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As Long as It Sounds Foreign
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Many shows and movies don't bother getting a foreign language right when they portray them. The incidence of this increases along with the obscurity of the language. It is easily explained away as native speakers are hard to get, especially if the country of origin is on the other side of the globe and the language is fairly obscure. Even if you finally get one, he might not be so helpful if he has a poor knowledge about the aspects of his own language that the work specifically needs to use. Or simply he's a poor actor or a poor choice for the role (while non-native actors won't be able to correctly pronounce phrases in a language they don't speak). And that's assuming there even still are any native speakers. But first and foremost, if the intended audience won't be able to tell the difference anyway, why bother? A somewhat more redeeming justification is that the show isn't supposed or expected to accurately portray a real-life language. A variation on this is that the foreigners speak English, but are identified as foreign by an accent or are parading universally known national images. Names appear especially hard to get right, even European ones, which is all the stranger as most American naming conventions haven't ventured far from their origin. This is why we see female Russians with masculine surnames and patronymics used as names or surnames, or why most French characters in comedic works tend to have a name composed of an English word preceded by a random "Le" or "La". This could be explained if their name was anglicized, though the practice has fallen out of favor in recent decades. Amusingly: when this trope is applied to a character's name, it often results in a Dub Name Change when a work is exported to the country where said character is supposed to be from—since the original name would sound ridiculous to audiences in that country who actually know the culture. For example: in the Japanese dub of Star Trek, Hikaru Sulu's name is "Hikaru Kato"; in most Japanese translations of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles works, Hamato Yoshi and Oroku Saki are renamed "Yoshihama Takeshi" and "Oroku Sawaki"; and in the Chinese translations of the Harry Potter books, Cho Chang is renamed "Zhang Qiu". On the flip side: the American-born Maximillion Pegasus was originally named "Pegasus Crawford" before Yu-Gi-Oh! was exported to the United States. This tends to be even more common in Eastern works, where writers usually tend to have even less experience with other cultures, leading to results that would seem more at home in Middle-Earth than any existing place on Earth. Contrast with Gratuitous Foreign Language (and all its subtropes), where the writers take care to give characters lines in a foreign language — which are often poorly rendered by the actors. Contrast also with Poirot Speak, where everyone in the native country has an elementary education in their native language but can only say the hard words in heavily accented English. Contrast also with Famous-Named Foreigner, when in an attempt to avert this trope, the author manages to give his foreign character a real name... albeit belonging to a famous historical character, which often leads to ridiculous results. When a work is named with this trope, it may result in a Word Purée Title. See also Foreign-Looking Font, Fictionary, Black Belt in Origami and Unintelligible Accent. See also Speaking Simlish. Canis Latinicus and El Spanish "-o" are subtropes specifically dealing with Latin and Spanish affixes, respectively. Ching Chong is a subtrope for Chinese. Camp Wackyname is this for fake Native American names for summer camps. Also consider Esperanto, the Universal Language. For hilariously inverted examples of this trope, watch here (fake German), or here and here (fake English). CAUTION: This trope may lead to stumped subtitlers. |
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In Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid, one character sports a tattoo. It is neither the language nor the meaning that he claims it to be when asked about it. | |
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Dream Theater's "Take The Time" has Gratuitous Italian, and although the Italian is correct (sampled from a movie), the rendition of it in the lyrics booklet is horribly mangled. | |
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In The Bourne Identity, the name on Bourne's Russian passport is written "Foma Kiniaev" in Latin letters and "Aschf Lshtshfum" (�щьф Лштшфум) in Cyrillic letters. Apparently, the designers of the prop just typed the fake Russian name in the Russian keyboard layout without actually translating it. The name was corrected to proper Фома Кин�ев in The Bourne Supremacy. The Russian name itself is quite correct (the English equivalent would be "Thomas"), albeit rare. | |
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Dune: The original novel contains a Fremen funerary hymn, which is actually a real-world Serbian song. The Russian translator mistook it for garbled Russian, and, in the preface, he chastised Frank Herbert for "picking up the most pleasant-sounding words out of a Russian dictionary." To convey the purported effect, he translated the song into (grammatically-correct) Hindi. | |
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The meeting of the G8 Heads of State near the start of 2012 sees the Russian president whispering to his translator in Serbo-Croatian. | |
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Twin pill bug acrobats Tuck and Roll in A Bug's Life only speak and understand foreign-sounding gibberish. Official sources say they're Hungarian, but their speech sounds nothing like the actual language. The Closed Captioning doesn't clarify, only saying "Speaking Foreign Language". | |
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Viva Piñata had a scene with sumo hippos who are implied to be Japanese. The words they spoke were Japanese alright, but they spoke it completely out of context, especially since the words were like "Sushi" and "Sashimi" that most western audiences would know anyways. It's a funny stealth pun considering what comes out of a pinata, but given that they speak perfect English, it's a bit of a Mood Whiplash. | |
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In The Mister, not a single one of the Albanian characters has an Albanian name. Protagonist Alessia Demachi has an Italian given name AND surname. Her betrothed Anatoly has a Russian name. Her kidnappers are named Dante and Yili. Dante is Italian again; Yili is probably a misspelling of the actual Albanian name Ylli. Her roommate is named Magda, a name used in several European languages, but still not Albanian. | |
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Both an in-universe and media example from The 40-Year-Old Virgin: Paula, the store manager, while in a conversation with Andy, reminisces about the time when she lost her virginity to a Hispanic boy. She remembers he used to sing her a song, which is in entirely correct Spanish, but the lyrics are nowhere as romantic as she actually thinks they are. It translates to: "When I get to my room, I can't find anything. Where are you going in such a rush? To the soccer game." She thought it was a beautiful lullaby, while Andy just didn't get it. | |
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The Amazing Adrenalini Brothers, who hail from Réndøosîa (a fictional Eastern European/Eurasian country) and speak in gibberish (e.g., "Groota Fizz", "Yazha" and "Jonka kriska navooti"). | |
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In the second season of Digimon, this happened in the dub. Yolei sounds Japanese to non-speakers but can't actually be written in Japanese characters. The third season, meanwhile, has a Hispanic little girl named Chico, which means "boy" in Spanish,note This may have come from how many Japanese feminine names end in "-ko" and the writers not knowing this is unique to Japan so the dub changed her name to the much more plausible Rosa. | |
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The Chinese Cat Shun Gon from The Aristocats he sings one line in his "native Chinese" during "Everybody Wants to Be A Cat" which goes like "Shanghai, Hong Kong, Egg Foo, Yung!". At one point he says something along the lines of "Fortune cookie always wrong!" All while using chopsticks to play the piano. |
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X-Men: Storm's first name "Ororo" is not an actual African name, let alone a Kenyan one. The Cajun mutant, Gambit, likes to toss some French into his dialogue. He sometimes calls Rogue "chéri" (darling)... which would be nice if he weren't using the masculine form of the word. Luckily for our grammatically-challenged hero, there is no audible difference between "chéri" and "chérie". Kurt (aka Nightcrawler)'s Gratuitous German often gets misspelled so that he ends up calling girls "camisole" ("leibchen") instead of the intended "sweetheart" or "darling" ("liebchen"). Hudlin had him utter "lieberstesh". Blackwing (previously known as Beak) is a mutant who was said to be from Rotterdam, the Netherlands. His real name is Barnell Bohusk, which isn't much of a Dutch name at all. Sunpyre has the highly implausible first name of Leyu, which isn't even remotely Japanese. For one thing, the Japanese language doesn't have an "L" sound. Even if you assume that his name is a Romanized form of something like "Reyu", that's still not a real Japanese name. The closest real Japanese name to "Leyu" is "Rei". Colossus' real name is Piotr Nikolayevitch Rasputin. "Rasputin" is a common surname in the area of Russia where he's from, which is fine. And the patronymic is correct, even better. Then his sister Illyana Rasputin is introduced. Slight oops: since Russian surnames have masculine and feminine forms, her last name ought to be "Rasputina". The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe eventually gives her full name as "Illyana Nikolaivitch Rasputina (Anglicized to Rasputin)", but even that isn't completely right: Russian patronymics have masculine and feminine forms too, and "Nikolayevitch" ("son of Nikolai") is