Just a Stupid Accent: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

{{quote|''"We do not even have a language!'' ''[[Trope Namer|Just a stupid accent!]]"''

 

Occasionally, a film or TV show will be set in a foreign country, where another language is spoken. [[Translation Convention|Instead of having the actors speak normally]], or having them attempt to speak in their characters' actual language, the characters instead speak English - except in a ridiculous accent to constantly remind viewers that these characters are foreign. A [[Translation Convention]] that bats you over the head with the [[Rule of Perception]].

"I also like savings ze mahhney."

"Most premiums televisions peckidge...I jump in it." }}

 

== Anime and Manga ==

** The Ra's chief engineer has a vaguely German/Eastern European accent for no reason.

 

* The ''[[Asterix]]'' comics do this with the ''font'' of the foreigner who was speaking. The Greeks would use angular letters, the Germans would speak in Fraktur, and the Normans would use Nordic-looking letters. Sometimes the differently-fonted speech can be understood by the Gaulish protagonists, but not always. The Egyptian hieroglyphics were often pictionary but sometimes just random drawings or French visual puns, and they weren't understood by the Gauls. In one hilarious scene, when Gaulish sidekick Obelix asks an Egyptian to tell him to say "speak" in hieroglyphics, Obelix's speech is rendered as crude stick figures instead of hieroglyphics.

* Whenever creator/artist [[Sergio Aragones]] addresses readers in [[Groo the Wanderer|his comics]], he "speaks" with a heavily-accented English. This has occasionally caused him trouble in real life. Once when he was invited to be a speaker for a panel at a convention, the con organizers politely provided him with a translator... despite Aragonés knowing perfect English and only using the goofy accent as a gag. He politely pretended not to speak English so as not to waste the translator's time.

 

* [[Peter Sellers]] as [[The Pink Panther|Inspector Clouseau]], showing that it is at least [[Older Than They Think]]. Clouseau goes on to avert it by speaking in an accent which not only bears little or no resemblance to any French accent real or imagined ( "whit is zis minkey??" ) but never actually speaking a single word of actual French, although Sellers himself spoke the language fluently.

** Of course it's repeatedly lampshaded where even his fellow countrymen can't understand his accent.

* In ''[[Ghost Fever]]'', Madame St. Esprit (as she calls herself) is a medium with an exaggerated French accent; as Jethro puts it, "If ''that's'' a French accent, [[And I'm the Queen of Sheba|then I'm speakin' Italian!]]"

 

* In [[Rudyard Kipling]]'s story "In the Rukh" (1893) Muller, a German forest ranger in India, speaks with a highly-exaggerated accent unless he's speaking the local Indian dialect. Observe:

{{quote|If I only talk to my boys like a Dutch uncle, dey say, “It was only dot damned old Muller,” and dey do better next dime. But if my fat-head clerk he write and say dot Muller der Inspecdor-General fail to onderstand and is much annoyed, first dot does no goot because I am not dere, and, second, der fool dot comes after me he may say to my best boys: “Look here, you haf been wigged by my bredecessor.” I tell you der big brass-hat pizness does not make der trees grow.}}

* Justified in Starplex- the computer that handles the translations assigns alien languages an accent so listeners can tell what language is being spoken.

 

* Used all the time in ''[[Mission: Impossible]]''. Possibly combined with [[Translation Convention]]—as the show would frequently feature signs and lettering in the background written in [[As Long as It Sounds Foreign|foreign-looking gibberish]],<ref>e.g. "Zona Restrik" for "restricted zone", or "Fumin Prohib" for "No Smoking", etc.</ref> we can assume that the characters are ''actually'' speaking a different language rendered as accented English in the show.

* Also common in other spy shows of the 1960s.

* In Season 2 of [[The Almighty Johnsons]], [[I'm Not a Hero, I'm X|Eggther]] speaks in a clichéd [[Norse by Norsewest|Norse]] accent

 

* ''[[The Reduced Shakespeare Company]] Radio Show'' adds a flashback scene to ''Romeo and Juliet'', performed in a ridiculous Italian accent ("don't-a mention the spaghett'").

 

* [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] by Dylan Moran in Monster—the bit where he's talking about the common view of the French:

{{quote|"I 'ate my painteengs. I 'ate them! I 'ate your painteengs too!"

* British-Iranian Omid Djalili will often start his act with a generic Middle Eastern accent before abruptly snapping into his natural English accent.

 

* In ''Feng Shui'', based on Hong Kong movies and involving time travel, everybody speaks ''Cantonese''. Even in Ancient Rome, the Wild West, modern New York and Victorian England.

** (Translated into English subtitles for English-speaking players, of course.)

** One mission involves ''everyone'' playing Commies in a Commie-dominated Alpha State. The book actually explains the stereotypical broken grammar in formal terms, followed by "If having trouble understanding, not to be worrying, merely to be imitating helpful examples given throughout book".

