You No Take Candle: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

{{quote|'''Vietnamese Hooker:''' Hey baby! You got girlfriend Vietnam?

If the work is taking on a superior versus inferior viewpoint, the superior beings might use [[Spock Speak]] or [[Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe]] to contrast the barbarism of the other group. The inferior race is often shown speaking pidgin English and omitting articles, auxiliary verbs, possessive pronouns, and sometimes prepositions. The speakers often refer to themselves in third person. It is quite similar to [[Hulk Speak]], though even non-combatants can or will use it. In some cases, it is a form of [[Aliens Speaking English]], in which the creatures have their own language and [[Eloquent in My Native Tongue|speak English as a very poorly learned secondary language]].

 

 

 

[[Super-Trope]] to the [[Race Tropes|more racial]] [[Asian Speekee Engrish]]. Unrelated to [[You Can't Get Ye Flask]], except in sense that we suck compared to [[Master Computer|computer overlords]]. Compare to [[Hulk Speak]] and [[Strange Syntax Speaker]]. If the speaker is otherwise very capable in their own language, then it is [[Eloquent in My Native Tongue]]. The [[Trope Namer]] is [[World of Warcraft]].

{{quote|'''Ranma''': Who'd want to date a stupid selfish cat girl like you?

'''Shampoo''' ''(pushing Ranma into Koi pond)'': [[I Take Offense to That Last One|Shampoo selfish, not stupid.]] }}

** This might just be Shampoo's [[Running Gag]] or something though. In the dub, her Mandarin is almost worst than her English! If she doesn't speak Mandarin or English well, what ''does'' she speak?!

*** Considering there are well over ten major "dialects" of Chinese that are generally less mutually intelligible than Swedish and Norwegian, or Swedish and German, she speaks her native language well enough. It ain't all Mandarin or Cantonese in China.

** Consider that his narration bears a certain similarity to Russian, most notably the omission of the definite article, which neither Russian nor Chinese (among a variety of other languages) have. A smattering of other Russian-inspired or -rooted words and phrases appear throughout the book, unsurprising considering that apparently many of the first colonists of Luna were Russian prisoners. Think of it as a sort of heavily watered-down [[A Clockwork Orange (novel)|Nadsat]].

* The Coyote Dialect as we hear it in the ''[[Hank the Cowdog]]'' series. Hank talks about it as if it's an actual language, but it's never clarified whether or not we're just hearing a translation.

** Discussed in ''The Bonesetter's Daughter'', in which the main character is concerned about her mother Lu Ling being misdiagnosed in a dementia test because of her poor English and the fact that she usually translated things people said to Chinese in her head, then responded in English.

* Ayla in the ''[[Earth's Children]]'' books tends to do this when she's learning a new language.

* This backfired on Alexandra (Zan) Ford in the YA novel ''[[Saturday The Twelfth Of October]]''. Thrown back into prehistoric times by a convenient glitch in the space-time continuum, Zan is discovered by two cave people about her own age. She goes into the "me Tarzan, you Jane" routine and says "Me Zan". For the rest of the book, the cave people call her Meezzan. She even starts thinking of herself as Meezzan during the year or so she lives with them.

{{quote|'''Christmas Eve:''' [[Funetik Aksent|Blyon!]] You take our recyclaburrs!}}

* ''[[Trouble In Tahiti]]'' has Dinah quote a couple lines of this from the "terrible, awful movie" she's seen (the stage direction calls for a ''[[South Pacific]]'' accent).

* Used by the native heroine of the 1923 play ''White Cargo'' (played by [[Hedy Lamarr]] in the [[The Film of the Book|movie]]). Her first line, "Me Tandelayo. Me good girl. Me ''stay''," famously provoked the critic Robert Benchley to stand and announce, "Me Bobby. Me bad boy. Me ''go!''" before stalking out of the theater.

* Tituba talks like this in ''[[The Crucible]]''. If you can't find a black actress to play the part, it's gonna be all kinds of jarring.

*** Also parodied in a later quest where you have to catch Kobolds with a net. One of the possible responses from the Kolbolds is "You no take... me!"

*** For those who don't know, kobolds put ''burning'' candles on their heads presumably to function as a miner's light even when ''they aren't in a mine''.

