As Long as It Sounds Foreign: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

'''CMOT Dibbler''': It's [[Qurac|Klatchian]], isn't it?<br />

'''Sol Dibbler''': Well technically, but I think it's [[Darkest Africa|the wrong part of Klatch]] and maybe "effendies" or something...<br />

* An ad for Bertolli features an "Italian" chef lamenting that Bertolli is stealing his business, to the tune of the Habanera from Bizet's ''Carmen'', a French opera that's set in Spain (and a Spanish form of music).

* An ad for Dunkin' Donuts has a [[Take That]] jingle from [[They Might Be Giants]] aimed at Starbucks, complaining about the gratuitous foreign-sounding gibberish in its drink orders:

** Ironically, this is an ad for Dunkin' Donuts lattes -- and "latte" is itself an Italian word. Although in Italian, it means ''milk'' rather than ''a coffee drink containing milk''.

* A German commercial used quasi-Italian sentences that really were German phrases spoken with a strange tone, like "Pasta ber prima" (=Passt aber prima / That fits [you] really good!)

* A South African ad for an Italian restaurant / coffee place had a husband pretending to say romantic things to his wife. Actually, he is surreptitiously reading the take-away ("takeout") menu, only with dramatic / passionate intonation. The wife goes all weak-kneed and says that she loves it when he speaks Italian to her.

 

 

** [[New Mutants]]' Roberto da Costa sometimes says sentences in Spanish... even though he came from Brazil, where the language is Portuguese.

* In-media example: In one ''[[Lucky Luke]]'' album, the Daltons disguise as Chinese. Jack decides to make his disguise by speaking "Chinese". Which means that he says "ching chang chong" all the time. A crowning moment of funny is when he is talking to a Chinese man who dislikes Rin-Tin-Can very much:

'''Chinese man:''' While I agree, I would not use such words even about someone as horrible as Rin-Tin-Can. }}

* In X-Men, Colossus' real name is Piotr Nikolaivitch Rasputin. Rasputin is a common surname in the area of Russia where he's from, which is fine. And the patronymic is correct, even better. Then his sister Ilyana Rasputin is introduced. Slight oops; her last name ought to be Rasputina. The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe eventually gives her full name as "Ilyana Nikolaivitch Rasputina (Anglicized to Rasputin)."

* In ''[[Top Secret]]'', most of the German spoken is completely irrelevant Yiddish phrases. For example, when supposedly ordering at a restaurant, the love interest is in fact telling the waiter, "''Folg' mich a gang und gai in drerd''" -- "Do me a favor and drop dead." At one point a German soldier does respond to an order in German, severely intoning "''Ich liebe dich, mein Schatze''" -- "I love you, darling." More fake languages abound: the Swedish lines are English run backwards, and a priest reciting the last rites for a condemned man speaks mostly in stock Latin phrases, throwing in one sentence in Pig Latin ("ou're-yay oing-gay to get ied-fray in the air-chay").

** There's also the bit where Nick is riding the train to East Germany, and is learning German from a language tape.

** Also,the French Resistance have the right French names, except Chocolate Mousse. It should have been "[[Did Not Do the Research|Mousse au Chocolat]]".

* In ''[[The Bourne Identity]]'', the name on Bourne's Russian passport is written "Foma Kiniaev" in Latin letters and "Aschf Lshtshfum" (Ащьф Лштшфум) in Cyrillic letters. Apparently, the designers of the prop just typed the name in the Russian keyboard layout without actually translating it. The name was corrected in ''The Bourne Supremacy''.

* Certainly true of the sort-of Indian cult in ''[[The Beatles (band)|Help!]]'' Made funnier by the fact that the British actors make essentially no attempt to conceal their...[[Buffy-Speak|Britishness]].

** Of course, had Radek actually spoken a word in the film, he would've sounded more German than Russian, given that he was played by Jürgen Prochnow, although the actor's English is pretty good.

* In [[Transformers: Dark of the Moon]], Agent Simmons' "German" is simply a string of meaningless consonants and vowel sounds that sounds closer to Geonosian than German. So bad it was probably intentional. If not...

* Victor Spinetti had the possibly unique ability to do this with English in English language films. In ''Oh! What a Lovely War'' and ''[[Magical Mystery Tour]]'' he plays drill sergeants who bellow incomprehensible gibberish at high speed (although in ''Magical Mystery Tour'', the phrase "And get your bloody hair cut!" is very audible). Spinetti was also able to do this with Italian.

* In ''[[Muppet Treasure Island]]'', during the [[Big Lipped Alligator Moment|"Cabin Fever" number]], a group of German sailors sings a bit that goes "Ach du lieber, Volkswagen car; Sauerbraten wienerschnitzel und wunderbar!", a word salad of German words well known to Anglophones.

* Parts of Eli Roth's horror movie ''[[Hostel]]'' take place in Amsterdam, capitol of The Netherlands. But the scenery doesn't look like Amsterdam at all and the people talk German instead of Dutch. In the German translation, it is supposed to be somewhere in eastern Europe.

