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{{trope}}
{{quote|'''Sol Dibbler''': I don't think "bwanas" is the right word, Uncle.
'''CMOT Dibbler''': It's [[Qurac|Klatchian]], isn't it?
'''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.
|'''''[[Moving Pictures]]'''''}}
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.
▲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.
A variation on this is that the foreigners speak English, but are [[Just a Stupid Accent|identified as foreign by an accent]] or are [[It's Always Mardi Gras in New Orleans|parading universally known national images]].
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Names appear especially hard to get right, even European ones, which is all the stranger as most American naming conventions haven't ventured far from their origin. This is why we see female Russians with masculine surnames and patronymics used as names or surnames. This could be explained if their name was anglicized, though the practice has fallen out of favor in recent decades. In most cases, the author [[They Just Didn't Care|just didn't care]].
Contrast with [[Gratuitous Foreign Language]] (and all its subtropes), where the writers take care to give characters lines in a foreign
Contrast also with [[Famous-Named Foreigner]], when in an attempt to avert this trope, the author manages to give his foreign character a ''real'' name... albeit belonging to a famous historical character, which often leads to ridiculous results. When a work is named with this trope, it may result in a [[Word Puree Title]].
See also [[Foreign Looking Font]], [[Fictionary]], [[Black Belt in Origami]]. See also [[Speaking Simlish]]. [[Canis Latinicus]] and [[El Spanish-O]] are subtropes specifically dealing with Latin and foreign affixes, respectively. Also consider [[Esperanto, the Universal Language]]
{{examples}}
== Advertising ==
* An ad for Bertolli features an "Italian" chef lamenting that Bertolli is stealing his business, to the tune of the Habanera from Bizet's ''Carmen'', a French opera that's set in Spain (and a Spanish form of music).
* An ad for Dunkin' Donuts has a [[Take That]] jingle from [[They Might Be Giants]] aimed at Starbucks, complaining about the gratuitous foreign-sounding gibberish in its drink orders:
{{quote|
** Ironically, this is an ad for Dunkin' Donuts
* A German commercial used quasi-Italian sentences that really were German phrases spoken with a strange tone, like "Pasta ber prima" (=Passt aber prima / That fits [you] really good!)
* A South African ad for an Italian restaurant / coffee place had a husband pretending to say romantic things to his wife. Actually, he is surreptitiously reading the take-away ("takeout") menu, only with dramatic / passionate intonation. The wife goes all weak-kneed and says that she loves it when he speaks Italian to her.
{{quote|
== Anime and Manga ==
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* ''[[Hellsing]]'''s Walter Dollneas has a surname consisting of two Welsh words that don't often appear together, let alone appear in a surname. Hirano has all but admitted that he had absolutely no idea what he was doing with the foreign names.
* ''[[Death Note]]'':
** Light's name is not a translation of ''hikari'' (光), the Japanese word for "light". The kanji for "Moon" (月) has the English word "light" as a possible pronunciation for it when used as a name.
*** "Possible pronunciation for a name" in Japan is basically "whatever the heck you want to call your child", but using "月" to be pronounced "Light" is... unusual, to say the least. Apparently the author chose that name so that it wouldn't cause bullying of someone with the same name as the character.
** Most of the victims' names are examples of this trope, as was L, whose real name is {{spoiler|L Lawliet}}. In ''Death Note 13: How to Read'', the writer of the manga admits that he made up the names of the victims randomly, so that no real names would show up as having been written down in the Death Note.
** The bizarre {{spoiler|Quillsh Wammy}}, which is {{spoiler|Watari's}} true name. No wonder he used an alias...
* Piccolo from the ''[[Dragon Ball]]'' series. His name means "small/little" in Italian. In the Italian version of the manga and the movies his name remained unvaried, but in the TV series his name, along with that of many other characters, was adapted. His first incarnation was given the name... "Al-Satan" (the same name they had already given to Chichi's father earlier in the series!), while his second one received the name "Junior". Oh, and the God of Earth was called "The Supreme".
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* Rally Vincent from ''[[Gunsmith Cats]]'', although Rally is her nickname (her real name is Irene). It's a secondary joke based on the R=L stereotype/confusion of Japanese speakers. Switch the letters around and see what name you get.
** Ditto [[Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's|Rally Dawson]].
* ''[[Baccano!]]'' - Expect characters to be given names like Jacuzzi Splott and board a train graciously named the ''Flying Pussyfoot.''
** "Claire Stanfield" is a perfectly normal woman's name. The problem is, Claire Stanfield is a ''[[Gender Blender Name|man]]''. This one got lampshaded in the dub during an episode preview. In the thirties, when the series took place, that could be a man's name. The problem is that the masculine version of the name was spelled Clare.
** ''[[Durarara!!]]'' from the same author has Semyon Brezhnev, a [[Husky Russkie|Russian]] [[Gentle Giant]] of a [[Scary Black Man]], who speaks in [[Eloquent in My Native Tongue|a broken and heavily accented]] Japanese. There's also a brief conversation in Russian between him and Izaya, but his Russian is, actually, not pronounced with any greater degree of accuracy...
* In ''Plawres Sanshiro'' the closing titles song ends with the lyrics "Craft Love", that make absolutely no sense either in the context of the song or indeed any context.
* ''[[Saiyuki]]'' gives the female name Hazel to a male priest... Slightly offset by the fact that he is rather [[Bishonen]], anyway.
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** There are English-spoken phrases being a combination of English and Japanese or simply very grammatically incorrect. "Let's dancing" is actually rather common in Japan.
* ''[[Fafner in the Azure]]'' has a supposedly Irish character named "Kanon Memphis", which doesn't sound like the sort of name ''anyone'' would have, let alone an Irish person.
** Might've been meant to be Conan, which IS the name of an Irish Anti-hero (Conan MacMorna).
* ''[[Umineko no Naku Koro ni]]'' actually does a pretty good job of having Western names. There's Eva, Maria, Rosa, Rudolf, George, Battler,
** Battler's name is [[Lampshaded]] by him in the sound novels, due to him complaining how odd it is.
* Somewhat subverted in episode 10 of ''[[Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex]]'', where in-show foreigners Suzuki Sato and Tanaka Watanabe, both CIA agents, don't bother to check their Japanese aliases for simple things like using two surnames as a full name before entering the country. The Japanese officials with whom they interact are understandably befuddled upon seeing their calling cards. They're [[Acceptable Targets|obnoxious Americans]] with their own sinister agenda and we're supposed to dislike them anyway. To add insult to injury, they look and act very much like some like racist stereotypes of the Japanese, which is probably supposed to reflect their opinions of the country they've been assigned to.
* ''[[D.Gray-man]]'', spectacularly so with the "Portuguese" Tyki Mikk's name. There are at least 4 blatant errors in this name alone.
** "Arystar Krory" was named after a real person called "Aleister Crowley", but the author deliberately went with a different spelling. There is also a Mexican man with the name "Winters Socalo", a German woman named "Miranda Lotto", two Chinese siblings named "Lenalee" and "Komui", and an American man named "Tup Dop". "Marie" is a man, and it seems that's his last name, meaning his first name is "''Noise''". Of note is that a woman who's name was spelled "Crea" in the series itself has her name more correctly spelled "Claire" in a [[All There in the Manual|data book]].
* ''[[Mai-Otome]]'' has most of its characters with obviously Japanese given names, but because they all come from [[Fantasy Counterpart Culture
* ''[[Katekyo Hitman Reborn]]'' is a repeated offender for its attempts at Italian names, most notably Bianchi is used as a (female) first name - it is actually a surname.
* ''Aura Battler Dunbine'' has a classic example of this. A female character is introduced as "Marvel Frozen", to which the Japanese lead hero responds, "'Marvel Frozen'? You must be American!"
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** Considering the time period and that Yahiko, born and raised in Tokyo, is in Kyoto, it's probably a (rather well-known, actually) [[Kansai Regional Accent]] joke. ("Chigau", a word meaning "that's wrong", gets shortened to "chau" in Kansai, and since the dog they're talking about is a Chow-Chow, Watsuki just had [[A Worldwide Punomenon|a little too much fun with it.]])