 

* Used to devastating effect in the play ''Translations''. The characters seem to alternate between English and Irish accents. We eventually realize that the English accents represent the English and Gaelic languages, and though we can understand everyone, the characters can't understand each other.

* [[Gilbert and Sullivan]]'s ''The Grand Duke,'' which features a German theater troupe with an English lead actress, plays with this one: everyone speaks unaccented English, except for the English character, who is written with a thick German accent.

** An amusing subversion of [[Real Life Writes the Plot]]: the role of Julia was originally played by Ilka Von Palmay, who had an impressive singing voice but a ''Hungarian'' accent.

* [[The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)|The Complete Works of William Shakespeare]] does ''[[Macbeth]]'' in (deliberately) terrible Scottish accents.

 

== Video Games ==

* ''[[Deus Ex]]'' plays this straight, and has it as a plot point if you miss an incorrect accent.

* If ''[[Total War|Rome: Total War]]'' is an indication, the Greeks, Egyptians, Eastern peoples, Carthaginians, Numidians, and the various barbarian tribes, all spoke perfect English aside from their accents. ''Medieval II Total War'' takes this one step further: Scots speak in a thick Scottish accents, The Holy Roman Empire and France speak in thick over-the-top German and French accents and throw in [[Gratuitous German]]/[[Gratuitous French|French]] on a regular basis, the English speak in a posh [[British Accents|British accent]], the Moors, Turks and Egyptians speech is in an Arabic accent and is laced with Arabic terms, the Spanish, Portuguese, various Italians, and the Byzantines all speak in a generic Southern European accent, the Eastern European factions (and, for some reason, the Danes) speak in a generic Eastern European accent, and the Mongols and Timurids speak in an [[Egregious]] East-Asian accent that makes one wonder how the creators didn't get their pants sued off their bodies.

** The Kingdoms Expansion to Medieval Total War II takes it one step further. The units all speak in English with an accent depending on their cultural type, e.g. when playing as the Vikings in the Britannia Campaign your Huscarl units will speak English with a vaguely Scandinavian accent, while any Bill Militia etc have a vaguely English Accent and so on.

* [[Devil Kings]] (or ''[[Sengoku Basara]]''). Arslan/Chosokabe and Puff? Whatever is Capcom thinking, putting these Canadian actors to voice these characters when even these characters don't have an accent in the original.

* The ''[[Splinter Cell]]'' series uses this a lot, though ''Pandora Tomorrow'' had a lot of [[Not Even Bothering with the Accent]] instead.

* Done cleverly in the English dubs of ''[[Metal Gear Solid]] 3'' and ''Portable Ops'', in which Snake is an excellent speaker of Russian. Russian characters speaking in Russian are [[Translation Convention|translated to English]] using an accent that analogises to their Russian one (Volgin sounds American, Sokolov sounds British, etc), with the exception being Granin, who, when encountered, is drunk. Because his slurred speech is harder for Snake to understand, we hear him talking with a thick Russian accent.

 

== Web Comics ==

* ''[[Irregular Webcomic]]'' uses this in comic no. [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2435.html 2435], and (as expected) has a link back to this very trope.

* ''[[Cracked.com]]'' calls Just a Stupid Accent [http://www.cracked.com/article_18721_the-5-stupidest-ways-movies-deal-with-foreign-languages.html The 4th Stupidest Way Movies Deal with Foreign Languages].

 

== Web Original ==

* [[The Parody|Parodied]] in the [http://fartago.blogspot.com/2009/02/chapter-3-fellowship-of-fartago.html blog novel] ''[[Fartago]]''. In Chapter 3, the protagonists Farta and Tago meet Artiste, a member of their tribe whose dialogue is written in a bad French accent (saying "zis ees" instead of "this is," for instance). When Farta asks him about this, Artiste replies, "Since monolith come, I become French." Although, of course, it is unclear - in fact, doesn't seem to be the case - if the words Farta and Tago are "grunting" [[Aliens Speaking English|are even English]] in the first place. But if they're not, then how could Artiste speak English words with an accent? Given that the novel frequently engages in [[Playing with a Trope]] of various forms, it's possible this could be one more example of that. It's also worth noting, given all the other often subtle references the author makes to evolutionary paleontology (even as he - apparently intentionally, according to comments he's made - incorrectly pluralizes "Homo habilis" as "Homo habilii") that Artiste's "transformation" into French is as much a reference to cave paintings - the oldest known human art, found in several famous sites throughout France - as it is a reference to the stereotype that the French are artists.

 

== Western Animation ==

* On ''[[Phineas and Ferb]],'' the Russian cosmonauts speak to each other in accented English.

* In ''Garfield and Friends'', one character ruins Garfield's plan by saying that "he is not speaking Italian, but English with a bad Italian accent"

 

== Real Life ==

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Abridged Series Tropes]]

[[Category:Artistic License Linguistics]]

[[Category:Accent Tropes]]