms such as Mark Davis, Jimmy Johnson or Michael Korgen when composing music that would eventually used in commercials [[Japandering|featuring foreign celebrities]].
* Besides being a [[Shoddy Knockoff Product]] of Kawasaki, the [https://ameblo.jp/enoki-2019/entry-12540850628.html Keweseki] marque sold in places like Angola bear the inscription "せんたんぎじ也つ" (translit. ''"Sentangijiyatsu"'') which is indeed made from actual kana, but makes absolutely no sense to a Japanese speaker. The brand attracted attention from Japanese media and internet circles who were perhaps bemused by the bizarre use of Japanese calligraphy.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Naming Conventions]]
[[Category:Did Not Do the Research]]
Line 658 ⟶ 659:
[[Category:Hollywood Style]]
[[Category:Truth in Television]]
[[Category:Word Salad Tropes]]
| |||