39,327
edits
Poirot Speak: Difference between revisions
m
update links
m (revise quote template spacing) |
m (update links) |
||
Line 27:
*** Well, some Cajun people speaks a dialect called "Cajun French", which is basically french words with english grammar (and outdated French words too, since it split from french a few centuries ago). It's no wonder than a cajun guy like Gambit ended here with this background, and is, for once, a totally [[Justified Trope]]
** According to legend, Austrians who saw the movie would exclaim something like "Oh my god! We don't actually sound like that... Do we?"
** The parody comic ''[[Twisted Toyfare Theatre]]'' likes to get a lot of laughs at the X-Men's expense by mocking this. The X-Men's gratuitous foreign words will usually have humorously inaccurate translations in [[Footnote Fever|footnotes]]; as an example, Nightcrawler's "Ja und splichist!" was translated as "I'm German."
* The modern Vladek Spiegelman in ''[[Maus]]'' speaks in the "foreign grammar, English vocabulary" variant, making this [[Truth in Television]] unless the author, his son, was using artistic license.
* In ''[[Strontium Dog]]'', the presumably Norwegian Wulf uses ''der'' for ''the'' ([[Did Not Do the Research|though in Norwegian 'the' is a suffix to the noun, not a standalone word before it]]), and ''ja'' for ''yes''. His sentence structure also varies between sensible and Yoda-like.
Line 42:
** Also sometimes there Naruto-dobe
** And they're convinced that Kit and Vixen are Japanese.
* [[Axis Powers Hetalia|Hetalia]] has this in a lot of fanfiction. Most common examples are France, and Germany.
* Replacing the "God" in sentences such as "Oh my God" with "Kami" is quite popular, and quite wrong: a lot of spirits that are nowhere near capital-G-God-tier, or even the lower tiers of Olympus, are called ''kami''.
* [[The Son of the Emperor]] is a bit of a peculiar example. While French and German words are mixed into dialogue written in English, this mostly done to convey the fact that the characters are speaking in those languages and not in English.
Line 50:
* A classic film example is Inspector Clouseau from the ''[[Pink Panther]]'' movies, expertly played by Peter Sellers. Subversion: Clouseau's horrendous (and fake) French accent was so thick the French characters in the movies had moments where they could not understand him.
** Several of the jokes are actually based on people '''expecting''' him to speak like this: for example, he says English ''room'' like the French ''rhume'' (cold (the virus))...
* The whispering among the Frenchmen in ''[[Monty Python and
* In ''[[Inglourious Basterds]]'', recognizable words in the French and German dialogue are occasionally reproduced untranslated in the subtitles, producing a Poirot-Speak-like effect even though the characters are speaking entirely in their own languages.
** It actually comes off more like [[Gratuitous German]], since it's mostly just words like "wunderbar," "mein Fuehrer," "ja," or "nein."
Line 68:
* P. J. O'Rourke's "Fake French in Nine (Neuf) Easy Lessons" is another instructional text on Franglais.
{{quote|"Did I tellez vous about le chemise je trouvez at le Bendel's? C'est ''tres froid''. Mais je ne affordez pas it at all so je chargez a Mama. Now she'll be pissoired a la maximum. Have to frapper les libres now--examination terminal de la français is demain..."}}
* There is also a series of books full of the mistakes Dutch people have made whilst trying to speak English, but while still using Dutch words/grammar. This stems from the fact that English and Dutch are related, and share many of the same words. Sometimes words ''sound'' familiar, but mean something slightly different, but hilarious, or something different entirely.
** It also comments on the fact that a lot of Dutch people literally translate Dutch proverbs into English.
* Herald Alberich from [[Mercedes Lackey]]'s [[Heralds of Valdemar]] series routinely speaks Valdemaran with Karsite word order. He was born and raised in Karse and only ended up in Valdemar after being kidnapped/rescued by a [[Intellectual Animal|Companion]], who eventually psychically fed Valdemarian vocabulary into his head... and ''only'' vocabulary, leading Alberich to use Valdemarian words with Karsite grammar.
Line 74:
{{quote|''"For you, Britischer pig, ze var is over."''}}
* Used in ''[[The Da Vinci Code]]'' frequently. The ''second line of dialogue'' after the prologue reads, "Mais monsieur, your guest is an important man." This is representative of most conversations involving non-native English speakers in the book.
** [[Harry Turtledove]] uses the same tactic to make sure you don't forget that people with French names in obviously French-speaking places speak French, or whatever other lingual group the story focuses on. In the [[Worldwar]] series, very little of The Race's language is ever translated into English in the text, but they have distinctive speech patterns which are often indicated (such as the 'interrogative cough'), which people will often use even when speaking human languages which have their own auditory cues to indicate that a question is being asked.
* In the novel version of '''[[2010: The Year We Make Contact|2010]]'' (which portrays rather friendlier Soviet-American relations than the film), the "Russlish" spoken aboard the craft is something of a running joke among the crew of the ''Leonov'', with "STAMP OUT RUSSLISH" posters being mentioned at one point. The American viewpoint character, Heywood Floyd, even mentions speaking to another American (Walter Curnow) in Russian at one point. This is, as noted below, [[Truth in Television]]: mixtures of Russian and English have proven to become remarkably common in space, where Russian cosmonauts and American astronauts frequently spend months together (first aboard ''Mir'', and now on the ISS), although when the book came out (1982) only one US-USSR joint project (1975's Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, which lasted all of 44 hours) had ever been tried.