a masculine patronymic; since Illyana's a girl, her middle name should be "Nikolayevna" ("daughter of Nikolai"). Eventually, about forty years after her introduction, this was corrected. New Mutants' Roberto da Costa sometimes says sentences in Spanish... even though he came from Brazil, where the language is Portuguese. (His native language remains Portuguese, so it's not simply a case of speaking a minority language for his country.) Silver Samurai's real name is Kenuichio Harada. You won't find a single person in Japan called Kenuichio. In Japanese translations, his name is Kenichiro. In the movie, "Kenuichio" is dropped entirely. We never learn his given name, or if Harada is erroneously being used as such. Apocalypse's birth name is said to be "En Sabah Nur", which is said to mean "The First One", hinting at the fact that he's one of the first documented mutants in history. Not only does "En Sabah Nur" not actually mean "The First One" (it roughly means "The Morning Light"), it's an Arabic phrase. Apocalypse was born in Egypt around 3,000 B.C., several millennia before the Arabic language existed. Quicksilver, who hails from the fictional Eastern European country of Transia, was born "Pietro Maximoff". While "Maximoff" is a real Eastern European surname (albeit a very rare one), "Pietro" is an Italian name, being the Italian variant of "Peter". The writers at least have the cop-out of his being from a fictional country, but most other characters from around there have names that fit geographically. The Romanian variant of Peter is Petru, which sounds rather close to Pietro. The assassin Kwannon (best known as the woman whom Psylocke swapped bodies with) is ostensibly Japanese. "Kwannon" is a rarely used Japanese variant of "Guan Yin", the name of a Chinese Buddhist goddess associated with mercy and compassion (the most common Japanese variant of her name is "Kannon"). Granted, it is at least a real name, but it still isn't something that a Japanese parent would name their child. |
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The Colour of Magic: Rincewind's identity in our world is a Swedish scientist named "Dr. Rjinswand", which is nothing like a Swedish name. (In the Swedish translation, his nationality is changed to Dutch; though, confusingly, they left in the bit about his language sounding "Hublandish", the Discworld's equivalent of "northern".) Twoflower becomes a German tourist with the last name "Zweiblumen", which is correct, but translates to "Twoflowers" (a straight translation of his name would be "Zweiblume"). In the Dutch version, he is named Tweebloesem (Twoblossom); the literal translation of Twoflower would be 'Tweebloem'. | |
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Prince Caspian: The sinister magic words the hag uses in her ceremony to summon the White Witch? They're actually the lyrics to an Arabic love song! According to the director's commentary, the actress's grandmother used to sing her that song, which she then used for the chant. | |
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The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension: Buckaroo Banzai has a Japanese father, but "Banzai" isn't a Japanese surname. It's associated with the Japanese "banzai charge" and literally means "ten-thousand years." | |
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Bleach: Quincy techniques are German-influenced that either translate into nothing or are very bad uses of German words and grammar. For example, Seeleschneider, "soul-cutter/tailor", should be Seelenschneider. The Vandenreich's kanji mean "unseen empire". While "reich" is German, "vanden" or "wanden" doesn't seem to be an actual word. It might be a misreading of "vonden" ("of the") or an example of Kubo's musical obsession by being a nod to German metal band Vanden Plas (who themselves are car fans and named themselves after the Flemish coachbuilders that eventually gave their names to a Jaguar brand). Several members' names are similarly foreign sounding, and by far the most unusual has to be BG9, (pronounced as the German "Be Ge Neun"). The Arrancar have Spanish-named zanpakuto, with a few strange exceptions, such as video game-exclusive Arturo Plateado having a zanpakuto named "Fenice" (not "Fénix" as has been erroneously claimed), which is Italian. Gantenbainne Mosqueda's zanpakuto, though, is named "Dragra", which doesn't seem to mean anything in any language. The Arrancar themselves have some curious vaguely European names, although several have been confirmed as deliberate misspellings based on real people. The Hollows have some reasonable variation names such as "Demi Hollow", "Huge Hollow", and "Menos Grande" (presumably broken Spanish for "big minus", but it literally means "less big"), but the names of the Menos stages, "Gillian", "Adjuchas", just seem to be made-up words. |
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As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_1cc09117 | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_208caf16 | type |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_208caf16 | comment |
07-Ghost is a series set in a European-style world. That explains the use of western words and names. Especially when the names in question aren’t actual names. Usually they are random German words, or just Gibberish. Combined with proper Japanese names. And in cases of in-universe terms, they probably just pick a word from a random language. One example would be the god of death, who is from some reason named “Verloren� which means “lost� in German. Or the terms “Kor� and “bascule�. Or the seven ghosts, who are called Zehel, Fest (means firm/firmly/feast in German), Profe, Randkalt (German again. “Rand� is edge and “Kalt� is cold, and therefore “Randkalt� means “edge cold�) , Rilect (maybe it’s supposed to be “Relict�), Ea, and Vertrag (contract in German). And then there are the names Wahrheit Tiashe Raggs (Wahrheit means truth in German), Weldeschtein Krom Raggs (Krom means “furthermore� in Czech, but that’s probably not what they meant. And Weldeschtein could be “Waldstein� which sounds enough like a German surname, or a rather believable Yiddish surname, though they probably weren’t meant to be Jewish with all the crosses around the place). Fea isn’t a word, but it resembles a few real names. Female ones. And Frau. Okay, he’s a womanizer, but is that really a reason to name him “woman�?! | |
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As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_21a64727 | type |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_21a64727 | comment |
The episode titles of 11eyes were also written in Hungarian on the title cards, most of them badly translated, so we got such gems as: The maiden of Crystal Palace -> In a girl crystal; Twisted Awakening -> Curving/Zig-zagging awakening; The choice called destruction -> Sleep off to allstars, etc. Admittedly they're based on the Japanese titles, not the English ones, but they're still wrong. | |
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As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_21a64727 | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_225494af | type |
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As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_225494af | comment |
The Grudge 2: Kayako Saeki's mother is revealed to have the full name "Nakagawa Kawamata", which is an unacceptable Japanese name because both words are surnames, and very noticeable ones at that. (Surname being used as given name is not a fad in Japan.) This is especially bizarre since the film's director, Takashi Shimizu, is an ethnic Japanese, so he should have pointed this out. | |
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As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_233c6964 | type |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_233c6964 | comment |
In King Arthur's Disasters, when thanking Sir Martyn in his "language," King Arthur makes random Japanese-sounding noises. | |
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As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_24eb97b7 | type |
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As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_24eb97b7 | comment |
Black Widow was first introduced as "Natasha Romanov." One writer finally got her name right, "Natalia Romanova." About half the writers still get it wrong, and it's still wrong in her film adaptations. In the fine tradition of cool Russian nicknames, however, "Natasha" is an acceptable nick for "Natalia". We still have to paper over "Romanoff/Romanov" as her Anglicizing her surname, but it's entirely plausible so it does not draw much attention. | |
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As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_253f1c17 | type |
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As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_253f1c17 | comment |
In The Bible: The Complete Word of God (abridged), the Tower of Babel scene has fake Spanish ("Taco sombrero Antonio Banderas!") and fake Japanese ("Buddha shinto mushy-mushy, Godzilla killy-killy sukiyaki?"). | |
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As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_253f1c17 | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_259a6c64 | type |
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As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_259a6c64 | comment |
From 2007 to 2009, the Samoan wrestler Eddie Fatu portrayed "Umaga," a "Samoan savage" with tattoos, face paint, dreadlocks, and a sarong (technically called a lavalava in Samoan). His name was pronounced "oo-MAH-gah" by everyone except William Regal, who pronounced it "yoo-MAN-gah" — which, amusingly, is much closer to actual Samoan pronunciation (it'd actually be "oo-MAH-ngah", with the "ng" from "thing" not from "congo"; no syllable in Samoan can end on a consonant). | |
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As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_25c5223f | type |
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As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_25c5223f | comment |