* In ''[[Chrono Crusade]]'', most of the English names of the American characters make sense, like Joshua and Rosette Christopher. But then you have the German character Satella Harvenheit (which ''might'' have been meant to be "Stella", but is officially spelled with the extra "A"), and the Portuguese immigrant Azmaria Hendrich...(although to be fair, her last name is her adoptive father's....but it still doesn't sound right).
* For ''[[Weiss Kreuz]]'', [[Takehito Koyasu]] apparently picked the name because "Weiss" sounded cool, and "Kreuz" sounded cool with it. Randomly from a German dictionary. This was after the producers firmly vetoed his original title: "Cat People". In English. It really could have gone much worse.
* In the ''[[Tokyo Mew Mew]]'' anime, Ichigo meets an English speaking pianist and is only able to say a few English words, one of them being her own name translated, which is "strawberry".
* ''07-Ghost'' is a series set in a European-style world. Of course, that explains the use of western words and names. Especially when the names in question aren’t actual names. Usually they are random German words, or just Gibberish. Combined with proper Japanese names. And in cases of in-universe terms, they probably just pick a word from a random language. One example would be the god of death, who is from some reason named “Verloren” which means “lost” in German. Or the terms “Kor” and “bascule”. Or the seven ghosts, who are called Zehel, Fest (means firm/firmly/feast in German), Profe, Randkalt (German again. “Rand” is edge and “Kalt” is cold, and therefore “Randkalt” means “edge cold”) , Rilect (maybe it’s supposed to be “Relict”), Ea, and Vertrag (contract in German).
** And then there are the names Wahrheit Tiashe Raggs (Wahrheit means truth in German), Weldeschtein Krom Raggs (Krom means “furthermore” in Czech, but that’s probably not what they meant. And Weldeschtein could be “Waldstein” which sounds enough like a German surname, or a rather believable Yiddish surname, though they probably weren’t meant to be Jewish with all the crosses around the place). Fea isn’t a word, but it resembles a few real name. Female ones.
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* ''[[Batman]]'' example: Ra's Al-Ghul's daughter, Talia, uses the "surname" Al-Ghul, despite the Arabic patronymic [[Did Not Do the Research|not working that way]], but kind of makes sense as her name would thus be "Talia, of the Demon". The trouble is that she then uses the "Anglicized" variant, "Talia ''Head''", which [[Did Not Do the Research|translates the wrong word]]. Maybe "Talia Demon" wasn't subtle enough.
* The time displaced DC character Manitou Raven is said to be from the native American tribe that eventually became the Apache. Manitou (meaning "spirit") is actually an Algonquin word. For Europeans and others who may not know where the Apaches and Algonquins live relative to each other, [[Critical Research Failure|this is about the equivalent of assuming a Norwegian word or myth can equate to a Georgian one]].
** [[It Gets Worse]]: Manitou Raven's power word for becoming a giant is the same as the ''[[Superfriends]]'' character he's an [[Expy]] for, Apache Chief: "Inukchuk". There ''is'' a word that is very similar to this, "inukshuk", which in its language means "something that substitutes for a human", and is applied to giant stone columns and statues. So it would ''almost'' be viable as a symbolic magic word, in the vein of "make me as big as an inukshuk", if it weren't for the fact the language in question is Inuktitut, an Inuit language. To carry on the example above, this would be like taking that Norwegian-Georgian mythological mix and throwing in a dash of Swahili. Then there's the fact that Inuit did not build giant stone columns or statues: inukshuks are only a few feet high. "Becoming as big as an inukshuk" would cause the average human to ''shrink''.
* Hendy of the [[Blackhawk]] squadron is a nice example too, Hans is OK, Hendrickson is slightly un-Dutch, fitting a Dutch-American better than an unhyphenated Dutchman, "Hendricksen" is genuinely Dutch, but "Ritter" is the German word for "Knight", Dutch would be "Ridder", a title, not a name.
* Marvel Comic's character Silver Samurai's real name is Kenuichio Harada. You won't find a single person in Japan called Kenuichio.
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*** [[It Got Worse|Could be worse]], Hudlin [[What an Idiot!|had him utter]] [[Critical Research Failure|"Lieberstesh"]].
** Blackwing (previously known as Beak) is a mutant who was said to be from Rotterdam, the Netherlands. His real name is Barnell Bohusk, which isn't much of a Dutch name at all. Marvel has since changed his official birthplace to Maryland, USA, though that doesn't exactly solve the problem, either.
** ''[[New Mutants]]''{{'}} Roberto da Costa sometimes says sentences in Spanish... even though he came from Brazil, where the language is Portuguese.
* In-media example: In one ''[[Lucky Luke]]'' album, the Daltons disguise as Chinese. Jack decides to make his disguise by speaking "Chinese". Which means that he says "ching chang chong" all the time. A crowning moment of funny is when he is talking to a Chinese man who dislikes Rin-Tin-Can very much:
{{quote|
'''Chinese man:''' While I agree, I would not use such words even about someone as horrible as Rin-Tin-Can. }}
* In ''[[X-Men]]'', Colossus' real name is Piotr Nikolaivitch Rasputin. Rasputin is a common surname in the area of Russia where he's from, which is fine. And the patronymic is correct, even better. Then his sister Ilyana Rasputin is introduced. Slight oops; her last name ought to be Rasputina. The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe eventually gives her full name as "Ilyana Nikolaivitch Rasputina (Anglicized to Rasputin)."
** And even ''that'' isn't right - Nikolaivitch is a masculine middle name, literally translating as "son of Nikolai." Since Ilyana's a girl, her middle name should be "Nikolaivna" (daughter of Nikolai).
* Gabby Rivera was hired for ''America'' because she was ethnically Hispanic. She does not actually know Spanish yet made frequent use of [[Poirot Speak]]. The result is a horribly broken mess noticeable to those whose entire proficiency in Spanish is a single middle-school course. This is made worse by Marvel claiming the comic was an attempt to appeal to Hispanics.
== Fan
* 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.
== Film ==
* [[Charlie Chaplin]]
** In the classic [[Suddenly Voiced|semi]]-silent comedy, ''[[Modern Times]]'', Charlie is expected to sing a song, but loses his cuffs that have the lyrics written on them. Desperate, Charlie improvises a song using gibberish that sounds like a mix of French and Italian and pantomimes a story as he sings. That product of his quick thinking brings the house down. Chaplin did this to keep his Tramp character international and not limited to a specific language.
** Chaplin's Hitler-like role in ''[[The Great Dictator]]'' delivers a foaming-at-the-mouth speech in Tomanian, one of the funniest fake foreign languages ever: a pastiche mixture of English, German and Yiddish nonsense in which such words as "Sauerkraut" and "Katzenjammer" recur.
* In ''[[Team America: World Police]]'', anything that wasn't English was nonsensical gibberish, apart from random French that amounted to the same thing. The terrorists, for example, only use 3 words: 'Durkadurka', 'Muhammed', and 'Jihad!' Except for the cries of "NO ME GUSTAAAA!" at the Panama canal and a North Korean pilot shouting "KAMSAHAMNIDA!".
* Sacha Baron Cohen takes full advantage of this trope in his ''[[Borat]]'' sketches and movie; his spoken "Kazakh" is actually a (sometimes, but not always, nonsensical) mix of Yiddish, Polish, Gangstafied Hebrew, and other languages in an overdone Slavic accent. His written notes are in straight Hebrew. Also his sidekick in the film, Azamat, is actually speaking real Armenian. Almost all the Cyrillic writing used in the film and marketing materials is gibberish created by typing English words into a keyboard set for Cyrillic letters.
** For example, the title on the DVD case sorta LOOKS like 'Borat' but in cyrillic it's closer to saying something like 'Voyadt'
* Turks were unwilling to act the caricatures in ''Midnight Express'' and thus Armenians were hired to portray them, which means that in both the prison and the court scene, reprehensible gibberish and fake Turkish is emitted instead of Turkish.
* In ''[[The Court Jester]]'' the English Hubert Hawkins ([[Danny Kaye]]) pretends to be a jester from Italy. When a guard asks him why he doesn't have an accent, he replies that he is fluent in many languages and demonstrates it by talking a lot of nonsensical gibberish that sounds very much like French, Italian and German. (This skill was then known as "double-talk", and Kaye was a famous master of it.) The guard, who doesn't understand any of this, allows him to pass.
