My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels: Difference between revisions

* In ''[[Y: The Last Man]]'', one of Alter's Israeli soldiers is held at gunpoint by 355. She pleads for her life by ratting off every English phrase she can remember. Things like, "how much does this cost." [[Too Dumb to Live|It might have helped if she dropped the gun]], but that is beside the point.

* In ''The Modern Parents'' in one issue of ''[[Viz]]'', Malcolm, Cressida, and Tarquin visit [[Qurac|Kaftanistan]] to persuade a local warlord to stop hunting endangered mountain goats. Malcolm has prepared a speech that is supposed to go along these lines:

If you are irresponsible now, your children will inherit a twisted and barren environment }}

:: but after translating it into Kaftanistani, it comes out as:

You and your men perform unnatural acts in the dirt<br />

Because of your [[Department of Redundancy Department|evil]] [[Shaped Like Itself|wickedness]], may your children be born deformed and barren }}

* In ''[[Phenomenon]]'', a friend of John Travolta's character asks him to teach him some Portuguese so he can hire a (beautiful) Brazilian lady as his maid. Travolta uses a tape recorder to give English and Portuguese "translations" for sentences like, "Can you start on Monday?". But the Portuguese sentences actually mean "You have beautiful eyes", and so on. At the end of the movie the friend and the Brazilian lady are getting married. Aww.

* ''[[George of the Jungle (film)|George of the Jungle]]'': Lyle uses a phrasebook to attempt to communicate with his native porters in the African jungle. Apparently the makers of the Hungarian phrasebook from the original sketch also made a Swahili one.

* ''[[Johnny English]]'': When [[Rowan Atkinson|Johnny]] tries to speak in romantic Japanese to Lorna, it comes out as "May all your daughters be born with three bottoms."

* In ''[[Star Trek|Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country]]'', Uhura tries to get the Enterprise past a Klingon guard post by speaking Klingon without the aid of a translator. She says, "We am thy freighter condemning things and supplies." The Klingons find the phrase humorous; to maintain the ruse, the Enterprise crew responds with forced laughter.

* In ''[[Gung Ho]]'' a secretary for the Japanese auto manufacturer says tells Michael Keaton that her boss is "between a rock and a hard-on." He rushes in while jokingly saying, "I gotta see this."

* In the 1989 German comedy movie "Otto – Der Außerfriesische" starring comnedian Otto Waalkes, the main character travels to the U.S. to search for his lost brother. With the help of a German-English dictionary, he tries to communicate with a local cab driver, first speaking the supposed english phrase and then the German translation (supposedly for the viewer to understand).

I am hungry ("I am hungary") }}

 

** Carrot just thinks she's incorrect, because dwarves look the same genderwise. One of the earlier books explains this.

** In ''[[Discworld/Interesting Times|Interesting Times]]'', Rincewind the Wizzard is sent to the Counterweight Continent because he is the only one to understand the language - somewhat.

'' 'Damn. I mean... arranged beetles?... variety of waterfall?... Oh, yes... money.' '' }}

*** Of course, the Counterweight Continent is a Discworld version of China, where most of the various languages are tonal, meaning the same syllable can mean several different things based on intonation. For example, the words for "wizard" and "blob of swallow's vomit" differ only by tone.

*** The same thing happens with Mr. Saveloy, albeit to a slightly lesser extent:

** Earlier in ''Interesting Times'', the narrator claims that a simple word like "aaargh" can, in a certain language from Honwondaland, mean "More boiling oil, please!" which can have interesting implications for those uttering it.

** A [[Running Gag]] in the same book has Rincewind use an intonation while screaming "aaargh" that translates it into the counterweight continent phrase for "your wife is a big hippo".

* In [[C. J. Cherryh]]'s ''[[Foreigner (novel)|Foreigner]]'' series, a not-quite-fluent professional translator between humans and the alien atevi says, in the atevi language, "pregnant calendar" when she means "urgent meeting", and {{spoiler|"disintegrate and abase your weapons" when she means "surrender and throw down your weapons"}}.

* ''My Most Excellent Year'' by Steve Kluger has a number of sign-language examples, as many of the characters find themselves needing to rapidly learn American Sign Language after a six-year-old Deaf boy attaches himself to them.