Savage Man, Savage Beast: "Pit Dernitz" has to be the most awkward-sounding attempt at a Dutch name in the history of film. His given name could at least be understood conceivably as a misspelling of "Piet", a shortened form of "Pieter" and a common male name in the Netherlands and Belgium (where the character is said to originate), but his surname bears little resemblance to any Dutch last name on record. | |
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As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_25c5223f | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_261c8d3f | type |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_261c8d3f | comment |
The Simpsons "Krusty Gets Kancelled" features "Worker and Parasite," a cat and mouse cartoon that looks like an old propaganda cartoon from an Eastern Bloc country. The dialogue is vaguely-Slavic nonsense, and the title card and end credits feature fake Cyrillic text ("ENDUT! HOCH HECH!") that does not translate into anything. In the episode where the Germans purchase the power plant, Smithers' German suck-up tapes do teach accurate German, but the German the owners speak to each other is nonsense. In "King of the Hill" the creators wanted to avoid this for the native language of the Sherpa characters and so contacted the producers of the movie Into Thin Air, which featured the language extensively. They were disappointed to find that the movie producers had used this trope. |
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The Simpsons | hasFeature |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_261c8d3f | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_268f6fd1 | type |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_268f6fd1 | comment |
Transformers: Dark of the Moon: Agent Simmons' "German" is simply a string of meaningless consonants and vowel sounds that sounds closer to Geonosian than German. So bad it was probably intentional. If not... There's a minor Ukrainian character with the name of Aleksei Voskhod. "Aleksei Ascension" sounds more like a movie title than an actual name. |
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Transformers: Dark of the Moon | hasFeature |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_268f6fd1 | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_2779b11d | type |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_2779b11d | comment |
Himouto! Umaru-chan has Sylphinford "Sylphin" Tachibana, who's half-Japanese and half-German; while her name is meant to denote her foreign ancestry, "Sylphinford" isn't a real name in German or any other language. | |
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As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_27f4c7fb | type |
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As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_27f4c7fb | comment |
Coraline's soundtrack has some random made up language for at least one song. | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_27f4c7fb | featureApplicability |
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Coraline | hasFeature |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_27f4c7fb | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_283b23c1 | type |
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As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_283b23c1 | comment |
Similarly, the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's movie has a screen on-board the TSAB ship display text taken from a commercial web publishing site. It's obfuscated further by being mirrored (see-through screen seen from the back) and in the usual Lyrical Nanoha pseudo-runes script. | |
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Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's | hasFeature |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_283b23c1 | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_28508de | type |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_28508de | comment |
Winx Club English dubbers like adding "-us" to normal words to make Latin-sounding spells. It happened more often in the 4Kids dub (e.g.: "Transportus Back Homus," "Getus Outta Hereus," "Cushionus Fallus"), but the Nickelodeon dub has done it, too (e.g. "Relocatus"). | |
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Winx Club | hasFeature |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_28508de | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_28724fb2 | type |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_28724fb2 | comment |
Averted in Titanic. The Swedish emigrants speak perfectly correct Swedish, including situationally appropriate levels of formality. The actors' accents are hit-or-miss so it's hard to understand more than singular words for a native speaker, but once you get through that, it's apparent that research was done. | |
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Titanic (1997) | hasFeature |
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As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_2a640f8c | type |
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As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_2a640f8c | comment |
Rally Vincent from Gunsmith Cats, although Rally is her nickname (her real name is Irene). In-story her name is intended to actually be Larry since she didn't think anyone would hire an obviously female bounty hunter, but due to the L/R confusion it would up translated as Rally, which still fit due to her fondness for cars. | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_2a640f8c | featureApplicability |
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As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_2a640f8c | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_2bbcacd9 | type |
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As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_2bbcacd9 | comment |
Similarly to Looney Tunes, in ''Avatar: The Abridged Series" Spanish is rendered mostly as English with "El" tacked on. "El Gasp!" Sometimes they also add "-o" to the end of words and maybe put in a real Spanish word in there. "I challenge you to an Agni Kai!" "Don't you mean a duel?" "No, an Agni Kai!" "Why don't you just call it that then?" "Because it sounds Asian... ish?" (FYI, Agni is the Hindu god of fire, and Kai means meeting in Japanese). |
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As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_2bbcacd9 | featureApplicability |
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Looney Tunes | hasFeature |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_2bbcacd9 | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_2d311a08 | type |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_2d311a08 | comment |
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987): Splinter often uses random Japanese words (and sometimes even obviously non-Japanese words, like "Sacajawea") in his battle cries. | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_2d311a08 | featureApplicability |
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987) | hasFeature |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_2d311a08 | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_2d36f9cb | type |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_2d36f9cb | comment |
An ad for Bertolli features an "Italian" chef lamenting that Bertolli is stealing his business, to the tune of the Habanera from Bizet's Carmen, a French opera that's set in Spain (and a Spanish form of music). | |
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Carmen (Theatre) | hasFeature |
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As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_2e2efbf9 | comment |
The Libyan terrorists from the first film speak some vaguely Arabic-sounding nonsense language. | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_2e2efbf9 | featureApplicability |
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Back to the Future | hasFeature |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_2e2efbf9 | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_2e6be66a | type |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_2e6be66a | comment |
My-Otome has most of its characters with obviously Japanese given names, but because they all come from Fantasy Counterpart Cultures, a lot of their surnames are non-Japanese. | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_2e6be66a | featureApplicability |
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As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_2f230a09 | type |
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As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_2f230a09 | comment |
Chaos Fighters is extremely rife with this in almost everything. As in case of character names, the only normal sounding name is Kenny Fanal from The Secret Programs and Clair Tyranof in Route of Land. It doesn't help that those oddly sounded names are completely made up by mixing syllables. But considering that they were all set in foreign planets, this may be justified. | |
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As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_2f9517bf | type |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_2f9517bf | comment |
D.Gray-Man "Portuguese" Tyki Mikk's name. There are at least 4 blatant errors in this name alone. "Arystar Krory" was named after Aleister Crowley, but the author deliberately went with a different spelling ("Alistair Crawley" could be a plausible substitute, though). There is also a Mexican man with the name "Winters Socalo", a German woman named "Miranda Lotto", two Chinese siblings named "Lenalee" and "Komui", and an American man named "Tup Dop". "Marie" is a man, and it seems that's his last name, meaning his first name is "Noise". A woman whose name was spelled "Crea" in the series itself has her name more correctly spelled "Claire" in a data book. "Jasdevi" are supposed to be American and while "Devitto" is apparently "David" mispronounced his brother "Jasdero" did not get so lucky. |
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As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_2f9517bf | featureApplicability |
