Omniglot: Difference between revisions

{{quote|'''Lady Christina:''' You speak the language?<br />

'''The Doctor:''' Every language.|''[[Doctor Who]]''}}

Sometimes there may be justification for this -- perhapsthis—perhaps it's a superpower, or perhaps they had an [[Upgrade Artifact]]. And sure, some people genuinely are good at languages. But sometimes, it just seems to be a case of [[Did Not Do the Research]] -- the—the author is just not aware that learning a foreign language properly can be quite difficult and time-consuming (perhaps because the author has never properly learned a second language himself). The result is a sort of [[Charles Atlas Superpower]].

== [[Anime/]] and [[Manga]] ==

{{quote| Max: "I am pleased to meet you. I am Bart's loyal teacher and butthead."}}

* In ''[[Keepers of the Elements]]'' each generation of Keepers is granted this as a secondary ability.

{{quote| '''Indy:''' It's too bad the Hovitos don't know you like I do, Belloq.<br />

{{quote| 20th Century kid: (speaking loudly and slowly) I. Can't. Understand. You.<br />

* From ''[[The A-Team (film)|The a A-Team]]'':

{{quote| '''Face''' (after witnessing the very white and very Southern Murdock supposed to be disguised as a Rabbi speak flawless Swahili to an airport security guard): You speak Swahili?<br />

'''Murdock''': [[I Thought Everyone Could Do That|You don't?]] }}

{{quote| "Rincewind could scream for mercy in nineteen languages, and just scream in another forty-four."}}

** Amber from ''[[I Shall Wear Midnight]]'' picks up almost any language unbelievably fast.

* In ''[[Harry Potter]]'', Barty Crouch, Sr. allegedly speaks over 200 languages, including Gobbledegook and Troll (though Troll is an incredibly easy language to learn).

* In ''[[The Jungle Book (novel)|The Jungle Book]]'', Mowgli -- andMowgli—and by extension his teacher Baloo -- knowBaloo—know all the languages of all the creatures of the jungle. Baloo knows them because he's old, wise, and accepted everywhere, and he teaches Mowgli them because being a "mancub" means that nobody will accept his presence at all unless he learns their language. Mowgli eventually one-ups Baloo by adding the Indian human tongue to his list.

* Kelhus of ''[[Second Apocalypse]]'' has a perfect memory, above-genius level intellect, and an insatiable thirst for knowledge. It's no surprise that he learns new languages in about a week, just from talking with people who speak it. He even became fluent in the ancient language of magic in two weeks--whichweeks—which took his genius teacher six months to learn the ''grammar''.

{{quote| ''Suleiman-bin-Daoud was wise. He understood what the beasts said, what the birds said, what the fishes said, and what the insects said. He understood what the rocks said deep under the earth when they bowed in towards each other and groaned; and he understood what the trees said when they rustled in the middle of the morning. He understood everything, from the bishop on the bench to the hyssop on the wall''}}

* ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'' has a character named [https://web.archive.org/web/20130509133903/http://heroeswiki.com/Traveler Traveler] who has this very power. Only it's not limited to any spoken language, but hand signs and animals as well.

{{quote| '''Neelix''': "I was trying to negotiate with a Xenon-based life-form when the Universal Translator went off-line. Arturis here stepped in and acted as a perfect go-between--and he'd never heard either of our languages!"}}

** During the show's run, its section on ABC.com featured "files" for individual characters which included lists of spoken languages. You can find Sydney's [https://web.archive.org/web/20130925042536/http://www.alias-tv.com/sydney.html here]; not counting English, it lists twelve(!) of them.

** The Judoon themselves are examples of this trope. In their first appearance, their commanding officer barks orders in their language, records an utterance from one of the medical staff using a device, and plugs it into his armor; he then spends the episode speaking in fluent "Earth English". (However, it could just be a translation device similar to the TARDIS; this troper's memory of the episode is a bit hazy.){{verify}}

* Ziva David from ''[[NCIS]]'' speaks ten languages, including the language of love. However, she suffers from severe [[Blunt Metaphors Trauma]] when speaking English, and presumably any language other than her native Hebrew.

{{quote| "What can I say? One day I had a gonzo headache and before it went away I could read and speak Chinese. And it was a bad afternoon, too, lemme tell you."}}

* ''[[Law and& Order]]'s'{{'}}s Ed Green can speak English, Spanish, French, and "enough Russian to get a date". It's unclear if he's fluent in French, however, and this is partially explained by the fact that he moved around a lot as a young child, sometimes living in French-speaking African countries.

** That's the punchline. Plus it's kind of unstandableunderstandable considering he probably had other things on his mind rather than learning another language and he left Miami when he was 17. It's likely he learnt those other languages because he had to in order to do his job.