'''T.C.''': Um, actually you just said "I live in a parking lot." You didn't mean to do that. }}

* In ''[[The Saga of the Noble Dead]]'', half-elf Leesil was never properly taught the Elvish language. His later attempts to learn it go poorly; the first time he actually tries speaking to an elf, he manages to turn a request for directions into an insult against the elf's mother.

** ''[[In Living Color]]'' does their own take [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4Ggi4Ru5Lg here].

** On ''[[QI]]'' in series F's episode about the future, Stephen Fry uses this phrase as an example sentence ''in [[Esperanto, the Universal Language|Esperanto]]''.

** After some hints, Rob Brydon goes from 'My cousin is a meercat of strange angles' to the words for 'eels' and 'hovercraft'. When he puts the sentence together, he still can't believe it:

'''Rob''': (laughing) I thought you were being cross with me there, you were saying that just to move on! }}

** Ladies and gentlemen, [http://www.omniglot.com/language/phrases/hovercraft.htm translations of "My hovercraft is full of eels" into many different languages].

* ''[[Ugly Betty]]'' has an episode where Betty (who has lived in America for her entire life) accompanies her father to visit her family in Mexico. The episode features a [[Running Gag]] where Betty tries to say something in Spanish and her father informs her that she just said something embarrassing: "You just said you ate your niece." "You just told them you're pregnant." The [[Bilingual Bonus|funniest part]] is that what she says are actual, fairly common mistakes among new Spanish speakers.

* Sheldon's attempts to learn Mandarin in ''[[The Big Bang Theory]]''. "Long live concrete?"

"Don't call the library. Show me your mucus!" }}

** It's not stated whether he learned it wrong or was taught it wrong, but either way...

*** The Chinese restaurant owner refers to Howard as the friend 'who thinks he speaks Mandarin', making this a likely case of being taught wrong. Of course, knowing Howard, he probably did this on purpose to screw with Sheldon.

* An episode of ''[[Star Trek: Voyager]]'' had this: "That's very sweet of you, but you just told me the comets are tiresome."

** Likewise [[Cunning Linguist|Hoshi Sato]] trying to learn Denobulan in ''[[Star Trek: Enterprise]]''. "I think you make a very cute washboard."

** And, of course, there's the famous instance in which Frank Burns, while holding an auction, tries to wish the Korean crowd "peace and prosperity". In response, a man asks, "You wish us all a prostitute?"

** From another episode: Hawkeye is screaming at a Korean farmer who was trying to work a rice field which had been mined, injuring his daughter.

'''Radar''': Sir, you're calling him an umbrella! }}

** Also, in "The Chosen People," Hawkeye tries to say, "Your presence is welcome in our camp," to Korean officer Sam Pak, but Pak tells him he actually said, "Your uncle has gas from eating cabbage." Hawkeye tries to say something else in Korean and Pak responds with, "I'm sorry to hear that . . . your uncle with the gas is now pregnant."

** In the episode "Radar's Report," Father Mulcahy is attempting to calm a wounded North Korean. Radar's voiceover tells us he meant to say "peace and happiness" but was really saying "Your daughter's pregnancy brings much joy to our village."

* Parker does this in ''[[Leverage]]'', while trying to rescue a group of abused Serbian children. She has a phrase book, but what she says is subtitled as:

:: She eventually gets the kids to go with her by, after nearly giving up, meekly offering "Haagen-dazs?" Later, she reacts to getting caught by exclaiming, [[Getting Crap Past the Radar|"Oh, shiny tomato!"]]

* Long long ago, in ''[[I Love Lucy]]'', Lucy was meeting her in-laws the Ricardos of Cuba for the first time. She tries to be polite with a few memorized phrases, but botches the pronunciation. So instead of saying a polite "Thank you" to her father-in-law, she calls him a "fat pig". [[Hilarity Ensues]].

* In one episode of a short-lived NBC sitcom ''[[Cafe Americain]]'', set in France, the main character (played by Valerie Bertenelli) was finally given an ultimatum to learn the native language. Her initial attempts were a little less than stellar: An attempt to congratulate a newly engaged couple had her unintentionally claiming to be having an affair with the man; and one attempt to converse with her instructor/UST interest resulted in the memorable phrase "Cheese in my pants makes me happy. Don't you agree?"