* The Spanish movie ''Bienvenido Mr Marshall'' has a whole segment parodying [[The Western]] movies in faux-English except a few words like "Whiskey", "Hey!" "Howdoyoudo?"
* In ''[[Top Secret]]'', most of the German spoken is completely irrelevant Yiddish phrases. For example, when supposedly ordering at a restaurant, the love interest is in fact telling the waiter, "''Folg' mich a gang und gai in drerd''" -- "Do me a favor and drop dead." At one point a German soldier does respond to an order in German, severely intoning "''Ich liebe dich, mein Schatze''" -- "I love you, darling." More fake languages abound: the Swedish lines are English run backwards, and a priest reciting the last rites for a condemned man speaks mostly in stock Latin phrases, throwing in one sentence in Pig Latin ("ou're-yay oing-gay to get ied-fray in the air-chay").
** There's also the bit where Nick is riding the train to East Germany, and is learning German from a language tape.
{{quote|
** Also,the French Resistance have the right French names, except Chocolate Mousse. It should have been "[[Did Not Do the Research|Mousse au Chocolat]]".
{{quote|
* In ''[[The Bourne Identity]]'', the name on Bourne's Russian passport is written "Foma Kiniaev" in Latin letters and "Aschf Lshtshfum" (Ащьф Лштшфум) in Cyrillic letters. Apparently, the designers of the prop just typed the name in the Russian keyboard layout without actually translating it. The name was corrected in ''The Bourne Supremacy''.
* Certainly true of the sort-of Indian cult in ''[[The Beatles (band)|Help!]]'' Made funnier by the fact that the British actors make essentially no attempt to conceal their...[[Buffy-Speak|Britishness]].
* ''[[The Princess Diaries]]'' and ''[[The Princess Diaries]] 2: Royal Engagement'' play this trope straight over a cliff by [[Ruritania|inventing a European country]], "Genovia," in which the queen (Julie Andrews) is English, the peasants speak either French or English with French, English, and American accents, and the [[Beautiful All Along|princess's]] name is Princess Amelia Mignonette Thermopolis Renaldi.
** The books do give some
*** Mignonette is a flower.
*** Queen Clarisse (Julie Andrews) could very well have been an English princess who married the Genovian King. The fact that she is styled "Dowager" would usually mean that she was a queen consort (married into the royal family) rather than queen regnant (ruling in her own right).
* 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.
** In ''[[Back to the Future (film)|Back to The Future]] II,'' the older Marty's Japanese boss has a name equivalent to "Mr. General Motors." Also, the Japanese street signs in the town square were found hilarious by Japanese tourists during filming.
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* Parodied in ''[[Scary Movie]] 4'' with two characters having a subtitled conversation consisting of random Japanese words ("Karate judo sumo samurai!") and trademarks.
* Played painfully straight in the third ''[[Austin Powers]]'' movie in which Goldmember, and everyone else goes on at some length about Goldmember being Dutch, only for Goldmember to only ever use really bad German in the movie. Come on Hollywood, it isn't that hard.
** Actually, thanks to cultural osmosis, the best context suitable Dutch translation of the English word for frustrating situations is the exact same word both in spelling and phonetics. So if Goldmember had spoken proper 'inappropriate Dutch', nobody (not even the Dutch) would get that he was speaking 'inappropriate Dutch' rather than just swearing a lot.
** There are also the twins [[A Worldwide Punomenon|Fook Mi and Fook Yu]], whom Austin identifies as Japanese, but their names could much more easily pass for Vietnamese or some other East or Southeast Asian language. Of course, the entire franchise is made of [[Rule of Funny]].
*** In a deleted scene, Austin meets the twins again (in Japan), and they reveal their real names: Cindy and Sally.
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** Irish has had so many problems with spelling standardisation that the misspelling might be perfectly acceptable. The pronunciation isn't.
* The Italian 1970 western ''Compañeros'' had a main character that was supposed to be Swedish and was named "Yodlaf Peterson". Yodlaf is total gibberish and does not even remotely sound like any Swedish or Scandinavian names (the closest real name probably being "Jonas", or "Olaf") and while Petersson and Pettersson are common surnames in Sweden, Swedish surnames ending with -son almost always have two S's (as in "Peter's Son" contrived to Petersson). The surname would probably be excusable since occasionally people prefer to have their surnames written with only one S for aesthetic reasons, but the film does this more than once, also introducing an (fictional) brand of Swedish Safes named Svenson. The film also contains some Swedish speech, which was done surprisingly well - while badly pronounced, all the lines where grammatically correct.
* In ''[[The Terminal]]'', Viktor Navorski ([[Tom Hanks]]) is from Krakhozia, a made-up Warsaw Pact country . He speaks passable Bulgarian, adequate to the situation. The [[Ruritania]] he comes from is a minor [[Genius Bonus]] : several Slavic languages have similar sounding words for "collapse", usualy written as some variation of "krach" (spelled vaguely like "krakh"). "[[Bilingual Bonus|Collapsia]]" would be [[Rule of Funny|a pretty apt name]] for the protagonist's home country, given the movie it is the collapse of communism that strands the protagonist.
* ''[[Zulu]]'': According to legend the Zulu messenger was instructed to simply 'say something' in his native language as he collapsed as King Cetewayo's feet. This was a mistake as what he chose to say was 'kiss my behind' or words to that effect. The Zulu actor playing the king managed to keep a straight face. But audiences of their compatriots didn't.
* In ''[[Charlie's Angels]]'', there's a scene where the angels speak Finnish to each other. They discuss what a bad idea it would be to sleep with a client, but this is not what it says in the subtitles. I'm guessing the scene was rewritten after it was shot. Things get increasingly weird if you watch the movie with Finnish subtitles, which also don't match what's said.
* Kal Penn has said that when filming the scene where Taj loses his virginity in ''Van Wilder'', the filmmakers told him to "say something in Hindoo [sic] -- something religious." Instead, he said in Gujurati: "There's a white bitch under me."
* ''[[The Producers]]'': While Uma Thurman certainly tries to speak
* In ''[[The Incredible Hulk]]'', the thuggish Brazilian who harasses Bruce Banner in the early scenes speaks Portuguese with a horrible, horrible foreign accent. It's grammatically correct (or correctly incorrect for the setting), though.
** Really, every Brazilian not played by a Brazilian actor (there are quite a few) speaks in a barely understandable accent. Bruce Banner's emergency Portuguese actually sounded better than most of them.
* In ''[[Stripes]]'', the Soviet soldiers of Czechoslovakia all speak with vaguely Russian-sounding grunts.
* A [[Lzherusskie]] flavoured example would be "general Radek", a minor antagonist from the movie ''[[Air Force One (film)|Air Force One]]''. Radek sounds like an awfully Russian name, da? Well... nyet! "Radek" is not a Russian name - in fact, it's not even a (usual) surname in any Slavic language. It's a given name, specifically a typical Czech diminutive of the male name Radoslav (as a certain [[Stargate Atlantis|Dr. Radek Zelenka]] will tell you).
** On the other hand, there was an actual person named [[wikipedia:Karl Radek|Karl Radek]], who was a genuine Communist at the time of [[Red October]]. On the other hand, it was a self-selected name; he was born Karol Sobelsohn.
** Of course, had Radek actually spoken a word in the film, he would've sounded more German than Russian, given that he was played by Jürgen Prochnow, although the actor's English is pretty good.
* In [[Transformers: Dark of the Moon]], Agent Simmons' "German" is simply a string of meaningless consonants and vowel sounds that sounds closer to Geonosian than German. So bad it was probably intentional. If not...
{{quote|
* Victor Spinetti had the possibly unique ability to do this with English in English language films. In ''Oh! What a Lovely War'' and ''[[Magical Mystery Tour]]'' he plays drill sergeants who bellow incomprehensible gibberish at high speed (although in ''Magical Mystery Tour'', the phrase "And get your bloody hair cut!" is very audible). Spinetti was also able to do this with Italian.
* In ''[[Muppet Treasure Island]]'', during the [[
* ''[[You Don't Mess With the Zohan]]''. The hero is called "Zohan Dvir". While "Dvir" is a real Israeli surname, "Zohan" is... well, not. The closest first name to Zohan Hebrew has is "Zohar".