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As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_2f9517bf | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_31db782c | type |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_31db782c | comment |
Elizabeth's Russian friend and later fiancé Boris has a very weird last name: Bolinobol. If you try to look it up, you'll end up being directed to New Dynamic English related sites. | |
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New Dynamic English (Radio) | hasFeature |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_31db782c | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_31fe90d6 | type |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_31fe90d6 | comment |
In Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars, Samuel Klugarsh responds to the protagonists' skepticism by stating that he knows way more than they do: "Waka waka. Needle noddle noo. Hoop waka dup dup. Baklava. That's Turkish." Actually, that's one Turkish word ("baklava") among a whole lot of nonsense. | |
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As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_31fe90d6 | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_32c541e6 | type |
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As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_32c541e6 | comment |
Fullmetal Alchemist has a strange mishmash of numerous European cultures, names, and words in the fictional country of Amestris in which it is set, resembling many northwestern European locales but not really fitting any. This may have been an attempt to make Amestris less of an obvious Fantasy Counterpart Culture for Imperial Germany, but the pieces just don't fit together right, resulting in awkward things like a man named "Basque Grand". | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_32c541e6 | featureApplicability |
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As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_32c541e6 | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_32fb0c3a | type |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_32fb0c3a | comment |
Christmas Eve in Avenue Q chose that name when she moved to America because she thought it sounded good. | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_32fb0c3a | featureApplicability |
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Avenue Q (Theatre) | hasFeature |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_32fb0c3a | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_33318a24 | type |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_33318a24 | comment |
In the musical Of Thee I Sing, six French soldiers enter singing this French-sounding nonsense chorus (which also slips in the Yiddish phrase "tut dir veh"): | |
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Of Thee I Sing (Theatre) | hasFeature |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_33318a24 | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_338be055 | type |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_338be055 | comment |
In Muppet Treasure Island, during the "Cabin Fever" number, a group of German sailors sings a bit that goes "Ach du lieber, Volkswagen car; Sauerbraten wienerschnitzel und wunderbar!", a word salad of German words well known to Anglophones. Justified in that they're really Englishmen taking a brief break from sanity. | |
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Muppet Treasure Island | hasFeature |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_338be055 | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_341c02e9 | type |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_341c02e9 | comment |
In Batman Begins during the scene where Bruce Wayne meets Ra's Al Ghul (actually his decoy), we see him communicate in what is supposed to sound like Tibetan (as the league's headquarters is in the Himalayas). In actuality, Ken Watanabe isn't speaking in any known language, though according to some release's subtitles, it's supposed to be Urdu. | |
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Batman Begins | hasFeature |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_341c02e9 | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_34510e69 | type |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_34510e69 | comment |
In the self-published German sci-fi adventure novel The Adventures of Stefón Rudel, the Author Avatar Stefan changes his name to the pseudo-French "Stefón" after moving from Occupied Germany to "Itörnetie Plato 18". For the record, the actual French equivalent to Stefan is either Stéphane or Étienne. | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_34510e69 | featureApplicability |
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The Adventures of Stefón Rudel | hasFeature |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_34510e69 | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_352bb510 | type |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_352bb510 | comment |
In Jupiter-Men, Arrio's Language of Magic is Spanish. But his failsafe spell, "Disipar a Cenizar" isn't actual Spanish. It's supposed to read as "Dispel to Ashes", but "cenizar" isn't a real word. The grammatically correct phrase would be "Disipar a Cenizas". | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_352bb510 | featureApplicability |
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As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_352bb510 | featureConfidence |
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Jupiter-Men (Webcomic) | hasFeature |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_352bb510 | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_35d98631 | type |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_35d98631 | comment |
The language spoken by the Bushrats from Taz-Mania, which sounds like a mishmash of German, French, Italian, and pig Latin coupled with a judicious bit of Fun with Subtitles. | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_35d98631 | featureApplicability |
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Taz-Mania | hasFeature |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_35d98631 | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_360140c7 | type |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_360140c7 | comment |
The classic, stop-motion series of Fireman Sam had a character called Bella. Ostensibly, she was Italian, her credentials being an outrageously exaggerated accent and owning a restaurant. However, she would not pronounce the final 'e' sound in her frequent exclamations of "grazie". She was also heard to say "bueno" on at least one occasion, which would be Spanish. The final nail in the coffin: her full name was Bella Lasagne. | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_360140c7 | featureApplicability |
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As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_360140c7 | featureConfidence |
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Fireman Sam | hasFeature |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_360140c7 | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_362e79d | type |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign | |
As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_362e79d | comment |
Bushido from Teen Titans has the civilian identity Ryuku Orsono. Ryuku (well, Ryukyu) is the name of a chain of islands, not a given name, while Orsono is simply not a real Japanese surname by any stretch and doesn't even kind of sound like one. The names of his weapons are also really poorly researched, but that's another matter. | |
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Nahri invoking this leads to the inciting incident of all The Daevabad Trilogy. While hosting a sham zar, she signs an ordinary song in her birth language—since only she knows it, she figures it'll make her efforts more authentically mystical. Unbeknownst to her, she's singing one of the languages of the djinn, who are real after all, and manages to call the spirit of a genuine daeva. (And she attracts the even-less welcome attention of a bunch of ifrit while she's at it.) | |
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Few of the Turkish characters in Midnight Express are actually Turkish. Most were local Maltese actors, since the movie was filmed in Malta. Most of the Turkish characters have pseudo-Arabic names, like Rifki and Hamidou. Real Turkish names sound different and are not limited to names of Arabic origin. | |
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Michael Morbius is supposed to be Greek, but his name really isn't (Michael is Hebrew) — probably because it wasn't decided he was Greek until 19 years after his introduction. On at least one occasion it's questioned why his first name is not Michalis (the Greek version of Michael), the answer simply being that "[his] mother preferred Michael". | |
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Kill Bill has Lucy Liu and Uma Thurman speaking Japanese. While Lucy's is passable (though obviously accented to a native speaker), Uma's is atrocious and barely understandable. | |
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Harry Potter: Many of the characters of non-British origin have names that do not fit their background. "Cho Chang" is usually cited as an example and almost sounds like a slur, so the Chinese translation renamed her "Zh�ng Qiū" (which sounds somewhat similar). However, Cho could actually be a subversion, likely in a case of Accidentally-Correct Writing. The name can be interpreted to be rendered in the more archaic Wade-Giles romanization system (more commonly used by the "old-stock" Chinese diaspora). Cho Chang converts to "Zhuo Zhang" in modern Pinyin. Zhuo (倬) is a fairly common unisex given name in Chinese, and can be rendered in other perfectly valid given names in Chinese. Bulgarian surnames almost always end in -ov/-ev (male) or -ova/-eva (female), but Viktor Krum and his Bulgarian Quidditch team-mates have surnames that do not fit this pattern. The name of Durmstrang Institute sounds German, but doesn't actually mean anything (though it resembles, and might have been inspired by, the phrase "Sturm und Drang" - storm and stress). Just to make matters worse, Durmstrang is said to be located in far northern Europe (most likely northern Norway), not Germany. |
