Strange Syntax Speaker: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

This [[Trope]] deftly describes when wily characters can't understand unusual dialog delivered brazenly by an alien or outsider. The twist? While ''words'' are apprehensible, the text's [[wikipedia:Syntax|syntax]]—significant rules regulating grammar generation - remain reclusive. [[Self-Demonstrating Article|Perhaps paired words will always alliterate]], or orators must mangle texts to fit fifteen-syllable sentences. Regrettably, results sound strange, appearing as garbled gibberish to the central characters, but basic sentence syntax conforms coherently ''to the strange speaker.''

 

Critical concept: attending audience ''can'' clearly surmise sense after attaining strange syntax's prime principles. Axiom acclimation therefore turns into intriguing core component of overture.

 

{{examples}}

== Comic Books ==

* In ''[[League of Extraordinary Gentlemen]] Black Dossier'', the character Galley Wag is from a dark-matter dimension and speaks in a bizarre slang like "Bread and Tits!" and "Huff yer oyver in all you'm tick senned such a plumious sparktackle?" While the statements make sense in context, the human Mina can understand Galley Wag and provide translation.

* Often employed in [[Grant Morrison]]'s ''[[Doom Patrol]]''—the Scissormen speak in nonsense phrases, the Men from N.O.W.H.E.R.E. speak in sentences that are expansions of that acronym, and so on.

** The Scissormen's speech is made even better by the fact that they speak in gibberish and anagrams simultaneously.

** It doesn't help that half the time {{spoiler|she's talking to her invisible friend Cipher}}

* The 2011 ''[[Teen Titans (Comic Book)|Teen Titans]]'' revamp featured Thrice, a team of three metahuman brothers with powers that involve merging into one body and splitting apart. The combined form always uses first person ''and'' first person plural pronouns, possessives, etc., referring to "I/We", "me/us", and so on.

** It's been speculated that Yoda's speech is essentially that of a Galactic Basic speaker from 8–900 years ago, when Yoda was young.

*** [[Fridge Brilliance]]: His years of isolation have caused him to occasionally forget the "correct" way to speak. The above sentence isn't "an eloquent phrase"; it's just plain mangled rambling.

* Played for comic effect in ''[[Airplane!]]!'' with [[Jive Turkey|Jive]].

* ''[[V for Vendetta]]'': V's vernacular vigilantly vexes viewers via very variant vocabulary.

** Interestingly, the last two examples are very similar to how a native Mandarin speaker would speak English, since that is almost exactly the way it is said in Mandarin ("we not know" rather than "we know-not").

* Mr [[Con Man|Jingle]] in ''[[The Pickwick Papers]]'' - strangely incoherent speech - talks like a telegram - rum fellow - very.

** Carrot's... let's call it "idiosyncratic" approach to punctuation (basically a grammatical equivalent of [[Spray and Pray]]) makes his writing a bit of this.

* Manny in ''[[The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress]]'' speaks (and narrates the entire novel) without using articles or other "nulls" (what he considers meaningless words), as well as Russian and Australian slang.

== Live Action TV ==

* In the ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]'' episode "Darmok," Captain Picard is stranded with an alien who speaks a language composed entirely of figurative language. The Universal Translator gets their ''literal'' meaning just fine, but without knowing the stories they're alluding to, it's impossible to decipher what they're actually talking about.

* ''[[The Twilight Zone]]'' (1985) episode "Wordplay" is based on this trope. A man has an unusual experience: The people around him are suddenly using words incorrectly, ''e.g.'', saying "dinosaur" when they mean "lunch". More and more words get replaced, until other people's speech becomes complete gibberish to him. He ends up having to re-learn the meaning of words out of a children's book.

* In ''[[House (TV series)|House]] M.D.'', House once had a patient who replaced every word with a word somehow related to but separate from what he meant. The connections were fuzzy enough that they got him to correctly say yes and no, and finally figured out that {{spoiler|when he said "bear" he meant "bipolar", as in "polar bear"}}.

{{quote|Daniel: Sphere. Planet. Label. Name.

Jack: Following. You. Still. Not. }}

 

== Music ==

* Eric Idle's ''Rutland Weekend Television'' had the host of a short chat show and his guest talking like this.

{{quote|'''Host:''' Ham sandwich bucket and water plastic duralegs rubber mac fisheries underwear?}}

 

 

== Video Games ==

* The ''[[Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri]]'' [[Expansion Pack]] ''Alien Crossfire'' gives us Progenitors, who toe the line between this and [[Aliens Speaking English]] due to [[Translation Convention]]. Alien-to-alien speech is rendered as normal, fluent language. However, alien-to-human communication is impossible until you research a tech which allows ''in-universe'' translation, which renders Progenitor speech with a syntax roughly equal to "Subject: Statement".

** ''[[Star Control]]'''s Daktaklakpak provide a similar challenge -- their language is so mathematical and formulaic that initially the tech teams don't even think they're ''sentient.'' Once you obtain a translator their speech remains formulaic and stilted: "Statement: Daktaklakpak are superior to Humans. Interrogation: What are Humans doing in our space?"

* The Orz from ''[[Star Control]] 2'' have [[Starfish Alien|thought processes so alien]] that the best translators cannot fully process their language. Translations end up using a combination of best guesses and mixed metaphors for the unknown words.

* In ''Neurotically Yours'', the character Piltz-E the squirrel speaks in this manner.

* In ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'' the space station manager Mister Aliss speaks in a very odd dialect characterized by using a lot of unnecessary [[Oh God, with the Verbing!|"verbings"]], poor understanding of metaphors, and painfully arranged grammar (example: "You suspect? What is of the suspectings?"). From that Tagon identifies him as someone more used to speaking Galstandard Peroxide, the preferred language of aquatic sophonts {{spoiler|(correct)}}, specifically a part of a class of diplomats raised underwater among the Celeschul native species {{spoiler|(wrong)}}.

* "[[Starslip]]": after a conversation with Mr. Jinx about how laughably simple human languages are, a fellow Cirbozoid speaks with total disregard for word order.

* [http://www.neorice.com/aptgg_215 Lacey] from ''[[A Path to Greater Good]]''. Later subverted when he no longer has to impress people and speaks normally instead.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Translation Tropes]]

[[Category:Dialogue]]

[[Category:Language Tropes]]

[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]

[[Category:Self-Demonstrating Article]]

[[Category:Alliterative Trope Titles]]