* In ''[[King Ralph]]'', John Goodman's titular character is introduced to King Gustav and Princess Anna of Finland. Neither name is Finnish in origin, though Anna is still fairly common, and there is a Swedish-speaking minority in Finland. The fact that Finland has no royalty was an intentional break from reality.
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* Parts of Eli Roth's horror movie ''[[Hostel]]'' take place in Amsterdam, capitol of The Netherlands. But the scenery doesn't look like Amsterdam at all and the people talk German instead of Dutch. In the German translation, it is supposed to be somewhere in eastern Europe.
* ''[[Inglourious Basterds]]'' parodies the trope by [[Inverted Trope|inverting it]]. The native speakers to be fooled into thinking they're hearing something properly foreign are ''Germans''. The American heroes are pretending to be Italians, only they can't speak Italian at all. They're assured that Germans have no ear for Italian accents, so they can fake it and it'll be okay.
{{quote|
** ...and on some Southerners for its fakiness.
* In ''[[The Mummy Trilogy]]'', Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo), Anck-Su-Namun (Patricia Velásquez), and pretty much anyone else who speaks Egyptian during the movie is in actual fact just making up Arabic-sounding words right on screen, as they go along. And so they're more accurately speaking not ''Egyptian'' but ''Gibberiptian''. (In one dramatic scene, Imhotep uses poorly pronounced German as "Egyptian".)
** In the case of Imhotep himself, he'd be speaking ancient Egyptian, a language that we can read but have no idea how to speak given that things like pronunciation guides and vowel sounds were not recorded on the writing examples that still exist. He'd be speaking gibberish no matter what. Now, the fact that people seem to be able to understand him is either [[Did Not Do the Research]] or [[They Just Didn't Care]]. Or possibly [[A Wizard Did It]].
** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTTVRpGoPVo This video] reveals that Ardeth Bay may have said the same Arabic line on three separate occasions to mean three different things.
* ''[[Star Trek]] IV: [[Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home|The Voyage Home]]'' had the whalers speak (bad) Finnish, even though Finland is landlocked to north and has absolutely no whaling waters.
* Both an in-universe and media example from ''[[The 40-Year-Old Virgin]]'': Paula, the store manager, while in a conversation with Andy, reminisces about the time when she lost her virginity to a Hispanic boy. She remembers he used to sing her a song, which is in entirely correct Spanish, but the lyrics are ''nowhere'' as romantic as she actually thinks they are. It translates to: "When I get to my room, I can't find anything. Where are you going in such a rush? To the soccer game." She thought it was a beautiful lullaby, while Andy just didn't get it.
* The bad guys in ''[[Die Hard]]'' speak in pseudogerman gibberish.
* In ''[[The Dark Knight]]'', all of the Asian characters in Hong Kong speak flawless Chinese...in the wrong dialect. The standard dialect used in Hong Kong is Cantonese, whereas the characters all speak Mandarin. This could be [[Hand Wave|handwaved]] by the recent push in Hong Kong to learn Mandarin, but surely you would revert to your native language if the Batman had come to kidnap you?
** As a white-collar businessman, it wouldn't be surprising for him to be a native (or at least co-native) Mandarin speaker. The security forces should probably be speaking Cantonese, though, although it's not inconceivable to think the same would apply to them - or that the characters would simply be from Mainland China, where the dominant language is Mandarin.
*** The security by the desk ''was'' speaking in Cantonese.
* An ''intentional'' (as in "it actually fulfills a specific purpose") example is the [[German Language]] movie ''Almanya - Willkommen in Deutschland''. It is the story of a Turkish family (speaking German, but only due to [[Translation Convention]]) who emigrate to Germany, where they initially have no clue what the natives are saying. In order to convey this, all Germans only speak vaguely German sounding gibberish instead of actual German. (To summarize: The audience's ''own'' language [[Keep It Foreign|is supposed to sound foreign]].)
* ''Rescue Dawn'', the actors who are supposed to portray Vietcong fighters are actually from Thailand and as a result, they all speak Lao and Vietnamese in the wrong accent.
* In the [[Asterix]] movie ''Asterix Conquers America'', the Native Americans are saying a random mix of North American place names that were taken from words in the languages of the Native American tribes that lived in those regions. Leading the medicine man to say such things as "Minnesota Manitoba. '''MIAMI!'''"
* In ''[[Congo]]'', [[Tim Curry]] plays an ex-Romanian philanthroper named Herkemer Homolka. However, Herkemer Homolka is so not a Romanian name. Homolka is actually a Czech surname.
* Invoked by Jackie Chan's character Passportu in ''[[Around the World in Eighty Days]]'', who pretends to speak French. Most of what he ends up saying is mere gibberish.
* Whatever the translator is using for Rocky's speech from the ring at the end of ''[[Rocky|Rocky IV]]'', it sure doesn't sound like Russian.
== Literature ==
* 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
* 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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** However, "Mischa" (or "Misha") has migrated over to being largely a female name in the US, especially as a nickname for a girl named "Michelle".
* In H.P. Lovecraft's fiction the Necronomicon was penned by an Arab named Abdul Alhazred, a fictitious name Lovecraft came up with in his childhood. The name "Alhazred" doesn't exist in Arabic and couldn't exist given that "Abdul" ends with a suffix synonymous with the prefix of "Alhazred", so if the name were real then it would be something like "abd-el-Hazred".
** It is quite common however for Arabic names to be mangled as they get sifted through European/American sources.
*** In Arabic, " 'abd" ("عبد") means "servant". "El" is "the" or "of the" depending on context, and "Hazred", obviously, looks just like the English word "hazard", which means "danger". So, "servant of the danger"... amazing [[Fridge Brilliance]] on Lovecraft's part, if intentional, and spooky if not.
**** Not that surprising since "Alhazred" was coined after "Hazzard", Lovecraft mother's maiden name. (Oh, and by the way, the english word "hazard" come from the arabic "az-zar" : "dice game".)
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* In [[Spike Milligan]]'s first novel, ''Puckoon'', the Irish parish priest muses that his parishioners are all ignorant bumpkins. He recalls once giving a sermon in Latin, at the end of which everyone said "Amen". He'd actually just told a dirty story.
* R. J. Rummel ran into this a lot regarding his [[Original Generation|non-historical, foreign characters]] in his ''Never Again'' series. Chinese and Muslim characters got the most of this (and perhaps coincidentally, they were the villains of the second and third books.) [[The Mole]] of the second book (who is {{spoiler|also the [[Evil Counterpart]] of the female lead}}) is a Chinese assassin named Khoo Jy-ying, which of course is gibberish. She has Vietnamese ancestry as well, but that doesn't justify the name as it is still gibberish in that language also.
* Robert Ludlum is a faithful practitioner of this with Russian names like Nikolai Yurievich Yurievich. The English equivalent of this would be someone named Peterson Peterson. Russian middle names are patronymic, derived from father's name, and Russian family names rarely end in -vich, unless the person is of Polish heritage.
* The Japanese-sounding name "Moto" has been adopted by the fictional character ''Mr. Moto'' and by Filipino-Japanese actress Iwa Moto though "Moto" is not a Japanese name. Iwa Moto's real name is Eileen Iwamoto.
** In the last of the "Mr. Moto" books, [[Lampshade Hanging|two different American intelligence officers pointed out]] that "Moto" isn't a Japanese name by itself; it's an '''ending''' that's sometimes part of a Japanese name. So Mr. Moto, whatever his real name was, was deliberately doing As Long as It Sounds Foreign to Americans for more than a decade. This may've been an [[Author's Saving Throw]].
== Live
* In ''[[Don't Trust the B----
* 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.
** Subverted when [[Stephen Colbert]] was [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-K47xCUc7E actually speaking German.]
** Even more hilarious if they take a well-known word or phrase in that language and completely mistranslate it on purpose.
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20111202055056/http://www.zimbio.com/watch/PO01jpZ7ge-/J+Pop+Talk+Show/Saturday+Night+Live This sketch] on [[Saturday Night Live]]. It's all complete gibberish.
** Except for [[Anna Faris]]'s line "''ninhonjin''", which is very close to the actual Japanese word for a Japanese person, ''nihonjin''.