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In Animalympics we have Bruce the Japanese penguin who only supposedly speaks Japanese, he is likely speaking gibberish. | |
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In the Prequel Another Note, multiple characters' names are composed of random English words smashed together, such as Beyond Birthday, Quarter Queen, and Bluesharp Babysplit. | |
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In A Million Ways to Die in the West, when Albert speaks to the native indians, he uses such words as "Mila Kunis". | |
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In Armed Girl's Machiavellism, Choka U. Barazaki demands to be called "Regina delle Farfalle" ("Queen of the Butterflies" in Italian), as she says she's Italian. Her pronunciation in the anime, however, is horrible, and she actually mangles "Regina della Farfalla", meaning "Queen of the Butterfly". Possibly intentional, as she's actually Japanese and trying badly to pass herself as Italian to maintain continuity with her older sister figure Mary Kikakuj�, who is half-French. | |
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This trope is toyed with when Austin and his father converse in their native dialect (thick British accents) in order to have some privacy while discussing an important matter in public. It starts off with some genuine slang and British idioms but, being Austin Powers, eventually even the subtitles themselves give up on making sense of what these two are actually saying to one another. | |
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On a Cracked Top 5 list, it was mentioned that, to Americans, the Japanese language sounds like "ching chong." Neither of those two phonemes exist in Japanese. | |
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Excel♡Saga: Although the English used by the paramilitaries in the action movie episode is grammatically perfect, it's apparently delivered by actors who haven't a clue what the words are intended to mean (and only the vaguest grasp of English pronunciation). This is deliberate parody of the trope - the Japanese subtitles (which the English subs of the scene follow) are far more eloquent, often to the point where they have very little to do with what is spoken. It's also lampshaded in the English dub. Originally, when the soldier asks her "What is your purpose?" in a really strong Japanese accent, Excel just responds "I don't know." In the dub, she says "A big fish?" | |
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The Indian steward from Doctor in Trouble is called "Satterjee". This isn't a real name, the closest Hindu name is "Chatterjee". | |
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The Dresden Files: Harry Dresden uses mostly fake and/or ungrammatical Latin for magic words. This is explained as a sort of emotional boundary from the spells, and it's noted that, when working spells, the important bit is not so much the words themselves, but rather that the words sound right to the individual using the spell. (It's also established in one of the novels that Harry's grasp of actual Latin, used instead of English in meetings of the White Council of wizards, is terrible. As he repeatedly says, "Damn correspondence course." — but the book also mentions the magic words won't work as boundary if you actually understand them, meaning he'd have to switch to another language if he actually learned Latin). In another book, he mentions that a female wizard he grew up with prefers using pseudo-Egyptian in her spells. In Dead Beat, there was a book titled Die Lied der Erlking. Presumably Jim got a lot of mail correcting him, because when Harry runs into the guy who wrote it, he mocks him for his terrible grammar. |
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The first episode of Pacific Heat features the team trying to bust up a Chinese smuggling ring. They manage to trace the shipments to a ship called the S.S. Okamaru... which is a Japanese name, and not a particularly common Japanese name, either. | |
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Much of Yoko Kanno's music from Cowboy Bebop is in a pseudo-French language. | |
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Yu-Gi-Oh!: A minor example in Funimation's short lived uncut dub: in 4Kids' original English dub of the anime, most characters were subject to a Dub Name Change. For example, Hiroto Honda was renamed to Tristan Taylor. For the uncut dub, a compromise was decided upon to use the dub's first name along with the original Japanese surname, so in this instance, Tristan Honda. The exception to this is the character known in the west as Joey Wheeler, as his first name is taken from the surname of his Japanese iteration, Katsuya Jonouchi. As a result, this dub named him Joey Katsuya, effectively giving him a personal name in place of a legitimate Japanese family name. Most of the ancient Egyptian character names in the Millennium World arc fall headlong into this. Some (Atem, Seto, Isis) pass muster because they're derived from actual Egyptian gods' names, and Siamun shares his name with a historical pharaoh, but many are clearly made up (Mahado, Mana, Shada, Kisara) or are anachronistically Arabic (Karim, Hasan). Akhenaden and Akhenamkhanen's names might be very loosely based on Akhenaten's. |
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King of the Hill: The Souphanousinphone family often shouts what is supposed to be Laotian, however, it is actually just foreign sounding gibberish. It should also be noted that Souphanousinphone is a made-up surname. Used in-universe in the earlier Khan episodes to show how little the guys knew about Asian cultures, which is in contrast to Cotton, who can tell Khan's nationality just by looking at him due to having fought Asians in the war. |
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King of Prism has a character from Madagascar named Nebuchadnezzar Ur Mfalme de Merina XIII. None of these names even remotely sound close to being from Madagascar, except for Merina: his ID gives his place of birth as the Merina Kingdom, a real kingdom that once ruled the island but was overthrown by the French in 1897 (94 years before the character's date of birth written on the same ID). | |
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The title character of Princess Pi is an Egyptian princess named after a Greek letter. It didn't take long for the creator to realize it didn't make sense to name an Egyptian princess after a Greek letter, so he decided the entire comic shouldn't make sense either. | |
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Discworld Nanny Ogg usually manages to make herself understood no matter where she goes, although her linguistic approach is described as "gabbling away in her own personal Esperanto". "Excuse me, young homme! Trois beers avec us, silver plate", or 'Mein herr! Mucho vino avec zei grassy ass', for instance. The Colour of Magic: Rincewind's identity in our world is a Swedish scientist named "Dr. Rjinswand", which is nothing like a Swedish name. (In the Swedish translation, his nationality is changed to Dutch; though, confusingly, they left in the bit about his language sounding "Hublandish", the Discworld's equivalent of "northern".) Twoflower becomes a German tourist with the last name "Zweiblumen", which is correct, but translates to "Twoflowers" (a straight translation of his name would be "Zweiblume"). In the Dutch version, he is named Tweebloesem (Twoblossom); the literal translation of Twoflower would be 'Tweebloem'. As the page quote indicates, the people of Ankh-Morpork don't seem to be particularly concerned with what part of Klatch something is taking place in. Klatch has variously stood in for either the Middle East or Darkest Africa, especially in earlier books, hence the debate in ''Moving Pictures' over whether they should address the locals as "bwanas" or "effendies." |
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The Spanish movie Welcome Mr. Marshall! has a whole segment parodying The Western movies in faux-English except a few words like "Whiskey", "Hey!" "Howdoyoudo?" | |
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In Metalocalypse, Toki and Swiskgaar speak gibberish Norwegian/Swedish at several occasions, even if they are supposed to be Scandinavian. Neither of their names are usual Scandinavian names. To be fair, the three American members of the band don't have usual names either. There aren't very many Murderfaces in the phone book. | |
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Mirage): Hamato Yoshi's deceased wife was a woman named Tang Shen. Yoshi hailed from Japan, but "Tang Shen" is clearly a Chinese name. The 2012 cartoon actually provides an explanation; Tang Shen is, at least partially, Chinese. One could easily apply this to other versions of the character due to her tending to lack a backstory. For that matter, Hamato Yoshi and Oroku Saki are this as well. "Hamato" is not a real Japanese family name. "Saki" is an actual Japanese name....except it's a feminine name. In Japanese translations his name is changed to "Sawaki". |
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Done to a ridiculous degree in episode 52 of Hayate the Combat Butler where "Italian" ranges from reciting Italian foods to saying anime/manga related references with bad pseudo-Italian accents. Considering the nature of the show, this trope was almost certainly done deliberately. | |
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Tony Hawks' attempt at singing Psy's Gangnam Style in series 58 of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue. | |
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Adam Hills, an Australian comedian, has a routine all about this. He uses The Swedish Chef as an example of how people imitate other languages. He then goes on to say that those who go a little further just imitate the accent and make up gibberish while adding in an occasional word in that language. | |
