Eloquent in My Native Tongue: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
{{quote|''"<Thank Christ! I sound like a fucking retard when I try to speak English!>"''
|'''Natalya''', upon finding another person who speaks Russian, ''[[Y: The Last Man]]''}}
{{quote|"''I really, really hope English is this person's second or third language, and if she were writing in Albanian or Farsi or whatever she would be so eloquent you'd weep.''"
|'''Diana Goodman''', commenting on an all-but-incoherent forum post in [http://www.notwithoutmyhandbag.com/babynames/6.html Baby's Named a Bad, Bad Thing].}}
Hey, look over there. [[You No Take Candle|There's a guy who doesn't speak very well at all! He must be stupid!]]
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== Anime and Manga ==
* When ''[[Ranma ½]]''{{'}}s [[Hot Amazon]] Shampoo speaks Chinese to Mousse, she's eloquent to the point of being archaic, but her Japanese is pretty bad (it's translated as [[Hulk Speak]] in English).
* Shenhua from ''[[Black Lagoon]]'' is Taiwanese and presumably speaks fluent Chinese, but her English (and Japanese, in the original) is utterly dreadful both in grammar and pronunciation, to the point where Revy (who is Chinese-American) nicknames her "Chinglish." It's ''not'' a good idea to take her poor language skills for stupidity, [[Dark Action Girl|unless you want to be]] [[Knife Nut|knifed to death]].
* Kuu Fei from ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'', despite her grades is ''not'' stupid; her physical/kinetic ability sits at a genius level. She also occasionally speaks in her native Chinese, at which she comes off as perfectly concise. However, she speaks Japanese in a stereotypical "Chinese person speaking Japanese badly" manner, which is translated similarly to Shampoo's speech in the above example.
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== Fan Works ==
* Frequently used for Shampoo in ''[[Ranma ½]]'' fanfiction, as her canon characterization is a [[Funny Foreigner]] with a limited grasp of Japanese, and one [[Fanon]] [[Flanderization]] turns her into a baby-talking dimwit. Showing her as well-spoken in Chinese (and possibly other languages) is a common way to expand her character.
** One good example of this can be found in ''[
* In [[The Teraverse]] story ''Over The Line'', Sister Marie - a superheroine nun from San Diego - is detained and questioned, in Spanish, by the Mexican federal police, who then don't believe her when she identifies herself... because they assume that she ''should'' be fluent in Spanish, but she clearly isn't. (However, she's previously known to be fully bilingual in French and English, and previously worked as a translator on behalf of French-speaking immigrants in the United States.)
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* The titular ''Pnin'' in the novel by Vladimir Nabokov.
* Dave Sedaris' ''Me Talk Pretty One Day'', which causes his French teacher extreme grief. He finally understands French... but can't speak it properly himself.
* [[J. R. R. Tolkien|JRR Tolkien]]'s [[The Lord of the Rings]] has the wild men of the Drúadan Forest; they have no contact with outsiders, and are viewed as backward primitive creatures. Upon contact, their chief Ghân-buri-Ghân speaks sub-optimal Common Speech - but turns out to be quite smart, wise and knowing. This is further cemented when one reads [[All in The Manual|the other things Tolkien wrote about them]].
* Professor Van Helsing (a Dutchman) in the original [[Dracula]] is an interesting quasi-example of this. He speak the English in syntax quite broke, but he's really quite eloquent even then, in that he has a great vocabulary.
* [[Sherlock Holmes]] story ''A Scandal in Bohemia'' features a letter written with English words and German syntax, which is one of the clues Holmes uses to narrow down the origin of the letter.
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