** The fact that it's complete gibberish [[Occidental Otaku|is kind of]] [[Acceptable Targets|the point]].
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*** In one sketch, Danny Kaye (see above) played the Chef's uncle.
** ''The Muppet Show'' also featured occasional appearances by the Flying Zucchini Brothers, an acrobat troupe that spoke Italian-sounding gibberish with the occasional broken English inserted. ("Ay, Fettucini alfredo! Light-a da booma-booma!")
* Lt. Hikaru Sulu from ''[[Star Trek: The
** The Sulu Strait is in the Philippine archipelago. The Japanese dub of the original series considered Sulu to be Filipino.
** [[Gene Roddenberry]] mentioned it being an affectionate rendering of Solow, as in Herb Solow, the executive who helped get Star Trek off the ground, "without the W."
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** On the other hand, in the Japanese dubbing of Star Trek, Sulu was renamed [[The Green Hornet|Kato]], a common Japanese surname.
*** And then they cast a Korean-American actor to play him for the [[Star Trek (film)|film]].
** Although [[Fictionary|Klingon is a language unto itself]], writers of ''[[Deep Space Nine]]'' or ''[[Star Trek:
* Parodied in ''[[Angel]]''. A Mexican wrestler, who goes by the name of Numero Cinco, explains that he got that name from an earlier time in his life, when he and his brothers called themselves "Los Hermanos Numeros." Angel's reaction to this name: "The Number Brothers? Huh?"
** Another episode has Angel talking to two Koreans. One of them speaks Korean fluently, but the other has lines that are technically correct but very simplistic and childish. When Angel speaks to them, his lines are complete nonsense that sort of sounds like an Asian language.
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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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**** Note that linguists HAVE managed to "decipher" Sumerian vocabulary by way of Sumerian-Akkadian tablet.
**** Meanwhile in ''Angel'', Wesley is implausibly fluent in hundreds of demon languages.
** Then there's the episode where we get to see what is supposedly the testimony of the first person to encounter Hansel and Gretel (it makes sense in context). The German in it is... let's say, erratic.
{{quote|
* The ''[[Flight of the Conchords]]'' play a song "Foux Du Fafa" that consist only of beginner French phrases in the "Girlfriends" episode.
* The ''[[Kids in The Hall]]'' had [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JinJ7NY5_E a game show called Feelyat!] presented entirely in ludicrous fake Dutch, complete with Der Nederlander Footchoir (a bunch of people hiding behind a curtain except for their hands, which were dressed with socks and wooden shoes, clomping rhythmically).
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** Subverted in the episode "Suckers". The victim of an apparent art theft identifies himself as a Japanese businessman named [[Girls Love|Yuri]] [[Famous-Named Foreigner|Yamamoto]]. He is eventually revealed as a [[Con Man]].
** There is a rare English Language occurence of this in the ''CSI:Miami'' episode "Dishonour". A woman's father, who is a Hindu, says that she has 'dishonoured the sacrament', which, if you know Catholicism, is wrong, seeing as a sacrament is a Catholic ritual.
*** That's the most common usage, but the word itself can be used more generically for sacred rituals of any sort. Even the Christian usage isn't limited to Catholicism, for that matter.
** Meanwhile ''CSI: NY'' features some odd choices for character names from time to time, like that one girl named Risa Calaveras ("Laugh Skulls" in Spanish).
* ''[[The Fast Show]]'''s "Channel 9" sketch, inspired by baffling Central European televison, has monologues like "Et-eth-etth-thethet-Chris Waddle." (A British footballer, chosen for no good reason.) It started out as a [[Kent Brockman News|news broadcast]], and expanded into adverts, dramas and a nativity play ("SPROG!").
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** "Scorchio!" Brrrr.
** Boutros-Boutros-Ghali!
* A visual example of this appears on Korean television on variety programs when a foreign person is speaking in their native language and the network doesn't think the words are important enough to translate. The foreign speakers are usually subtitled with something like "!@%$$#@%* &
* In the original ''[[Land of the Lost (TV series)|Land of the Lost]]'', the Kroffts were actually ordered by the network not to do this for the Pakuni. So they hired Victoria Fromkin, a Ph.D. linguist out of UCLA, to create the Pakuni language: A grammar, a syntax, and a two hundred word vocabulary. The language is fully detailed in the DVD extras for season 1.
* ''[['Allo 'Allo!|Allo Allo]]'': Totally parodied on the (British) comedy. A German spy, attempting to infiltrate Britain, is asked to demonstrate his supposedly realistic English accent. It comes out as something to the effect of "Fafafafafa, fafafafafafa, [[Britain Is Only London|Big Ben]]".
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* ''[[The Wild Wild West (TV series)|The Wild Wild West]]''. A director once asked some Native American extras to use their own language for a scene, but decided not to use it as they [[Reality Is Unrealistic|didn't sound 'Indian' enough]].
* Both played straight and averted in the 1990s ''[[Get Smart]]'' [[Revival]] series. Agent 66 disguises herself as a Swede named Dr. Heynadeggjadeggi - not a remotely Swedish last name. Then averted as both she and another doctor speak grammatically correct Swedish.
** That name sounds like a bunch of Icelandic mountains mushed together.
* Sid Caesar, Howard Morris, and Carl Reiner frequently did sketches for ''Your Show of Shows'' in a fake European-sounding gibberish.
** Caesar's ersatz German, in particular, was said to be so convincing as regards inflection, cadence, and sound that, even though it was mostly gibberish, some German-speaking viewers reportedly had the uncomfortable and disconcerting feeling that they ''should'' be able to understand him.
* On ''[[The Colbert Report]]'', Colbert parodies this with his K-pop hit single [http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/182950/may-10-2007/he-s-singing-in-korean He's Singing in Korean].
{{quote|
* Occasionally used on ''[[The Daily Show]]'', when unpopular foreign news-makers (particularly dictators) are shown making speeches, coupled with an obviously incorrect voice-over translation. Usually in a silly voice.
* ''[[Hogan's Heroes]]'' is full of it when our heroes choose "German" names for themselves, and simply stick "-burg", "-meier", "-berg" or "-muller" after their own surnames. And the Germans never see through that? The "real" Germans all seem to have properly researched surnames, though.
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** And in "Welcome Back, Carter", Sherrif Andy is supposed to speak Dutch at one point. He's not, the first line is pure gibberish.
** The second line was hard to decipher, but the third is actually Dutch, albeit with a near incomprehensible accent.
{{quote|
*** It's: "I've just arrived in the city. Who would want to murder me?" It's Dutch all right, although the first sentence is not 100% grammatically correct.
* [[Lampshade
* Justin and Zeke's "alien language" in ''[[Wizards of Waverly Place]]''. [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] by the actual aliens ([[Aliens Speaking English|who speak fluent American English, anyway]]) in the episode "Wizard for a Day".
* In the ''[[All in The Family]]'' episode "Gloria Poses in the Nude", there's a Hungarian painter called Szabo Daborba. While "Szabó" is a common Hungarian family name meaning "tailor", Daborba is not a name in Hungarian. Szabo is also used as if it was his given name (in Hungarian name order, family name is followed by the given name). Gloria also says a sentence which is supposed to be in Hungarian, but actually isn't.
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* ''[[Dollhouse]]'': When Echo tried to speak Russian, you'd be hard-pressed to find a native speaker who could understand half of what she's saying. Particularly [[Egregious]] because she was supposed to infiltrate [[The Mafiya|the Russian mafia]].
** Actually, the words are mostly correct. The accent is pretty bad though.
* The rare moments of comic relief in ''[[Mission: Impossible (TV series)|Mission Impossible]]'' frequently came from the ''intentionally'' incorrect pseudo-Slavic (called "Gellerese" after creator/showrunner Bruce Geller) that features in almost every episode taking place behind the [[Iron Curtain]]; it
* ''[[Heroes]]'' is pretty accurate considering it's an entirely American production, but there are a few name-related items that you'd think someone would have brought up when being translated into Japanese:
** Yamagato (Industries) is not a Japanese name. This was likely taken from "Arigato." The writing in the show is 山形 which is "Yamagata": a surname, and city and prefecture in Japan, which would have been more accurate.
