Speaking Simlish/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: Characters in a video game speak voice-acted gibberish instead of actual language.

  • Straight: Everybody speaks a gibberish language.
  • Exaggerated: Everybody speaks using inhuman sounds.
  • Justified: The game takes place in a different world, where languages share nothing in common with our world's languages.
  • Inverted: Everyone, even babies, speaks perfect English. Aliens too!
  • Subverted: The characters are speaking an actual language, just not the same one as the text of the game.
  • Double Subverted: The language was one constructed purposely for the game, and isn't very complete outside the game dialogue.
  • Parodied: This trope... in a Sitcom.
  • Deconstructed: The setting acknowledges that the charters have no verbal language and have to resort to signing to communicate.
  • Reconstructed: Characters manage to convey information through the tone of speech rather through the meaning of words.
  • Zig Zagged: The first game had no voice acting. The sequel game tried to add voice, but due to audio compression it was entirely unintelligible. The third game turned this into full-out Speaking Simlish, but during development a second team started remaking the first game with full voice acting.
  • Averted: The game is fully voiced in English. (Alternately, the game has no voice acting at all.)
  • Enforced: "We want to add voice acting to this game, but there's not enough memory to hold all the lines."
  • Lampshaded: "It's a good thing we have these text boxes, otherwise I'd have no idea what you're saying!"
  • Invoked: "Hey, I don't feel like talking today, so let's just make funny sounds and pretend they mean something!"
  • Defied: ???
  • Discussed: "What a fascinating language, you can say a million different things with the same five phrases."
  • Conversed: ???
  • Played For Laughs: Simlish is used in a very dramatic scene.
    • Some Simlish words sound like rude English slang.

F'ytei m'tb e Speaking Simlish.