* ''[[Dungeons and& Dragons]]'' features this trope in spades. In 3.5, just one skill point can enable your character to read, write and speak an entire new language. Or if you don't feel like spending skill points, there's the "Linguist" feat, which lets you learn one new language whenever you gain a new level. Or if you don't feel like using feats, there's the 3rd level spell ''[[A Wizard Did It|tongues]]'' which allows you to speak, read and understand ''any language ever'' (for the duration of the spell, unless you spend experience and cast another spell to make it permanent). Or if you don't feel like learning magic, there's the fact that you automatically ''start'' the game knowing more than one language if you have a + 1 Intelligence modifier or greater. Monks also gain the ability Tongue of the Sun and Moon, allowing them to understand all languages, at a high level, for no apparent reason. And finally there's an Epic-Level feat that lets you speak and understand in its entirety any new language that you come across within ''minutes'', down to the most regal or impressive accent, aptly named "Polyglot".

** They also veered too hard in the ''other'' direction initially in the ''[[New World of Darkness]]''. Each language you knew besides your native language was a separate one-to-three-dot merit, and you required two dots to be literate and conversationally fluent -- onefluent—one dot meant you were minimally fluent and illiterate. For reference, this means that it took nearly a third of a character's starting merit dots to be able to read and speak an additional language, and it cost as much in merit dots or experience as having an intuitive sense of impending danger or being a relatively significant celebrity. They quickly rewrote it in the errata so it now acts as the original version of the Linguistics skill, except as a merit.

{{quote| "Ancient Martian [[Punctuation Shaker|Frang'Twa]] dialect? I know a few phrases."}}

* There's actually a trait for it in ''[[Eclipse Phase]]'' called Hyper Linguist -- itLinguist—it reduces the time and cost to learn Language skills to one-third, lets your character automatically learn a language through a single day of complete immersion, and grants a + 10 modifier to interpreting languages they don't know. Given that you need 50 points in a language skill to be fluent, and you normally require one Rez Point per skill point and one week of studying per point, plus you're restricted to 5 points in a skill per month, this is '''very''' handy if you're not planning to rely on your Muse's translation program for communication. It can also be varying degrees of justified, as your character can be anything from a custom-programmed AI to a centuries-old world-weary immortal.

* In ''[[Aberrant]]'', each point of Linguistics grants fluency with a language ''group'', like Scandinavian languages or multiple dialects of Chinese. A MegaIntelligence enhancement quadruples this.

* [[All There in the Manual]] for ''[[Warhammer 4000040,000]]'' describe the Kroot as extremely gifted in language due to their natural mimicry, making them able to pick up and speak almost any language with fluency in a matter of months. They can apparently even pick up [[Our Elves Are Better|Eldar]] and Tau language, which most humans can't speak due to exacting pronounciation. Most Kroot (except their leaders, who must be able to read the employment contracts) are illiterate on top of it and usually can't write any of the languages they may be able to speak.

* [[Metal Gear Solid|Solid Snake]]'s trophy in ''[[Super Smash Bros.]] Brawl'', as well as various bios from the ''[[Metal Gear]]'' series itself, states that he is fluent in six languages. One of these languages is implied to be French in ''[[Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots]]'', and if the Novelization for ''[[Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty]]'' is anything to go by, he also seems to have a fluency in Russian due to taking courses in Russian as part of his FOXHOUND Training.

* Although it doesn't come up very often, [[The Simpsons (animation)|Homer and Bart Simpson]] consistently display the ability to pick up fluency in just about any language they encounter, sometimes in only a few ''hours''.

** Homer is such an omniglot he can even [[Speaks Fluent Animal|speak Penguin]] -- and—and his comment that he can understand "food talk" in any language may mean he has a limited grasp of any animal language.

* In ''[[DuckTales (1987)]]'', Scrooge McDuck knows enough languages to be able to speak with almost anyone, but then he spent the better part of his life traveling the world doing business, and it's easier to haggle when you know the lingo. If he doesn't speak the language, he might speak a similar one - when he ended up in the [[Lost World]] of Tralla La in Himalaya, he found the natives spoke a language similar to one he learnt while yak trading in Tibet.

* An episode of ''[[All Grown Up!]]'' shows Susie Carmichael knowing various words in various languages as part of a language contest. She claims that she has a "freaky knack" for this. Problem is, such an ability is attested only once outside of the episode in question. <ref>In ''Rugrats in Paris'', Angelica boasts that she's going to Paris and brags about learning the language. Susie responds in perfect French, "I feel sorry for the French people who will hear you."</ref> The even bigger problem is that this ability solely exists to eventually {{spoiler|force Susie into picking [["Friend or Idol?" Decision|helping her friends win the language contest over auditioning for a singing contest]].}}

* [[J. R. R. Tolkien|JRR Tolkien]] was a [[Cunning Linguist|polyglot]] who spoke well over a dozen languages and had some comprehension of up to forty. He even [[Con Lang|made up a few of his own.]] Let's just say there aren't many authors who kept interfering with the foreign translations of their books to (correctly, see for instance the article on translator [[Åke Ohlmarks]]) point out how the translators aren't translating things properly into ''their native languages''...

* Out of all the [[Seiyuu|seiyuusseiyuu]]s out there, [[Tetsuya Kakihara]] is the only one who's known to be able to speak ''five'' languages and those are Japanese, German, English, Spanish, and Latin.

* [[Richard Burton (author)|Sir Richard Francis Burton]], [[Genius Bruiser]] that he was, spoke 29 European, African and Asian languages.