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** "Hiro" is usually part of a given name in Japanese (like "Masa"). When the character is by itself, it is usually "Hiroshi." In Japan, "Hiro" would be used as a nickname, very informally. Typically, Japanese people do not introduce themselves with a nickname. Of course, his name is used [[Captain Obvious|because "Hiro" sounds like "Hero."]]
* ''[[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
== Music ==
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* 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.
* Lemon Demon's "Hyakugojyuuichi 2003" has a whole verse of Mark "Toxic" Hughes talking pseudo-Japanese gibberish in the style of the announcer from ''[[Pokémon (anime)|Pokémon]]'' [[Image Song]] "Pokemon Ieru Ka Na?" (also known as "the Japanese Poke-Rap"). This was so the gibberish could be [[Mondegreen
* ''[[Coraline (animation)|Coraline]]'''s soundtrack has some random made up language for at least one song.
* [[Madonna]]'s ''Greatest Hits Volume 2'' album has "モヂジラミミヂ" written on the packaging. Those katakana spell "mojijiramimiji". This means nothing in Japanese; however, it ''is'' what one gets when one types "Madonna" on a Japanese keyboard set to kana mode...
* [[Billy Birmingham|The Twelfth Man]]'s comedy albums are practically built on this trope with the foreign players names.
** For the non-initiated, The Twelfth Man parodies cricket commentary with dead-on impressions of legends like Richie Benaud, with a smattering of "foreign" names like Jarvegemite Fermeeandad or the batting partnership of Kuttis Arminahf and Soonil Havaskar. He even does it with English names like grounds curator Bob Durunkel and Doug Deep, but his [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]] was his impression of NRL commentator Ray "Rabs" Warren reading out the upcoming [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nDeChysygA New Zealand ruby side]. Impressive, though NSFW.
* The rock group [[Blondie (band)|Blondie]] is notorious in certain circles for gratuitious French lyrics that, while not exactly gibberish, tend to be painfully literal and non-idiomatic translations from English. To a fluent speaker, the French verse of "Sunday Girl" in particular is little more than a [[Dick and Jane]] level translation of one of the English verses; other songs are almost as bad, and "Call Me" throws in random stings of gratuitous ''Spanish'' as well.
* ''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?
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* 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|
''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}}.
* [[David Bowie]] uses the phrase "Ouvre le chien" in two different songs. The literal translation from French is "Open the dog."
* The [[Red Hot Chili Peppers]] song ''Around the World'' has parts of the chorus sung in a fake stereotypical Chinese sounding language.
* Played for humor in the Angry Salad cover of Nena's "99 Red Balloons": their version is mainly in English (based on the translated version released as a single), but towards the end vocalist Bob Whelan starts throwing in stock German phrases, as a tongue in cheek nod to the original German version: "99 o tannenbaum, weinerschnitzel [[wikipedia:
* Lionel Richie's "All Night Long" features some African-sounding gibberish in its breakdown section. Richie originally wanted an authentic translation, but after learning there were literally thousands of languages spoken in Africa, he decided it was easier to just make something up.
* As part of the satire, the "Inuit" chanting in [[The Residents]]' ''Eskimo'' is actually strangely enunciated English: Most famously the track "Festival Of Death" includes a garbled chant that is actually "Coca-cola adds life!".
* [[Lady Gaga|"I don't speak German,]] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sNi9nIXxVo but I can if you want."]
* Sophie B. Hawkins' "As I Lay Me Down" has the exotic-sounding but nonsensical syllables "ooh la kah koh" as backing vocals. She once claimed it meant "wash your feet before you sleep" in "an indigenous language of the Ballantine tribe", and this joke tends to get taken at face value.
* 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!"
== Tabletop Games ==
* The plot of the first chapter in ''[[Pathfinder]]: Rise of the Runelords'' depends on a certain noble family: the Kaijitsus. [https://web.archive.org/web/20071211234602/http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/pathfinder/general/archives/japaneseNames
* ''[[Legend of the Five Rings]]'' flirts with this. Major, canon NPCs will get well-based names, but the guidelines for players and Game Masters to name their own characters vary, and so do the accuracy of the names used by players.
** There was also Kurohito, a guy born with stark white hair and fair blue eyes, whose name means "Black Man".
** The name "Toturi" is meaningless in Japanese, even if you see it as an alternative spelling to "Totsuri".
* In ''[[Warhammer
** This isn't an uncommon misuse of the phrase "Dies Irae", due to the apparent similarity of "Dies", meaning "day", and "Deus", meaning "god".
* 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 ==
* In the musical ''[[Of Thee I Sing]]'', six French soldiers enter singing this French-sounding nonsense chorus (which also slips in the Yiddish phrase "tut dir veh"):
{{quote|
Encore, Chevrolet Coupé
Papah, pooh, pooh, pooh!
A vous toot dir veh, à vous? }}
* ''[[The Mikado]]'':
** "Miya sama" from [[Gilbert and Sullivan]]'s musical is a subversion, as it is actually a Japanese folk song (though not a dirty one, as the [[Urban Legend]] has it). However, in one production the song was sung straight once, then repeated using lyrics made up entirely of Japanese brand names ("Mitsubishi Datsun Honda, Kawasaki Toyota...").
** Then there was the character named Yum-Yum, which is completely not a Japanese name..
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** It's even lampshaded in the end of the song : ''Hâ! Hâ! Ça-oh-râ toujours l'air chinoâ.'' (Ha ha, it'll still sound chi-neez !)
* Done in the Tower of Babel scene in ''The Bible: The Complete Word of God (abridged)'', with fake Spanish ("Taco sombrero Antonio Banderas!") and fake Japanese ("Godzilla killy-killy sukiyaki").
* [[Cirque Du Soleil]] uses 'invented' lyrics in many of its
** Also played with somewhat, in that Cirque has songs in quite a variety of ''real'' languages, to the point where, depending on the show, you can never really be quite sure whether or not you're listening to music in a real language.
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== Video Game ==
* ''[[Resident Evil 4]]'' is set in a nameless fictional European country apparently set in Spain. Despite this, all the Ganados speak Spanish [[Spexico|with a Mexican accent]].
* ''[[Command
** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_Y6cVQUJb0&feature=player_detailpage#t=6m57s One of the examples:] АПОСНО! НЕ ВИХОА! <ref>Pure gibberish. Of course, they meant "Danger! Keep out!", but wouldn't it be more accurate to say "Опасная зона! Посторонним вход запрещён!"? If that would have been, then this cutscene would be a [[Moment of Awesome]] to these who knows the language.</ref>
** ''Red Alert 3'' trailer also throws this one for a second. A rebel board that says "Изменение".
** Good luck understanding the pseudo-Soviet hymn played at the menu screen. Apparently, they did try to use real Russian words, but none of the people who actually sang it spoke the language. The music does, however, make it sound like something similar to the Red Army Choir.
** They are the first, to this troper's knowledge, to correctly use the phrase" do svidania", which is normally used in movies to mean "good bye". To be fair, that is what it means, but in the context of "see you later". Literally it means "until (our) meeting". Which means you wouldn't say it to a guy you're about to shoot (unless you're very religious). The proper word in this case would be "proshchai" (a final goodbye). [[Tim Curry|Premier Cherdenko]] uses it correctly.
{{quote|
* ''[[Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney|Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney]]'' features a case with a defendant and witness who speak Borginese, a "language" which consists of [[wikipedia:Dingbat|dingbats]].
** Netopian in ''[[Mega Man Battle Network]]'' is also written in dingbats, as is Melnics in [[Tales of Eternia]].
*** Melnics is actually a cipher language with the font based very loosely on the latin alphabet and [https://web.archive.org/web/20120508202131/http://tales.namco.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=47985 can be translated].
* The creators of ''[[Ico]]'', to facilitate the important gameplay/plot point of the two main characters being unable to verbally communicate or (in Yorda's case) be understood by the player, came up with not one, but two fictional languages for their protagonists. Yorda speaks something vaguely reminiscent of French, and Ico's language sounds a bit like Korean. {{spoiler|The Queen speaks both tongues fluently, a talent she [[Evil Gloating|puts to good use]] in her little chats with Ico.}}
* ''[[Jagged Alliance]] 2'' is a notable exception. The demo has characters Gasket (a moron), and Ivan (a Russian with little patience). When Gasket displays his stupidity, Ivan finally says "I've never worked with such an idiot before" in perfect Russian, AND the game correctly displays what he said in text as well. Considering that excluding Ivan is the only exception to a game fully in English, it's impressive they took the effort to get it right.