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Song of Susannah features a supposedly Swedish character with the distinctly Dutch-sounding name Mathiessen van Wyck. King's little-known short story "The Crate", where the evil crate is found on a remote island in the Drake Passage. The name of the island is... Paella. His Italian (or Italian-American) mafia characters speak a language which is not Sicilian dialect and not much like Italian. It does have a bit of Spanish in it, though. |
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The Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay called the Big Bad of the "Enemy Within" campaign "Zahnarzt". Yes, that's German for dentist. The first edition was full of such jokes. It had a family named Untermensch (Sub-Human), an inventor named Kugelschreiber (Ballpoint-Pen) who lived in a house called Geflügelsalad (Chicken Salad), a fire wizard named Hals Roch... The bad guy is named "Klaus P. Verräter" (Traitor). Allegedly, there is also a good guy named Goebbels in the same publication. | |
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Subverted in Virtue's Last Reward. Early in the game the players come across a phrase "two milkmen go comedy" written on the wall. At first glance it looks like pure nonsense, but it's an anagram of the perfectly sensible "welcome to my kingdom". Later in the same game, a second anagram features a typo. One that the characters acknowledge, and one that (as is sometimes the case with anagrams) is needed for the real phrase to make sense. | |
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Alien language examples abound in Return of the Jedi. The Ewok speak Tagalog, a Philippine language. Huttese spoken by Greedo, Jabba, and others is bad Quechua, spoken in a variety of dialects. Lando's copilot Nien Nunb speaks the Tanzanian language of Haya. | |
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Completely averted in Son of Saul; all the actors were speakers of their characters' languages. | |
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In the Tokyo Mew Mew anime, Ichigo meets an English speaking pianist and is only able to say a few English words, one of them being her own name translated, which is "strawberry". It can be especially amusing for native English speakers to listen to this supposed native English speaker speaking English with an extremely heavy Japanese accent, though this is fairly common for 'native English speakers' in Anime to sound nothing like an actual native English speaker since they hire Japanese voice actors who speak English about as well as many native English speakers speak Japanese. | |
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Damara from Homestuck (as well as a few other characters able to understand her) speaks in intentionally-terrible Google Translated Japanese. In-universe, it's just a dialect some lowbloods use. | |
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Scandinavia and the World: What Denmark does when asked to speak Swedish. | |
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The characters in Claymore often have more or less vaguely European names. They can be perfectly reasonable, like "Priscilla" or "Beth", but then there is also a female Warrior called "Dietrich", a distinctly male German name, a random Red Shirt named Queenie, or one of the Abyssals called "Riful" (sometimes rendered "Rifle" in translations, which does not make for any better a name), whose companion's name is commonly rendered as "Dauf". | |
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The Da Vinci Code: The French policeman is named Bezu Fache. While Fache is a real French name, the first name Bezu comes out to most French people as unheard of (there is not one Bezu X in the Paris phonebook) hilarious, as the name evokes André Bézu, a "comic" singer from the eighties, mostly known for the very corny tune La Queuleuleu. Making things worse, Bézu — the singer — usually donned a caricature of French attire complete with a beret and a blue, red, and white bowtie, perhaps making Dan Brown's choice of a name an elaborate joke on cliches about France — or not. | |
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For Knight Hunters: Weiß Kreuz, Takehito Koyasu apparently picked the name because "Weiß" sounded cool, and "Kreuz" sounded cool with it. Randomly from a German dictionary. This was after the producers firmly vetoed his original title: "Cat People". In English. (No, not that one.) It really could have gone much worse. | |
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Mostly averted in Samurai Champloo. The Dutch diplomats speak actual Dutch (a rarity in anime, where the Dutch are often treated as Germans with a different flag), and the American soldiers speak proper (if a tad simple and profanity-laden) English. With that said, the Japan-obsessed leader of the Dutch diplomats has a non-Dutch surname (his name is"Isaac Kitching", although it may be justified as a way to distance the character from an actual Dutch diplomat from the rough time period, "Isaac Titsingh"). Also, in-universe, Manzo's very weak attempt at infiltrating the American ship has him try to pass himself as American as speaking a mix between pseudo-English and Japanese. Again, justified since he is a Japanese official that does not know any English at all. | |
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Irregular Webcomic! has goofed on foreign languages a few times (such as in strip 30 where a German talks about his "bad plans for world domination" and uses the non-German phrase "with extreme prejudice"), to the point that David Morgan-Mar has started asking for help when he's doing them. To give him credit, he does admit it when he's goofed and he's stated his use of German articles is purely dictated by humour purposes. | |
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Top Secret!: Most of the German spoken is completely irrelevant Yiddish phrases. For example, when supposedly ordering at a restaurant, the love interest is in fact telling the waiter, "Folg' mich a gang und gai in drerd" — "Do me a favor and go to hell." At one point, a German soldier does respond to an order in German, severely intoning "Ich liebe dich, mein Schatz" — "I love you, my darling." More fake languages abound: the Swedish lines are English run backwards, and a priest reciting the last rites for a condemned man speaks mostly in stock Latin phrases, throwing in one sentence in Pig Latin ("ou're-yay oing-gay to get ied-fray in the air-chay"). There's also the bit where Nick is riding the train to East Germany, and is learning German from a language tape. The names of the French Resistance fighters are all French loanwords (Déjà -Vu even asks if they've met before): |
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In-universe in The Night Mayor: a virtual reality realm based on 1940s movie includes an evil cult whose Ominous Latin Chanting is just a string of mundane Latin phrases like "cave canem" and "reductio ad absurdum". | |
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Georgia Rule has a Basque character named Hiztegi Argitaletxea Sarrionandia (but you can call him "Izzy"). His name is genuine Basque for "Dictionary of the Sarrionandia Publishing House". | |
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The Order of the Stick features this trope as author Rich Burlew grabbed for Azure City characters various names from different Asian cultures without really caring about what they meant, which is how we got a Daimyo named Lord Shojo (Lord Girly, in effect.) Word of God is that while most of the Azurite names are real, Rich picked up "Shojo" from Legends of the Five Rings, and "Hinjo" is his own invention. This gets a Lampshade Hanging and a Hand Wave pretty early on after meeting Miko. [[Roy asks about whether they should call her "Miko" or "Miyazaki", and she replies that she's never heard of Japan. It's the writer's way of saying, "This isn't the real world, so don't pick at the languages, culture, or names of the Azurites." There's also a Sangwaan. He's may be just making fun of the Fantasy Kitchen Sink nature of D&D's old "Oriental Adventures" setting. Miko Miyazaki's name is itself an example: her given name is a title and her family name is rather famous. It's like if a Japanese fantasy work had a faux-English paladin named Priestess Spielberg. Miko, written with different Kanji, is an actual Japanese name (a diminutive of Mikoto). Justified: The physics run on D&D rules, why wouldn't names and languages run on what the typical gamer would be expected to know? They do live in the same universe as "Julio Scoundrél"... We eventually get an explanation in the prequel story How the Paladin Got His Scar: there was once an empire spanning half the continent which absorbed many tribes. The new nations that followed it had numerous ethnic groups living side by side. |
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Zigzagged with one Japanese-speaking delinquent in Girl Chan In Paradise. He only has two lines, one of which is complete gibberish, and the second ("Oh shit! Sore wa Kenstar-kun, senpai! Hayaku, iku ze!") is actual Japanese. | |
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Raphael from The Mortal Instruments, being Mexican, tends to interject phrases in Spanish when he speaks. In City of Ashes, he tells Clary that Simon "no es muerto," which is incorrect; it should be "no está muerto." It seems like a classic Google Translate error rather than it being intentional. | |
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Xianne from Melody. Her name is Filipino (well, actually a Filipino Flanderization of a Western name), but she’s clearly supposed to be Japanese. | |
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Averted in Nodame Cantabile. German director Stresemann uses the alias Milch Holstein, which sounds and is correct German. Chiaki, who speaks German, realises that Milch (Milk) is not a name Germans would use, especially in combination with Holstein, which is a cattle breed well-known in Germany. | |
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3Pac's parody of Gangnam Style heavily invokes this trope by consisting of nonsensical words, Asian culture-related phrases and, most importantly, repeated utterances of "Ching chong 3PAC STYLE!" and "Oooh, sexy lady" during the refrain. | |