* On ''[[Top Gear]]'', presenter [[No Sense of Direction|James May]] is given a Romanian phrasebook which has been purposefully mistranslated. When May inevitably gets lost, his attempts to ask directions only confuse the locals.

** Also Hammond, when speaking French, says things like 'le grand champignon', when he means the grand champion. 'le grand champignon' is, literally 'the big mushroom'. It gets worse when he says "il y a beaucoup de lapins dans ma pantalon" which means "there are a lot of rabbits in my trousers."

* Not an unintentional hovercrafting, but in ''[[The Wonder Years]]'', Kevin Arnold is sitting in French class daydreaming about a girl he has a crush on. In the fantasy, his love interest spouts off a whole bunch of eloquent, romantic French to Kevin. To which he can only reply 'Do you want some butter?'

* This happens a few times in ''[[Frasier]]'':

** In "The Perfect Guy".

** In another episode, Niles and Frasier attempt to confront Maris' German fencing instructor whom she has been having an affair with. Unfortunately, the man doesn't speak English but Niles' maid does...yet she has a very poor grasp of English, meaning Frasier has to translate what Niles is saying to Spanish so the maid can translate it ''again'' to the fencing instructor. Everything seems to be going fine until Frasier mistranslates "You have stolen Niles' wife" as "You have stolen Niles' shoes". For some reason, this infuriates the guy prompting him and Niles to duel preceded by this priceless exchange:

'''Frasier''': Oh great, that's ''just'' what we need! A '''''fourth'' language!''' }}

* Murdock may be ''[[The A-Team]]'''s resident [[Omniglot]], but his Italian isn't too great. Although the English speaking mooks around him don't know any better and it helps his disguise, it culminates in him asking two men to [[Crowning Moment of Funny|have his baby. ]]

* In the first ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'' sketch, a professor (played by Michael O'Donoghue) teaches a European immigrant (played by John Belushi) several useful English phrases, including "I would like to feed your fingertips to the wolverines."

* The old Skit show [[All That]] used to have a skit, "Everyday French with Pierre Escargot", where they taught the viewer how to say nonsensical French phrases:

* ''[[Burn Notice]]'s'' Michael Westen is usually pretty good at foreign languages, making this example all the more hilarious. In one episode he steals some [[MacGuffin|documents]] from the Pakistani consulate and leaves a written message in Urdu for the chief of security to meet him at a restaurant. The chief comes into the restaurant with the message and says this:

'''Waseem:''' Well, at least you got the name of the restaurant right. }}

* On ''Coupling'', in the episode "The Girl with Two Breasts", a scene where Jeff misunderstands Hebrew is played twice - the second time with the Hebrew in English, and Jeff's original English as incomprehensible gibberish. This reveals that Jeff has - in place of the girl's name - been repeating the Hebrew word for "breasts" ("Shadayam").

* ''[[The Goon Show]]'' would sometimes have Neddie rattle off a rapid fire string of French only for Moriarty to respond at the end "So, the pen of your aunt is the garden, eh?".

** Or:

'''Spy''': Does your wife know this? }}

 

== Video Games ==

* Infamously done in ''[[Metal Gear Solid 2 Sons of Liberty]]''.

* The plot of ''[[Leisure Suit Larry]] II'' kicks off when Larry tries to hit on a Spanish-speaking woman with rather poor Spanish resulting in nonsensical phrases... that just happen to be the [[Spy Speak]] sign/countersign his [[Identical Stranger]] was supposed to use, leaving him with a microfilm containing state secrets and KGB agents on his tail.

** Larry's Spanish actually makes even ''less'' sense than the subtitles would have you believe, to the point of often not even containing real words. [[They Just Didn't Care|It seems the writers share his problem.]]

** They were, in many cases, VERY OBVIOUSLY not real words, and just adding another level of silliness for the player.

* HK droids from ''[[Knights of the Old Republic]]'' do this intentionally when disguised as protocol droids. If we are to believe HK-47 the results are never pretty. There's a [[Epileptic Trees|theory]] that HK-47 deliberately tries to disrupt talks to start a shoot-out.