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** In ''Sims 3'' Simlish includes (correct, but irrelevant) phrases in French, Spanish and German. It also features licensed music from various bands... "translated" to Simlish. The cadance and intonation of the nonsense words follows the actual lyrics, and sometimes, the gibberish sounds ''almost'' like actual words.
* Every Civ leader in ''Sid Meier's [[Civilization]] Revolution'' speaks in themed foreign sounding gibberish... Intentionally.
** The same thing happens for every governor in "[[Sid
** On the other hand, the only main-line ''Civ'' game to incorporate talking units, ''[[Civilization]] IV'', has each of the units respond in the appropriate language. There was a little bit of [[Blind Idiot Translation]], but the fact that they bothered to come up with good
** ''Civilization V'' did away with the talking units. They just grunt now. Instead, they introduced talking leaders. Of course, the phrases the leaders say and the subtitles are completely different, even for leaders like [[George Washington]] and Queen Elizabeth I. There is still the problem of Rameses II not using proper Ancient Egyptian (this is justified by ''no one'' knowing what it's supposed to like) and other historical characters using modern-day versions of the languages. For example, [[Catherine the Great]] sounds like a modern Russian woman despite being born in a 18th century German principality (her subjects often complained at not being able to understand her heavily-accented Russian). Washington also sounds like he could be living in the 21st century. This troper can't speak for any others.
* Events of ''[[Half Life]] 2'' take place in an unspecified Eastern European location, so the game features quite a few inscriptions in Bulgarian.
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** Nevertheless, most in-game posters and signs featuring cyrillic letters are in fact in (sometimes mangled) Russian. Bulgarian usage of vowels is drastically different.
** Bizarelly, though, despite the otherwise Eastern European theme, City 17's gas pumps are labeled in ''Swedish''. As long as the texture reference photos look foreign...
* In the 1996 adventure game ''[[Call of Cthulhu (tabletop game)]]: Prisoner of Ice'' a Norwegian character is introduced early in the game, but his lines are just barely comprehensible to Norwegian, Danish or Swedish speakers. In one scene he screams "I have never loved anybody" in horribly mispronounced Swedish (even though he is supposed to be Norwegian).
* ''[[Fire Emblem Tellius|Fire Emblem: Path Of Radiance]]'' and ''[[Fire Emblem Tellius|Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn]]'' have the Ancient Language, which the Herons use to sing their galdr. The language is just Japanese being reversed.
** The written version of that in the game is also a [[Cypher Language|cipher of English]], and is [https://web.archive.org/web/20131029135424/http://serenesforest.net/fe9/galldr.html translatable].
* Maybe this is a common theme in [[Tom Clancy]] games, but in the air combat game ''HAWX'', the game opens with the squad facing a set of Bolivarian insurgents named "Las Trinidad" attacking Brazil. The problem with that is that Las Trinidad does not mean "the trinity" (that's la trinidad), but Trinidad. As in Trinidad and Tobago.
* The ''[[Panzer Dragoon]]'' series has the so-called "Panzerese," which is basically a combination of Japanese, German, English, and either Latin or Italian. Example: One song of the Panzer Dragoon Saga Soundtrack is called "Ecce Valde Glorious Ale." Make of that what you will. (does not qualify for [[Fictionary]] because it uses actual words from other languages)
* ''[[Call of Duty]] 4'' features Arabic graffiti in some levels, of varying accuracy. In one particularly amusing case, "Infinity Ward", the game's developer, is spelled out phonetically.
* The [[But Not Too Foreign|Half-Japanese, Half-Russian]] male lead of the first two ''[[Shadow Hearts]]'' games had the Foreign Sounding Gibberish name "Urnmaf" or "Urmnaf"
** It could be meant as "Yuuri" in Japanese (as well as "Yuri" in Russian)- which ''is'' a legitimate male name. English speakers don't necessarily pay attention to Japanese-style short versus long vowels.
* ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess|The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess]]''. Midna's spoken language sounds like some strange merge of Asian accent with French, while employing neither the grammar rules nor words of either language. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfoBWjUNYQw We think it's gibberish, anyway].
** Although, it's gibberish to us, in-universe she could easily be speaking speaking perfect Hylian.
* ''[[Age of Empires
* The ''[[Star Ocean]]'' games have some terrible names (including 'Fayt' Leingod, romanized with a Y to save us from laughing out loud) but nothing, nothing beats the protagonist of [[Star Ocean 4]], 'Edge Maverick'. Really.
* The ''[[Star Wars]]'' game ''Masters Of Teräs Käsi'' features the martial art "Teräs Käsi" that's inexplicably and ungrammatically Finnish. It means something like "steel, hand". If you must have a Finnish title, try "Teräskäsi" for "hand of steel".
* The ''[[Mario
* ''[[Daikatana]]'' has this before you even install the game. The front cover features two prominent Japanese characters. They do, in fact, translate to "large sword", the same as Daikatana would. The problem? It spells "Daito", a much different style of sword. This gives you a pretty good idea of what to expect from the game.
* ''[[Assassin's Creed]]'' has perfectly well spoken modern Turkish... for the decidedly European and Christian Templars.
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* ''[[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.
* [[Rance]] is a perfectly good if somewhat uncommon name. However, other names like Crook (who is a healer by the way), Ragnaroarch Super Gandhi, Reset, and Pastel show how [[
* In ''[[James Bond 007: Nightfire]]'' guards at the villain's Austrian castle will repeatedly shout "Einzelfeuer!", German for "semi-auto". It's the right language, and appropriate to yell at allies in a firefight the first few times but quickly becomes silly as that's practically their entire vocabulary, plus enemy guards will still use full-auto or burst settings while solo guards still yell it.
== Web Comics ==
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*** They do live in the same universe as "Julio Scoundrél"...
* ''[[Magellan]]'': When creating an illusory world Maya needed some Russian sounding place names, Chang is quick to [[Lampshade Hanging|point this out]].
* The Spanish spoken by ''[[Something
* ''[[Scandinavia and The World]]'': What Denmark does when asked to speak Swedish.
* ''[[The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob]]'' pokes fun at this when two French waiters converse in [http://bobadventures.comicgenesis.com/d/20090822.html mock French.]
* The title character of ''[[Princess Pi]]'' is an Egyptian princess named after a Greek letter. It didn't take long for the creator to realize it didn't make sense to name an Egyptian princess after a Greek letter, so he decided the entire comic shouldn't make sense either.
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* 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|JRR 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 equivslent 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 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 [[
* ''[[Chaos Fighters]]'' is extremely rife with this in ''almost everything''. As in case of character names, the only normal sounding name is ''Kenny'' Fanal from ''The Secret Programs'' and ''Clair'' Tyranof in ''Route of Land''. It doesn't help that those oddly sounded names are ''completely made up by mixing syllables''. But considering that they were all set in foreign planets, this may be justified.
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* Ling Ling in ''[[Drawn Together]]'' speaks vaguely Asian gibberish, called "Japorean" by the show's creators. According to "Drawn Together Babies", in-world he speaks a language he made up with his dead twin. In another episode, Ling Ling undergoes an operation to speak English.
* In the original ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1987|Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles]]'' cartoon, Splinter often uses random Japanese words (and sometimes even obviously non-Japanese words, like "Sacajawea") in his battle cries.
* One of ''[[South Park]]'''s creators is fluent in Japanese, so all speech in Japanese is accurate (albet on occasion slightly off, such as "sore no" instead of "sono" or "sonna"). Other languages are just gibberish, though. Lampshaded in "Good Times With Weapons", where the lyrics of the Japanese theme song are a [[Bilingual Bonus]] and a [[Take That]] to anyone who thinks that it's cool
** 'Broflovski' is not a real Polish or Pole-Jewish surname, though this is probably intentional.
** The episode ''Osama Bin Laden Has Farty Pants'' features Afghan children and Taliban who speak fluent, accurate Persian, (albeit with Iranian accents), while Bin Laden speaks random Koranic words, such as "jihad," "Ramadan," "Mohammad," "fatwa," mixed with gibberish.