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The James Bond film Live and Let Die is supposed to happen at a fictious island named San Monique. While a female saint Monica of Hippo does indeed exist, the name is pure gibberish. "San" is masculine adjective in Spanish language, while "Monique" is the French name of the saint. The correct name would have been either "Santa Monica" (Spanish) or "Sainte-Monique" (French). | |
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TNA poked fun at this trope with the Curry Man gimmick, who was supposedly Japanese, but was actually NOT Christopher Daniels, an American white guy. Curry Man's Japanese was actually just Daniels reciting names of famous Japanese pro wrestlers. Late in the gimmick's life, Curry Man did pick up some English skills, but not without the over done accent. | |
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In WWE, during the later part of William Regal's career, he was portrayed as a regal, high-class, British snob, which included mispronouncing wrestlers's names, such as calling Triple H "Haitch." The funny thing is, that pronunciation of the letter H is actually less posh, going against his "British Snob" persona for those in the know. It makes it sound like Corporate just told him to "sound as British as possible." That could be interpreted as Fridge Brilliance, since Regal was acknowledged even in kayfabe as a rough-and-tumble carnival wrestler from Blackpool, and the "haitch" could be explained as him reverting to his boyhood dialect. | |
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Turning Red names the French-Canadian pop singer Robaire, which is not an actual French name (it's spelled Robert, same as in English; it's only pronounced as "Robaire"). | |
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Schlock Mercenary has a In-Universe example with Mahuitalotu-Cocobanatuituimaya Bohu | |
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Whatever the translator is using for Rocky's speech from the ring at the end of Rocky IV, it sure doesn't sound like Russian. | |
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Inglourious Basterds played with in-universe when the Basterds try to pass themselves off as Italians in spite of speaking only a few words of Italian and having atrocious accents. It turns out that at least one Nazi has enough of a passing familiarity to notice — and, tragically, this recognition leads directly to the death of Bridget von Hammersmark. | |
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The Asterisk War is usually pretty good about getting non-Japanese characters' names right or at least plausible (when the translators don't screw it up after the fact), but there are still some mistakes. Irene Urzaiz does Calling Your Attacks in either Spanish or Asturian (a closely related language from northern Spain), referring to the Unrealistic Black Holes she can launch at her enemies as "fanega", e.g. "Diez Fanega!". Not only is there a singular-plural mismatch here, the fanega or Spanish bushel is a unit of volume, which is an odd choice for a Gravity Master to name her spells after. One of the schools in Asterisk is called "St. Galahadsworth", mashing up sainthood with a French-invented Knight of the Round Table and an Anglo-Saxon suffix (referring to a fenced or walled homestead). One of the alternate transliterations in the novels is "Gallardworth" or "Gallardsworth", which makes marginally more sense (Gallard is a real surname of Norman origin and could have conceivably mixed with English). |
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Silver Samurai's real name is Kenuichio Harada. You won't find a single person in Japan called Kenuichio. In Japanese translations, his name is Kenichiro. In the movie, "Kenuichio" is dropped entirely. We never learn his given name, or if Harada is erroneously being used as such. | |
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In the American Dad! episode "Salute Your Sllort", we are introduced to Swedish exchange student at Steve's school, the titular Sllort. "Sllort" is not only not a Swedish name, but not even a word at all in any known language. Search for "Sllort" and the only results will be for this single episode. | |
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In Disney's Peter Pan, the Indians play with this in the song "What Makes the Red Man Red?" | |
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Aura Battler Dunbine has a female character who is introduced as "Marvel Frozen", to which the Japanese lead hero responds, "'Marvel Frozen'? You must be American!" | |
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Some of Yuki Kajiura's music, such as "A Song of Storm and Fire" from Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE- or "Credens Justitiam" from Puella Magi Madoka Magica, have lyrics that sound like a real language, but mean absolutely nothing. It's Kajiuran, an invented language that sounds just similar enough to Italian to be confusing. | |
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Dances with Wolves tried to avert this by teaching the actors to speak their lines in Lakotah (only one of the Indian actors spoke it fluently). However, Lakotah is a dual language, with male and female forms. The Lakotah language coach for the film was a woman and apparently translated all of the dialogue how she would say it, so all of the Lakotah characters speak like women. | |
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In King Ralph, John Goodman's titular character is introduced to King Gustav and Princess Anna of Finland. Neither name is Finnish in origin, though Anna is still fairly common, and there is a Swedish-speaking minority in Finland. The fact that Finland has no royalty was an intentional break from reality. | |
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The plot of the first chapter in Pathfinder: Rise of the Runelords depends on a certain noble family: the Kaijitsus. | |
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Quicksilver, who hails from the fictional Eastern European country of Transia, was born "Pietro Maximoff". While "Maximoff" is a real Eastern European surname (albeit a very rare one), "Pietro" is an Italian name, being the Italian variant of "Peter". The writers at least have the cop-out of his being from a fictional country, but most other characters from around there have names that fit geographically. The Romanian variant of Peter is Petru, which sounds rather close to Pietro. | |
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In Macross Frontier, the on-screen displays populated with English filler text use completely irrelevant excerpts from, for example, the Adobe Flash Player (or Adobe CS?) EULA and an article about the appearance of Oakley sunglasses in some bicycle or motorcycle event. | |
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Macross: Sharon Apple's pop song "Idol Talk" in Macross Plus is completely untranslatable into French. The words are French, but the actual meaning is total gibberish. In fact, Yoko Kanno has said that most of Plus's songs were intentionally written to have lyrics that only resemble real languages, without actually being them. In Macross Frontier, the on-screen displays populated with English filler text use completely irrelevant excerpts from, for example, the Adobe Flash Player (or Adobe CS?) EULA and an article about the appearance of Oakley sunglasses in some bicycle or motorcycle event. |
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The Mummy Trilogy: Averted by the filmmakers as best as they could, where they had an official Egyptologist professor coaching actors on how to pronounce their lines in Ancient Egyptian — a reconstruction of it, anyway. This video, on the other hand, reveals that Ardeth Bay may have said the same Arabic line on three separate occasions to mean three different things. According to the commentary, Ardeth Bey said the line once. In editing, they needed a new shot in a couple of places (for pacing) and just recoloured the shot they already had. In The Mummy Returns, the oasis where the Scorpion King resides is known as "Ahm Shere". Amshir is the Arabic pronunciation of the sixth month of the Egyptian calendar, Meshir. What this has to do with Ancient Egyptian kings, who knows. |
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Refreshing Stories: In the Japanese version of "Mom friend thinks I invited her to a cruise ship and spent a ton of money but...", the cruise ship's name Una Casita de Mar is localized into the vaguely French-sounding Une Cassitre de Mare. | |
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Transformers: Super-God Masterforce doesn't even try to give believable names to characters who aren't the Autobot Headmaster Juniors. The Decepticon Headmaster Juniors, for instance, are Bullhorn, Wilder, and Cancer — respectively Mexican, American, and Chinese. That said, since those names are bizarrely appropriate for their transtectors' altmodes (a hellish bull, a crazed wolf, and a sickening crab creature), they might simply be aliases — not that there's ever any indication of this being the case. Most of the other characters who hail from the west are only afforded, well, Transformer names like "Road King" and "Doubleclouder". | |
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The Spanish spoken by Something*Positive's Pepito intentionally read like English phrases were simply run through Babelfish, with nonsense words and broken English thrown in at random. At first, everyone assumed it was just another one of Randy Milholland's potshots at his Unpleasable Fanbase, but it turned out to also have plot-relevance as well. (Pepito was faking being English illiterate.) | |
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Several of the bad guys in Die Hard speak in pseudo-German gibberish. This was fixed in the re-release, where their lines were overdubbed with German native speakers — except Hans Gruber, who now sounds terribly out-of-place. | |
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One wartime cartoon that averts this is Disney's Education for Death. All the German is real, done almost certainly because it was meant as a completely serious propaganda piece. | |
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The non-English portion of the "gypsy drinking song" Georgi sings in The Inspector General is actually a mix of Russian and Ukrainian folk music. | |
