The Unwritten/Headscratchers

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • When Tom is inside the whale's belly, why is it that Sinbad and Job are speaking in their native tongues, thus making Tom unable to understand them, but Baron von Münchhausen and Pinocchio are speaking in English, instead of German and Italian? The explanation can't be that Tom knows German and Italian and we're just dealing with Translation Convention, since Münchhausen, Pinocchio, and the Scottish fellow are also able to understand each other. The Baron probably knows English, but it seems unlikely that Pinocchio would. The whole thing takes place inside the "story world", so why not have everyone speak in English, since the stories of all these characters have been translated into that language?