* ''[[Inglourious Basterds]]'' parodies the trope by [[Inverted Trope|inverting it]]. The native speakers to be fooled into thinking they're hearing something properly foreign are ''Germans''. The American heroes are pretending to be Italians, only they can't speak Italian at all. They're assured that Germans have no ear for Italian accents, so they can fake it and it'll be okay.

** ...and on some Southerners for its fakiness.

* In ''[[The Mummy Trilogy]]'', Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo), Anck-Su-Namun (Patricia Velásquez), and pretty much anyone else who speaks Egyptian during the movie is in actual fact just making up Arabic-sounding words right on screen, as they go along. And so they're more accurately speaking not ''Egyptian'' but ''Gibberiptian''. (In one dramatic scene, Imhotep uses poorly pronounced German as "Egyptian".)

**** Meanwhile in ''Angel'', Wesley is implausibly fluent in hundreds of demon languages.

** Then there's the episode where we get to see what is supposedly the testimony of the first person to encounter Hansel and Gretel (it makes sense in context). The German in it is... let's say, erratic.

* The ''[[Flight of the Conchords]]'' play a song "Foux Du Fafa" that consist only of beginner French phrases in the "Girlfriends" episode.

* The ''[[Kids in The Hall]]'' had [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JinJ7NY5_E a game show called Feelyat!] presented entirely in ludicrous fake Dutch, complete with Der Nederlander Footchoir (a bunch of people hiding behind a curtain except for their hands, which were dressed with socks and wooden shoes, clomping rhythmically).

** Caesar's ersatz German, in particular, was said to be so convincing as regards inflection, cadence, and sound that, even though it was mostly gibberish, some German-speaking viewers reportedly had the uncomfortable and disconcerting feeling that they ''should'' be able to understand him.

* On ''[[The Colbert Report]]'', Colbert parodies this with his K-pop hit single [http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/182950/may-10-2007/he-s-singing-in-korean He's Singing in Korean].

* Occasionally used on ''[[The Daily Show]]'', when unpopular foreign news-makers (particularly dictators) are shown making speeches, coupled with an obviously incorrect voice-over translation. Usually in a silly voice.

* ''[[Hogan's Heroes]]'' is full of it when our heroes choose "German" names for themselves, and simply stick "-burg", "-meier", "-berg" or "-muller" after their own surnames. And the Germans never see through that? The "real" Germans all seem to have properly researched surnames, though.

** And in "Welcome Back, Carter", Sherrif Andy is supposed to speak Dutch at one point. He's not, the first line is pure gibberish.

** The second line was hard to decipher, but the third is actually Dutch, albeit with a near incomprehensible accent.

*** It's: "I've just arrived in the city. Who would want to murder me?" It's Dutch all right, although the first sentence is not 100% grammatically correct.

* [[Lampshade|Lampshaded]] in an episode of ''[[The Golden Girls]]'': "Sometimes I think you make half those [[Italian]] words up"

* Somewhat inverted with Adiemus. The language for this series of albums was deliberately stylized, 'not'' to be in any recognizable tongue. Instead, the intent was for the listener to percieve the voices as instruments, as [[wikipedia:Adiemus|The Other Wiki]] explains.

* [[Billy Joel]]'s song "Don't Ask Me Why" inexplicably drops "parlez-vous francais" ("Do you speak French?") for no other reason than it rhymes with the word "away".

Now you parlez-vous francais }}

** The song is basically one big "I know what you ''really'' are", so that's probably intended to mock the subject for learning French and using it to pretend she's ''from'' France or at least grew up there.

== Theatre ==

* In the musical ''[[Of Thee I Sing]]'', six French soldiers enter singing this French-sounding nonsense chorus (which also slips in the Yiddish phrase "tut dir veh"):

A vous toot dir veh, à vous? }}

* ''[[The Mikado]]'':

** Good luck understanding the pseudo-Soviet hymn played at the menu screen. Apparently, they did try to use real Russian words, but none of the people who actually sang it spoke the language. The music does, however, make it sound like something similar to the Red Army Choir.

** They are the first, to this troper's knowledge, to correctly use the phrase" do svidania", which is normally used in movies to mean "good bye". To be fair, that is what it means, but in the context of "see you later". Literally it means "until (our) meeting". Which means you wouldn't say it to a guy you're about to shoot (unless you're very religious). The proper word in this case would be "proshchai" (a final goodbye). [[Tim Curry|Premier Cherdenko]] uses it correctly.

* ''[[Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney|Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney]]'' features a case with a defendant and witness who speak Borginese, a "language" which consists of [[wikipedia:Dingbat|dingbats]].

** Netopian in ''[[Mega Man Battle Network]]'' is also written in dingbats, as is Melnics in [[Tales of Eternia]].

* "Asian" tattoos have become a a fashionable fad (not Vietnamese though, Latin-based text is not exotic enough) that will later embarrass whoever thought it was a good idea to permanently paint a word they don't know on their arm.

** [[Robin Williams]] has a couple examples...

** A post from a few months ago on [http://www.failbook.failblog.org Failbook] featured a girl who had uploaded a picture of her new Chinese Tattoo to Facebook. One of her Chinese friends commented that it translated as "picnic table".

* Expect people who speak a ''little'' Chinese to fake their way through the tones and, as a result, say gibberish.