'''HK-47:''' Translation: 2% probability that the miniature organic is simply looking for trouble and needs to be blasted. That may be wishful thinking on my part, master. }}

* ''[[Ratchet and Clank]]'' has the Tyhrraguise in the third game, ''[[Ratchet and Clank Up Your Arsenal|Up Your Arsenal]]'', which is a disguise that has to be used to infiltrate the enemy base. While wearing the Tyhrraguise costume, making a mistake will create humorous examples such as:

'''Ratchet:''' Would you like to buy a recently used crotchitizer? }}

* During a boss fight in ''[[Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure|Gurumin a Monstrous Adventure]]'', a character tries to translate for [[The Unintelligible]], and this comes up almost by name.

* Referenced in one of the ''[[Portal 2]]'' ARG mp3s in a "Language Learning Laboratory" tape for learning Spanish. Most of the phrases used are about potatoes, and range from odd to strange. "My hovercraft is full of potatoes" is one of the phrases.

* When Tails attempts to translate Yacker's language in ''[[Sonic Colors]]'', it ends up invoking this trope.

'''Tails''': They are either being used for their mystical powers by an evil man, or to make underwear to be worn by salad. }}

* Referencing the Monty Python example above, ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' has an "Orcish / Common Dictionary" and "Common / Orcish Dictionary" which translate "KEK" and "BUR" ({{spoiler|LOL}}) as "An aggressively passionate mating call."

* ''[[Panthera]]'' gives us Onca's [http://www.pantheracomic.com/?p=914 interest in mango fucking and boiling flowers.] Justified that she's only been practicing the language for a few hours at best.

* In ''[[Dominic Deegan]]'', the main character's father Donovan is hilariously inept with the orcish language; while he presumably thinks he's speaking greetings and profound things, he's really spouting nonsense, such as "My landmass erupts with kittens." He also has a very fancy title:

'''Donovan''': They lied to me. }}

** Recently an orc has been introduced with the same problem speaking Callanian. Apparently he learned from Donovan.

** As it turns out, [http://www.dominic-deegan.com/view.php?date=2010-01-12 He's been faking it the whole time]. Everyone is simply ''gobsmacked'' when he recites an orcish saying perfectly.

*** And why has he been faking it for ''twenty years''?

*** It could also be seen as [[Obfuscating Stupidity]], though it does bring up some questions of why he kept up with it even when his life was in danger from it, such as when he was captured and nearly killed by [[Fan Nickname|Outrage Chief]].

* In ''[[Daisy Owl]]'', at one point Steve is introduced to his long-lost family. His inability to speak Bear makes it seem like he's choking.

* One ''[[Achewood]]'' strip involves Ray attempting to learn German from pornography. The results are...interesting.

* In ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'', Torg and his Portuguese-speaking alternative universe counterpart try to communicate using a translation book. At first, there's an inverted version where Torg ''interprets'' Portuguese-Torg's phrases as weird non sequiturs (without noticing anything odd about it). Then they actually try to speak each others' languages with the help of the book:

'''Alt-Torg''': ''"Ahh!"'' }}

* Incubus in ''[[Blip]]'' [http://blipcomic.com/714/ wasn't very deft] with ancient tongues.

== [[Web Original]] ==

* ''[[Red vs. Blue]]'': Donut is revealed at the end of Season 3 to be able to speak some Spanish. In Season 4, it's revealed that it was only a couple years of high school Spanish, and he apparently wasn't a great student:

** Don't forget that Lopez' Spanish is all Babelfish, so very little of it makes any sense whatsoever. Plus he apparently mixes up French and Spanish.

** O'Malley asks Lopez how to instruct his Spanish-speaking robot army to "hurry up". Lopez instead tricks him into telling them that he likes to sniff his own butt, among other things:

'''Lopez''': "Es una lengua muy poetica." ("It's a very poetic language.") }}

* Rob says this verbatim in epsidoe four of ''[[Unforgotten Realms]]'' (only in the "classic" series and not the new one) when Mike asks what he was saying in Wolf-Language. [[It Makes Sense in Context]]

* In one episode of ''[[Celebrity Deathmatch]]'', [[Star Wars|Peter Mayhew]] does his "famous Chewbacca growl" after the audience insists... only to have an alien respond with "Whaa? Nobody talks that way about my momma!". [[Your Head Asplode|Hilarity ensues]].