** Further subverted in a Northrend questline where the player learns the tongue of the local murlocs. Murlocs are always portrayed as not terribly bright and their gorloc cousins speak in pretty broken English, but in their own language, the murlocs are actually surprisingly erudite. (And there's even a gorloc who's learned better Common and speaks both perfectly and intelligently.)

*** "Before you say anything, do not assume me as foolish as most of the Gorlocs you've met. I've been into the world a bit, I've learned your language, and I'm not easily duped." The implication isn't that ''he'' thinks the other Gorlocs are foolish, but that ''you'' might think them foolish because of their not good speaking and funny acting. Their leader in particular can say quite philosophical things and catch and eat shiny bugs at same time.

* Gargoyles in the ''[[Ultima]]'' series aren't excessive users of this trope, but have one very notable trait: they use "to be" for ''all forms'' of "to be".

** To be thinking that an example to be needed to explain. To be of the mind that the effect to be lost by your description. To know that all sentences to be of a personal nature. To explain that at first only winged gargoyles to speak, but later all gargoyles to speak. To not know why this to be.

** Also, the passive voice is spoken in by Emps in ''[[Ultima VII]]''.

* ''[[Fallout]] 3'' has the Super Mutants.

* Kongol in [[Legend of Dragoon]] speaks this way, never using pronouns if he can avoid it. What makes the whole thing so strange is that Kongol was raised by humans, but his brother who only lived with others of his species speaks with a perfectly normal syntax.

* In ''[[Vandal Hearts]] 2'', your hero will - after a [[Time Skip]] - pick up two faithful allies. One of them is a guy known as 'Vlad the Ox' who speaks like this, when not devolving all the way down to [[Hulk Speak]]. Naturally, everyone - including your other ally - assumes that he's simply [[Dumb Muscle]]... which he finds really annoying since, as he soon reveals, he is simply a forreigner who did not start learning the local language until a few years ago. In truth, he's both quite wise and clever. Mostly noteable due to this trope being directly adressed by him.

* [[Diablo|"We strong! We kill all with big magic!"]] The poor little demon had obtained a ''tavern sign'' depicting a sun and naturally expected it to be magical.

* Both Mumbo Jumbo and Humba Wumba, in addition to a few side characters, in the ''[[Banjo-Kazooie]]'' games. Rather jarring in Wumba's case, being a heavily stereotypical Native American in a game released in ''2000''.

 

== Real Life ==

** Recently, Twitter has brought back this mode of English-mangling. With only 140 characters, you either sacrifice grammar or risk running o

*** Another option would be the logical one to shorten the message...

*** Additionally, at least in Polish, the repetition is strongly discouraged so the omission of "I", "you" etc. is common (the subject of sentence can be deduced from grammatical structure of sentence). The reverse projection of using the "I", "you" would be a stylistic error (especially in written text).

* A version of this used to be very common in English spoken by Irish people, because Irish grammatical structures were imported directly into the language, sometimes creating strange, convoluted sentences. The best known example arises from the fact that Irish has an extra form of the present tense called the "gnáth láithreach" (habitual present) used for actions which occur on a regular or ongoing basis, which uses "bíonn" (to be) as an auxiliary verb in its conjugation, resulting in constructions like "I do be going to the pub every day". Other typical "funny Irish" sentences like "Is it looking for a slap you are?" or "I have a great thirst on me" can be attributed to the same kind of imported grammar. Now that the English language has so strongly taken hold in Ireland, you rarely actually hear grammar like this outside of rural areas or those few places where people still speak Irish primarily - though [[With Friends Like These...|our friends the English]] were still using it in "Paddy the Hilarious Irishman"-type skits long after it fell out of general use.

** It gets even crazier than that. You can make up a new rhyme on the spot, never say the second half, and have it be obvious simply from the context. The listener will deduce that because the sentence makes no sense, it must be a new rhyme, will work out what it must mean from the context, then find the rhyming word to complete the phrase so they will remember it. From that point on, the group may use the rhyme when context isn't enough to deduce it, and the outsiders are stumped yet again.

* Chinese (even, and even especially, Classical Chinese) has a simple (or even simplistic for our tastes) grammar with only a few exotic things, which can lead to the stereotype of Chinese people speaking with simplistic grammar. Masterpieces such as the ''Tao Te Ching'' or ''The Art of War'', when translated literally, would seem to fit this trope. Of course, it didn't deter them from being such a prestigious civilisation.