** In [[The Movie]], Cartman sings "Kyle's Mom's a Bitch" in several languages, which seem to be Chinese, French, Dutch and an African language, judging from the backgrounds and costumes. It sounds nothing like those languages. [[Justified Trope|Justified]] in that Cartman is giving his interpretation of what those languages would sound like.
** Also averted in "Passion of the Jew" in which Cartman speaks proper German.
** In another episode, Mr. Mackey speaks correct Spanish, even down to saying "¿está bien?", a correct translation of his "mm'kay?" [[Verbal Tic]].
* The opening song from ''How the Grinch Stole Christmas'' includes several lines of Seussian gibberish. After it aired, the studio got dozens of letters from people wanting translations for the "Latin lyrics."
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* ''[[Jonny Quest]]'' is notorious for this.
** Hadji is supposedly a Hindu, but his name is a Muslim honorific for one who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca.
** Any non-English language you hear on TOS is UTTER gibberish. For instance, the "Arabic" spoken by Kareem's men in "The Curse of Anubis", and the "Japanese" spoken by Dr. Ashida in "The Dragons of Ashida" are little more than cool-sounding nonsense.
* The Amazing Adrenalini Brothers, who hail from Réndøosîa (a fiction Eastern European/Eurasian country) and speak in gibberish (e.g., "Groota Fizz", "Yazha" and "Jonka kriska navooti").
* ''[[Family Guy]]: The time when Peter Griffin thinks he can speak Italian simply by virtue of his mustache. It sounds a lot like "Bippidy babbito bobbiti bobbidi boo" with accompanying hand gestures.
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** Despite supposedly being Portuguese, Santos and Pascoal (Peter's former fishermen employees) speak in heavily accented ''Brazilian'' Portuguese.
* In ''Modern Toss'', foul-mouthed signmaker Mr Tourette and his customers speak in a kind of gibberish that resembles French.
* ''[[The Simpsons]]''
** 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.
* The alien [[Bounty Hunter]] Embo from ''[[Star Wars: The Clone Wars]]'' speaks the fictional Kyuzo language, which is really just Dave Filoni speaking intentionally bad French. Interviews say that he mostly just read it out of some French ''[[Smurfs]]'' books, but at least once (in the episode "Crisis on Naboo"), Embo actually says an intelligible French word that fits the situation he's in ("Allez", when telling the other bounty hunters to move).
* 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 ==
* Car companies have an awful habit of doing this, often naming models with words that sound foreign. An American example is "Bravada." Japanese examples include "That's", "Ist" (German for "is"), "Stepwgn," "March," "Probox" (a Dutch brand of roof boxes), "President," "Friendee," "Hijet," "Expert," and "Custom Move."
** Whoever decided to keep the name Buick "Lacrosse" in Québec probably did ''some'' research (the English sport name is simply a French loanword), but the briefest of conversations with a Quebecer would reveal that they just called their car the Buick "the Jack-off" in Québecois slang. It was originally known throughout Canada as the Buick "Allure" (another French loanword) for this very reason, but they dropped this rename after a few years.
** The Mitsubishi Pajero is named for a wildcat, but in Spanish slang it means "wanker." Models sold in Spanish-speaking countries are called Monteros.
** 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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** It's a regular rule in the [[Television Without Pity]] recaps that the guy who tries to stick an "o" on the end of an English word and trying to pass it off as Spanish is [[Hypocritical Humour|El Douchebago]].
* Adding "-ay" or "é" to a verb doesn't automatically make it French. "Look-ay, I'm talk-ay-ing L-ay French-ay!"
* Adding "-a" at the beginning and end of a word doesn't make you sound Italian.
* Adding "-en" to the end of every word and sputtering random [[Heavy Metal Umlaut|ümlauts]] everywhere while imitating Arnold Schwarzenegger's voice does not make you sound German.
* Adding "-iau" at the end of every word and speaking bad English in a heavy accent doesn't make you sound Welsh. (for example 'I is Welsh-iau, bruv')
** Also, many people believe that simply going 'chhhhggghahhhghahhgggh' sounds like Welsh.
* Häagen-Dazs ice cream is famous for having chosen a name which sounds... Danish? Hungarian?
* There's also [[wikipedia:Europanto|Europanto]], a "language" comprising random words and syntax of various European languages, depending on what languages the speaker happens to know. A sample sentence: "Europanto want nicht informe aber amuse." It started as a journalist's joke, but now there are forums dedicated to its use.
** Swedish humour magazine ''Grönköpings Veckoblad'' uses a similar Esperanto parody, Transpiranto, which uses [[Bilingual Bonus|bilingual puns and Swedish words phonetically translated into German, French, Italian, English or other European languages.]]
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** Even when the names are made up of real kanji, they're often used wrong. Japanese names follow ''[[wikipedia:Japanese name|rules]]'', and they're not actually hard to use.
* Comedian Sid Caesar has gotten much mileage out of this technique. He shows it off on [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dlr8fj4Y00 this guest appearance] on the American ''[[Whose Line Is It Anyway?|Whose Line Is It Anyway]]?''
* Many "Spanish" place names in the American Southwest were actually invented by English speakers who wanted them to ''sound'' Spanish. In some cases, because these folks didn't actually know Spanish well at all, they turn out to be gibberish. For example, [[wikipedia:Isla Vista|Isla Vista, California]], [[wikipedia:Mar Vista, Los Angeles|Mar Vista, Los Angeles]] and [[wikipedia:Sierra Vista, Arizona|Sierra Vista, Arizona]] are [[Blind Idiot Translation]]s of "Island View", "Sea View" and "Mountain View" respectively that
** Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is guilty of this. Before marrying Corina Raigosa he was just Tony Villar. He added his name to his wife's name to come up with the far more ethnic-sounding (but utterly meaningless) "Villaraigosa" when he went into politics (and re-adopted his ethnic birthname "Antonio" rather than the anglicized diminutive "Tony"), to appeal to the large Hispanic population in Los Angeles.
*** It gets worse. The correct way of mixing both last names is Villarraigosa (with two r's), not Villaraigosa.
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** Pasadena sounds Spanish, but it's actually [[wikipedia:History of Pasadena, California#Etymology|a prepositional phrase in a language spoken by a Native American tribe who lived thousands of miles away.]]
* In Melbourne, Australia, there is an annual festival called ''Moomba'', which was suggested as a name by local Indigenous Australians, who translated it as something along the lines of "let's get together and have fun". In reality, 'Mum' (pronounced 'moom') means 'buttocks/anus' and '-ba' is a suffix meaning 'on, in, at' in several Aborigial languages of the area. The result means, roughly, "Up yours."
* [[wikipedia:Lorem ipsum|Lorem ipsum]] is an inversion of the trope. It's originally a slice of random text from Cicero, modified from proper Latin to approximate the standard letter distribution of English. It's supposed to ''look'' like English, but not be distracting by actually meaning anything.
* A variant of this trope happens in [[Ron White]]'s recounting of when he got thrown out of a bar. The telegraph in Fritch, TX starts transmitting, which he indicates by making a bunch of beeps, as long as they sound like Morse code. [[Rule of Funny|The "shorthand" bit does give it away, but who cares?]]
* The ''Tapestry of Dreams/Nations'' parade and [[Disney Theme Parks]] uses chanting that is meant to give an African feel, but it's completely meaningless.
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* "Asian" tattoos have become a a fashionable fad (not Vietnamese though, Latin-based text is not exotic enough) that will later embarrass whoever thought it was a good idea to permanently paint a word they don't know on their arm.
** [[Robin Williams]] has a couple examples...
{{quote|
** A post from a few months ago on [
* Expect people who speak a ''little'' Chinese to fake their way through the tones and, as a result, say gibberish.
* New Age "Native American spirituality" types often greet with "osiyo" and end with "mitakuye oyasin". The former is Cherokee. The latter is Lakota, thousands of miles away, and translates as "all my relatives" - which, without a verb, means nothing.
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* 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]]
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[[Category:Hollywood Style]]
[[Category:Truth in Television]]
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