You No Take Candle: Difference between revisions

* In the 1975 film ''[[The Wind and The Lion]]'', the concept is parodied by the use of an old vaudeville joke. U.S. Secretary of State John Hay, seated at a diplomatic dinner next to a Japanese representative, asks him as each course is served, "Likee fishee?" and "Likee soupee?" (the "pidgin" English of the period); at the dinner's end, the Japanese gentleman rises and delivers a long and eloquent toast in English to President Theodore Roosevelt, and then, seating himself by Hay, turns to him and asks, "Likee speechee?" The same bit is used in one of the Charlie Chan films.

* Played for laughs in ''[[Fear Of A Black Hat]]''. A video is shown with an attractive, Asian singer with an impressively booming voice, but when she is interviewed, she can barely speak a word of English. The real singer, an overweight, unattractive woman, then confronts her. This was a parody of the video for "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)", which also featured a beautiful woman who it later came out did not do the actual singing. You can compare the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl_F74xBvkk original] to the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF9rJpomD-U parody] yourself.

* Vanko from ''[[Iron Man 2]]'' feigns this with Hammer, basically because he doesn't like him. Also, it serves as [[Obfuscating Stupidity]], leading Hammer and his guards to underestimate Vanko.

* In ''[[Muppet Treasure Island]]'', the wild pigs speak this way.

* [[Chuck Palahniuk]]'s novel ''Pygmy'' is written entirely in pidgin English.

* The titular character of the novel ''So B. It'' is mentally disabled and has a vocabulary of twenty-three words. Her daughter, the protagonist, has a list of them taped to the refrigerator.

* Used in ''[[Watership Down]]'' when the animals speak Hedgerow, a kind of inter-species pidgin, which appears to owe a lot to Italian for whatever reason. Especially played up with mice ("You want-a nice grass? Plenty-a nice-a grass!") and Kehaar the gull.

* In [[Edgar Rice Burroughs]]' ''[[The Monster Men]]'', Lin, the Chinese servant, speaks entirely in very bad pidgin.

** 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.

* Happens several times in [[Harry Turtledove]] ''[[Worldwar]]'' books with the Race, reptilian conquerors to invade Earth during [[World War Two]], although subverted in that they are a highly-advanced species. Their representatives learn major human languages, but tend to speak in this manner (e.g. "maybe you help us now"), often trying to find proper equivalent in the given human language for a specific word with the typical "[[How Do You Say...?|how you say]]". This differs from lizard to lizard, though, and some get better as the series progresses. Given their physiology, though, their speech is also peppered with [[Sssssnaketalk]]. It also happens, as a necessity, between Liu Han and Bobby Fiore, as neither initially knows the other's language. They eventually develop a mix language of sorts, a mishmash of Chinese, English, Race, and sign. Only the two of them can understand it. The books show this as a You No Take Candle-like speech.

** In a similar vein, an early ''[[Star Trek: Enterprise]]'' episode features a lost colony of humans whose language has "devolved" into a primitive form after 70 years of non-contact with Earth.

*** To be fair, everyone except for the very youngest children had died off all at once several generations back; so everyone living there now learned to speak from people who had barely learned to speak themselves, having no adults to teach them better.

** Or "The Omega Glory" where warfare reduced two nations to "tribes" speaking a mangled, devolved English.

** Who could forget "Devil in the Dark", featuring the Horta, which at one point carves the words "NO KILL I" in the cavern floor using its searing-hot flesh?

{{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.

*** You later encounter the Timbermaw Furbolgs, whose slightly broken Common/Orcish (depending on which side you play) sounds rather more like lack of language fluency than lack of sophistication.

** From ''Warcraft III'' itself, you have the trolls, at least in the French translation. With the notable exception of witch doctors, who talk sophisticated instead.

{{quote|'''Deekin:''' Yes, Deekin very kobold, last Deekin look in mirror. Deekin not do that much; mirrors usually too high for Deekin.}}

** The first game also has an Ogre Mage who has a sarcastic retort to a player character who observes that he's very well spoken for an ogre.

** ''[[Final Fantasy XI]]'' has the majority of the beastmen use simpler forms of the [[Five Races]] language, if at all. Goblins and Lamia are actually more fluent in the player's language, although for Goblins, being good at language is [[Honest John's Dealership|good for business.]] It's also subverted in that there's a very well-spoken Orc in ''Wings of The Goddess'', as said Orc is actually a cursed Elvaan. {{spoiler|Why is this text spoiler'd and not the earlier part? Because it's actually an aversion; the Orc is really a well-learned [[Genre Savvy]] [[Magnificent Bastard]] ''real'' Orc who puts this trope and the expectations of it to work in order to trick you into freeing him, and it's only until you meet him again in [[The Lost Woods]] that it's revealed you've been had.}}

* The Trolls in ''[[City of Heroes]]'' are a gang whose members take a drug that gives super-strength but mutates them into giving them their distinctive troll-like appearance; it also apparently causes their brains to degrade to the point they start speaking like this. Ironically, this is the ''only'' effect (well, that and rage issues) Superadine has on the brain. Trolls are still as intelligent as anyone else; it's just the language centers that are affected.

* In ''[[Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri]]'': planetmind speaks variously broken English, but is a vast planetary intelligence into which humanity may eventually merge.

** This is a bit of an oversimplification; it turns out the [[Alien Kudzu]] is actually a vast neural network that self-organizes into a god-like mind, but in doing so destroys its necessary supporting organisms and dies back down, only to repeat the cycle in a series of tragedies. Humanity is able to break the cycle. So initially, Planet Mind is not very bright, but it just keeps growing...

** On a related note with ''[[Beast Machines]]'' — TANKOR SLAG BEAST BOTS! {{spoiler|Subverted when Rhinox's spark reawakens, giving Tankor a signifigant IQ boost — enough IQ to start plotting the downfall of Megatron and Optimus Primal. To hide what's happened, he still talks like he did before to most people, good guys and bad.}}

** Strika and Obsidian do as well {{spoiler|when also pretending to be idiots instead of the master tacticians they actually are}}.

* The clones of the ''[[Gargoyles]]'' Broadway, Brooklyn, Lexington and Hudson speak this way. [[Lampshaded]] when Talon offers to teach them how to use freewill "and verbs".

* "Me so hungee" and "Me fail English? That's unpossible!" from ''[[The Simpsons]]''.

[[Category:Language Tropes]]

[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]