* in Eric Flint's 163X series (started with the book 1632, written by Flint alone, now includes almost 20 print books, most co-written by Flint and another author(s), many that are anthologies of short stories by many authors, and, of course, the online 'zine "Grantville Gazette", which is formalized, canonized fanfiction), the fictional West Virginian town of Grantville, in the year 2000, is picked up and dropped in the middle of the 30 Years War (in 1631) in the middle of the Germanies. A patois (or pidgin, depending) quickly develops, called "[[Ami Deutsch]]" – "American Deutsch" or "American German". So you have a huge cast of characters who do this so habitually, many readers start doing it in *real life*.
* The Hungarian Toby Esterhase from ''[[The Quest for Karla]]'' trilogy, who manages to do this in multiple languages.
Line 95:
== Professional Wrestling ==
* Done pretty often in [[Professional Wrestling]], more recently with Santino Marella.
** Every single Hispanic wrestler in [[WWE]] does this.
Line 103:
* Anna Russell's routine "Schreechenrauf," introduced as a pastiche of [[Richard Wagner|Wagnerian]] arias for dramatic soprano, is actually a parody of the ''Ring'' cycle, with mangled Anglo-German phrases like "wir fallen in lieber" set to [[Richard Wagner]]'s music. The aria reaches a climax when it puts down one of the characters from ''[[Der Ring Des Nibelungen|Götterdämmerung]]'' (Gutrune, daughter of Gibich) as "Gutrune, die ''Götterdämmerung'' Gibich!"
** She does the same thing with what can only be described as dog-Italian, in "Canto Dolcemente Pipo", from the opera ''La Cantatrice Squelante''.
* Comedian [[Eddie Izzard]]'s bit on Martin Luther spirals into an exploration of this trope: "Then Martin Luther said 'hang on a minute!' Only in German, so, 'ein minuten bitte... ich habe einen kleinen problemm ... avec dieser, uhh, religione.' ...He was from everywhere."
** Izzard also does a bit on attempting to communicate in France with schoolboy French, most of which involves dragging a cat, a table, and a monkey everywhere so that his vocabulary stays applicable. This is sort of complicated/averted because Izzard can actually speak pretty good French – good enough to do whole shows in the language.
* Czech humorous singer Ivan Mladek once did a routine where he spoke German, slipping back into Czech. He told of a television show, approximately "Look Out For The Curve", and translated it as "Achtung! Die Kurve!" (Which, to Czechs, sounds like "Look out! A whore!" as ''kurva'' means prostitute...)
Line 126:
** It should be noted that at least one and [[Alternate Character Interpretation|possibly all three]] of those are [[Fauxreigner|not the nationality they appear to be.]]
* ''[[Chrono Cross]]'' does this ''constantly'', and most conspicuously with Pierre and Harle, the two characters with [[Gratuitous French|faux French]] accents. They even ludicrously use the word ''moi'' for both 'I' and 'me'. This is because the text was actually in standard English, run through an "accent generator" that replaced particular words or word beginnings/endings with others. This allowed the localization team to just translate one line and alter it, rather than translating 44 of them.
* The Russian voices from ''[[Command
* [[Jeanne D'Arc]] has Colet, who speaks in a terribly stereotypical French accent. In a game where everyone is already French.
* Secundo from ''[[Beyond Good & Evil (video game)|Beyond Good and Evil]]'' liberally sprinkles his speech with Spanish words (confusingly, a couple of Italian and French ones, too [the latter presumedly untranslated from the original – "et voilà!").
Line 204:
* Graffiti seen on Spanish sign in bus: "No sneako into USA, OK?"
* It is extremely common for Muslims of any language and ethnicity to pepper their own native tongue with literally hundreds or thousands of different bits of Arabic religious parlance, to the point where many sentences of theirs could hardly be said to be in any other language at all. Naturally this, along with many Muslims being unable to make out the difference between being Muslim and Arab, creates endless confusion and frustration for those of us in the faith (sorry, "ummah") who don't know much Arabic.
** It probably works this way for most religions: walk into a Jewish kindergarten class, sit back, and don't have a clue. But on the bright side, the Shabbos Ima and Shabbos Abba will most likely share some nosh with you, because Morah taught them about ''v'ahavta l'reyacha kamocha'', and they want to practice the ''mitzvah.''
* This is also the case in places in Southeast Asia who are making strong attempts to intigrate English into their schools and workplaces. The result is "Konglish" (Korean/English), "Japanglish" (Kapanese/English) or "Chinglish" (Chinese/English).
* Sometimes, when two people who know only a little bit of the other person's language are talking together (say, English and German), then if the english-speaker knows enough german to basically package the english in a german format, it makes comprehension much easier.
* The [[English Premier League]] attracts a lot of foreign players and it is interesting to contrast those who learn English and then move, with those who move then learn English. The former usually do speaking English with an accent - either their native or American, while the latter often acquire some of the dialect local to the club they play for. A particular treat is a player who was exposed to some English at home but hasn't yet taken formal lessons and is picking up stuff from team mates and listening to the crowd. It incorporates this trope for their general utterances mingled with odd phrases in a broad local accent when talk turns to actually describing the football.
| |||