* In ''[[The Powerpuff Girls]]'', Blossom and Buttercup's attempt at speaking Squirrel ends up like this:

"Happy to you log pony." }}

* ''[[Invader Zim]]'': "Howdy squichy. We are here to vomit language with a young man who lives in this shelter unit."

* Peggy from ''[[King of the Hill]]'' does this a few times in Spanish, making the "embarazada" mistake from the top of the page, among others. The sad thing is, she's a substitute teacher who thinks her best subject is Spanish.

** It becomes a major plot point in one episode. Peggy leads a class trip to Mexico and accidentally brings a Mexican girl home with her. When she brings the girl home, Peggy is arrested and charged with kidnapping. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkcEPbIjlw0 Hank finally allows Peggy to take the stand in her own defense, and her Spanish is so terrible that the court realizes it must have been a horrible misunderstanding.]

'''Peggy:''' Oh god, I'm going to jail!!! }}

* From the ''[[Darkstalkers]]'' cartoon: "All hail the imperial... Pudding! There are lizards in my pants!"

* When Krusty is running for Congress on ''[[The Simpsons]]'' he adresses a gathering of Hispanic voters in Spanish, only for Bumblebee Man to tell him that he just promised to vomit on their mother's grave.

* While most extraterrestrials on the show speak perfect English (though sometimes in strange intonations, like the Mooninites or Austrian accents, like Oglethorp the Plutonian), in ''[[Aqua Teen Hunger Force]]'' in the episode called Super Spore, a mouthless alien entity uses a proboscis to hijack Shake's body to speak. His native language is bastardized Japanese, but in the episode he's learning English from tapes that Carl has. He then begins spouting phrases "Shut up bitch! I need mustache ride for me lawyer." Frylock's Japanese isn't any better however...

'''Frylock''': "Thank you. Uh, that is, ''suck it. Suck it dry.''" }}

* ''[[The Secret Saturdays]]''. In "Into the Mouth of Darkness", Drew is less than impressed by Doc's grasp of Arabic:

* There's an episode of ''[[Whats With Andy]]'' where Andy pretends to be his cousin from Quebec. In order to prove it, Lori asks him to say "You just won the Stanley Cup" in French; instead he says "Your ears are as big as the Stanley Cup."

* In an episode of ''[[Garfield and Friends]],'' Jon tries to order in French and gets served a pair of soft boiled athletic shoes. In another episode he ends up ordering the name of the chef. Both times he has to deal with [[French Jerk]] waiters.

* The mom from ''[[Eek the Cat]]'' is often shown repeating absurd phrases from language learning tapes.

* Mark's early attempts at speaking manbird in ''[[Ugly Americans]]'', as it's an ''extremely'' tonal language consisting almost entirely of variations on "Suck my balls!"

* When Fang attempts to speak monkey while on an island of monkeys who look like her in ''[[Dave the Barbarian]]'':

* ''[[Scooby Doo]]'': When Mystery, Inc. go to Italy, Fred continually manages to misread his perfectly legitimate phrasebook, causing him to do things like requesting to rent a car that can outrace a flying hamster and ordering a potted plant at a restaurant.

 

=== Dutch ===

* There is a story or joke about a Dutch horsebreeder conversing with an Englishman where she uses the Dutch word for breeding (fokken) and then mistakes the Englishman's "pardon" for the dutch word for horses ("paarden").

'''Dutchwoman''': Yes, paarden. }}

** Justified, as both ''fokken'' and ''fucking'' have the same, Germanic stem in both meaning and grammar (see ''ficken'' in German).

* Yes, under "Real Life". Who knows if it's actually true, but...

** From [http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100910/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_klingons this article] about the production of a Klingon-language opera:

** And then in the comments<nowiki>:</nowiki>

*** Nerd hats on: the famous Klingon proverb 'Today is a good day to die' is {Heghlu'meH QaQ jajvam}, and the word for opera is {ghe'naQ}. [[Critical Research Failure|And this is pretty easy to google.]]

 

=== Spanish ===

* Spanish lesson time.

"Yo tengo quince anos." - I have fifteen anuses. }}

** There's a story of a guy new to Spanish who wondered why, every time he asked a kid their age, the kid would burst out laughing and answer, "Uno" (one).

[[Category:Older Than Feudalism]]

[[Category:My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels]]