Poirot Speak: Difference between revisions
m
clean up
m (update links) |
m (clean up) |
||
Line 9:
Not to mention that these characters sometimes impose their native tongue's sentence structure on English ("Please to be restful. It is only a few crazies who have from the crazy place outbroken."), [[Malaproper|mix up similar-sounding words]] without realizing it (such as ''dejected'' and ''ejected'', for example), and [[Blunt Metaphors Trauma|generally mangle English idioms]].
See also [[Gratuitous Foreign Language]] and [[As Long as It Sounds Foreign]], wherein nobody's supposed to understand ''any'' of the words. Has some degree of [[Truth in Television]], as slipping into your native tongue is rather common for those who are not completely fluent with a foreign language. However, the way this trope is often used in fiction tends to be the inverse of the way real people
{{examples}}
Line 64:
* Named for Detective [[Hercule Poirot]], who spoke this way as part of his [[Funny Foreigner]] facade. Hercule speaks fine English at the end as he explains step-by-step how he solved the case. Other characters have commented on it.
** Poirot's speech is something of a subversion, as he uses his accent to disarm suspects, making them think he's only a [[Funny Foreigner]] when it's really "[[Obfuscating Stupidity|just an act]]".
* Another notable literary example is Professor Van Helsing of the novel ''[[Dracula]]''; his style of
* There are a trilogy of books by [[Miles Kington]], entitled "Let's Parler Franglais", "Let's Parler Franglais Again" and "Lets Parler Franglais Une More Temps", which teach a mangled version of French of this type (for comedy but presented as serious language lessons). Franglais is described as "The language you can speak if you know English and O-Level (Middle School) French".
* P. J. O'Rourke's "Fake French in Nine (Neuf) Easy Lessons" is another instructional text on Franglais.
Line 160:
== Western Animation ==
* Almost every foreigner in the ''[[Looney Tunes]]'' series, especially in the Pepe LePew cartoons (in which
* All of the foreign [[Superfriends]] added to be minorities: Samurai, Apache Chief, and El Dorado.
** They were [[Unfortunate Implications|really insulting]], by the way.
Line 171:
** The fact that Starfire does this is even more vexing, considering her entire understanding of the English language stems from a direct psychic download from a native speaker, meaning she should have instant and near-perfect understanding of the language. The ''only'' words from her own language she should be using are ones without direct translations.
* Just because she understands it doesn't mean she's used to speaking it.
* In ''[[The Inspector (animation)|The Inspector]]'' cartoons from [[DePatie-Freleng Enterprises]], The Inspector (an [[Expy]] for [[The Pink Panther|Inspector Clouseau]]) has a fairly mild accent, though he does pepper his dialog with "oui" and other short words. In the early cartoons, however, his [[Sidekick]], Sgt. Deux-Deux, speaks with a mild Spanish
{{quote|'''The Inspector:''' "Don't say sí. Say oui."
'''Deux-Deux:''' "Sí, Inspector." }}
Line 185:
* This is generally not all that uncommon for the average<ref>Above a certain level of skill, you can start to ''think'' in the second language as fluently and holistically as your first, and pretty much none of this applies any more.</ref> speaker of foreign language. Certain common standard words are so ingrained in your speech patterns that it can be hard to drop them without conscious effort when using them in casual speech, ranging from words like "thanks" or "bye" to swearing. Generally the more surprised you are, the more likely you are to respond in your native tongue regardless of the surroundings. The most obvious example is probably when a startle causes you swear: it is nearly impossible not to slip into your native language when doing it and, conversely, swearing in a different language requires a conscious effort for which you don't have time when startled.
** Unless you learned swearing mostly from movies, music, the internet and other kinds of anglophone cultural export. Also, teens absorb this kind of English language pop culture right when they start rebelling against their parents' "no swearing" policies, and the parents often won't understand a hissed "Shit!", so you get away with it more easily. Words like "fuck" and "shit" and pretty much all kinds of sexual terms seem ''much'' less offensive than the equivalent words in languages like German or Japanese. Some media actually uses this as a form of [[Getting Crap Past the Radar]]. In ''[[Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt|Panty and Stocking With Garterbelt]]'', for example, almost all swears spoken are in English rather than Japanese - the censors didn't mind, but the intended audience would know what they meant.
* This is essentially the origins of "pidgins"
** Many of these pidgins eventually become fully fledged creole languages later on, combining many aspects of the languages they were derived from.
* In ''[[Michael Palin]]'s New Europe'', the people who are showing him around do miss out words when speaking English to him and one did use the Romanian word for "yes" rather than the English one.
* The famous [http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/article09-100 "blinkenlights"] warning sign.
* Often justified in real life. Children raised by parents who primarily speak one language in a place where most people speak another will often grow up speaking to their parents in unusual combinations of both. Typically, verbs, pronouns and grammatic structure will remain in the parents' native tongue, while nouns and and adjectives will shift far more quickly to the new language. The result is something almost identical to
** Franco-Manitobans (and other fully fluently bilingual people) do this, leading those of us who have to switch brain-language gears before changing languages completely in the dust.
* Jean-Claude Van Damme is particularly known for that in France when he kept using English words in the middle of his French sentences like his infamous "aware". The fact that his "philosophical" sentences are as clear as someone being high and drunk at the same time doesn't help either to understand him, no matter the language used.
Line 199:
** And sometimes justified in that there ''is no'' official translation from the German/Latin/Greek/English word, or, alternatively, that the official translation is to leave it as it is. That applies to more than science, of course.
** In Spanish, there is a false friend of this trope where the scientific term is indeed translated, then abbreviated through Spanish grammar to sound just like Poirot speak. ADN is DNA, for example, from ácido desoxirribonucleico, from deoxyribonucleic acid.
** It has more to do with convenience, similar to bilingual case, then undergraduate education. For example in conversation in Polish I can drop words like "coursework" etc. Usually it is aversion of
** This is common in other countries as well, thanks to almost all international publication and communication in the sciences being in English. For example, while there are German terms for some bioscience terms (and you could legitimately invent translations for the rest), they aren't really in use anymore. These days, it's less work writing your Bachelor's thesis entirely in English than try and translate all the technical terms into unwieldy German for your pedantic professor. You're going to have to learn it anyway, if you ever want to publish anything, so why not start early? They've even started introducing Master courses that are conducted entirely in English, to prepare the students and because it's just easier to stick to one language.
* This is also common in countries where a particular subject is taught in a language not native to the country. For instance, medicine in most Arab countries outside Syria and Algeria is taught in either French or English, depending on what other country has colonial or other historic ties. As a result, you get Egyptian and Jordanian doctors speaking Arabic with English words like "blood pressure" and "intravenous" and "lung cancer" showing up...which makes it difficult to talk to a Lebanese doctor, who will know them as "pression artérielle", "intraveineuse" and "cancer du poumon", and both would confuse the hell out of the Syrian doctor, who knows only "daght ad-damm", "qastara wardiyyah", and "saratan al-ri'ah". All, mind you, while speaking Arabic.
| |||