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In The Terminal, Viktor Navorski (Tom Hanks) is from Krakozhia, a made-up Warsaw Pact country . He speaks passable Bulgarian, adequate to the situation. The Ruritania he comes from is a minor Genius Bonus: several Slavic languages have similar sounding words for "collapse", usually written as some variation of "krach" (spelled vaguely like "krakh"). "Collapsia" would be a pretty apt name for the protagonist's home country, given the movie it is the collapse of communism that strands the protagonist. | |
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Like in the cartoon it's based on, the characters in the film The Last Airbender can be assumed to actually be speaking ancient Chinese but use English as a part of a Translation Convention. All of the In-Universe writing uses the former. The show went to great lengths to have accurate writing (Chinese history professor Siu-Leung was the cultural consultant on the show and its sequel show and did all the calligraphy himself) but in the movie it's just scribbles made to look like Chinese. | |
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The Hitler Rants fad on YouTube takes a scene from Downfall and subtitling the German to make Hitler appear to be ranting about World of Warcraft, his Xbox, shoes, Fords or whatever the author feels like laying into. It's a sort of inverse Godwin's Law, in that you start with Hitler, then begin the discussion. It also allows YouTube Poops in just about any language (except German), since the point is less what the words mean and more what they sound like. For example, expect any Game of Thrones themed Hitler Rant to use Stannis in the subtitles when he mentions Stalin. | |
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Skewered in Maverick, as, when the heroes are set upon by a band of Indians, Bret Maverick "translates" the chief's words, informing the rest of the party that they have trespassed on sacred ground, and the Indians' gods demand a blood sacrifice. As Maverick well knows (and the subtitles tell the audience), however, the chief just wants to know if Maverick has come for the money he owes him. | |
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In The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal Lecter has a dead little sister named Mischa, which is ordinarily a diminutive form of a male name Mikhail (Michael). (However, as the website hannotations.com explains, this may be deliberate due to various symbolic elements in the name.) This is one of the many reasons why among fans of The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal is often excluded from canon. | |
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There is an ethnically Hawaiian character in Rocket Power named Tito, which doesn't make sense, because there is no letter "T" in the Hawaiian alphabet, and while "Tito" is an actual name, it is an Italian/Spanish one, not a Hawaiian one. | |
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The Tales of Symphonia OVA has the song "Almateria", and while it has some significant words thrown in here and there, it's mostly pleasant-sounding gibberish. | |
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Some of the non-Japanese characters in Shaman King. The big standout would be Chocolove, an African-American shaman who joins the main cast in once the tournament begins. To avoid stereotypical depiction, the English dub and translations of the manga change his name to "Joco". | |
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Into The Veesha-verse: In-universe. "My Treasure" has Vee figure that "scheißen" is close enough to "schließen" that Masha will understand it. Masha, after they're done laughing, explains that while "schließen" means "to close", "scheißen" means "to take a shit." Vee accidentally asked Masha if they could shit the door instead of closing it. | |
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Forgotten Weapons sometimes features "Chinese mystery pistols," which are pistols made by small workshops during the Warlord period, usually copies of European and American pistols. They were made by and for people who knew that official guns bore text in the Latin alphabet, but who knew European languages about as well as most Westerners know Chinese. The results range from near-misses like WAUSER instead of Mauser to complete gibberish. | |
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In Zatch Bell!, Kiyomaro is running "tests" on a stone tablet (petrified demon). After a while, he starts shouting random spells and demon names at it, since it has writing in the same foreign language as the spellbooks. | |
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The Mikado: "Miya sama" from Gilbert and Sullivan's musical is a subversion, as it is actually a Japanese folk song (though not a dirty one, as the Urban Legend has it). However, in one production the song was sung straight once, then repeated using lyrics made up entirely of Japanese brand names ("Mitsubishi Datsun Honda, Kawasaki Toyota..."). With the exception of the Mikado himself, all the characters' names are just vaguely Asian-sounding phrases that will sound funny to western ears, like "Yum-Yum" and "Ko-Ko" (which Gilbert was not aware is a real Japanese name). |
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GA: Geijutsuka Art Design Class features Marianne van Trienen, who is explicitly stated to be French. But while Marianne is a valid French given name, the surname would have used "de" instead of "van" (which is the Dutch equivalent for The Von Trope Family), and Trienen is a more commonly Dutch name than a French one. | |
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In-media example: In one Lucky Luke album, the Daltons disguise as Chinese. Jack decides to make his disguise by speaking "Chinese". Which means that he says "ching chang chong" all the time. A crowning moment of funny is when he is talking to a Chinese man who dislikes Rin-Tin-Can very much: | |
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In Chrono Crusade, most of the English names of the American characters make sense, like Joshua and Rosette Christopher. But then you have the German character Satella Harvenheit (which might have been meant to be "Stella", but is officially spelled with the extra "A"), and the Portuguese immigrant Azmaria Hendrich...(although to be fair, her last name is her adoptive father's....but it still doesn't sound right). | |
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In Charlie's Angels (2000), there's a scene where the angels speak Finnish to each other. They discuss what a bad idea it would be to sleep with a client, but this is not what it says in the subtitles. Things get increasingly weird if you watch the movie with Finnish subtitles, which also don't match what's said. | |
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Batman example: Ra's al Ghul's daughter, Talia, uses the "surname" Al-Ghul, despite the Arabic patronymic not working that way, but kind of makes sense as her name would thus be "Talia, of the Demon". The trouble is that she then uses the "Anglicized" variant, "Talia Head", which translates the wrong word. Maybe "Talia Demon" wasn't subtle enough. (To be fair, Head is an actual surname, of Anglo-Saxon origin, and she was making very little effort to hide her identity or origins.) | |
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The Cajun mutant, Gambit, likes to toss some French into his dialogue. He sometimes calls Rogue "chéri" (darling)... which would be nice if he weren't using the masculine form of the word. Luckily for our grammatically-challenged hero, there is no audible difference between "chéri" and "chérie". | |
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Parts of Eli Roth's horror movie Hostel take place in Amsterdam, capital of The Netherlands. But the scenery doesn't look like Amsterdam at all and the people talk German instead of Dutch. In the German translation, it is supposed to be somewhere in eastern Europe. Except for the businessman, who is supposed to be Dutch. He speaks Dutch in the film, even though the actor, Jan Vlasák, is Czech and didn't even speak a word of English before getting the role. He learned all of his lines, both English and Dutch, by writing them down phonetically and just cram it in...and it was awesome. | |
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In Team America: World Police, anything that wasn't English was nonsensical gibberish, apart from random French that amounted to the same thing. The terrorists, for example, only use three words: 'Durkadurka', 'Muhammed', and 'Jihad!' Except for the cries of "NO ME GUSTAAAA!" at the Panama canal and a North Korean pilot shouting "KAMSAHAMNIDA!". | |
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Victor Spinetti had the possibly unique ability to do this with English in English language films. In Oh! What a Lovely War and Magical Mystery Tour, he plays drill sergeants who bellow incomprehensible gibberish at high speed (although in Magical Mystery Tour, the phrase "And get your bloody hair cut!" is very audible). Spinetti was also able to do this with Italian. | |
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The phrase "Ouvre le chien" appears in both "All the Madmen" and the Title Track to The Buddha of Suburbia. The literal translation from French is "Open the dog." | |
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In The Incredible Hulk, the thuggish Brazilian who harasses Bruce Banner in the early scenes speaks Portuguese with a horrible, horrible foreign accent (the actor is Peruvian-Austrian). It's grammatically correct (or correctly incorrect for the setting), though. Really, every Brazilian not played by a Brazilian actor (there are quite a few) speaks in a barely understandable accent. Bruce Banner's emergency Portuguese actually sounded better than most of them. | |
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In Star vs. the Forces of Evil Buff Frog — the Russian Spy in Ludo's army — says something vaguely foreign, supposedly in Russian before breaking the castle door while carrying the fountain with tadpoles in Season 1 finale "Storm the Castle" | |
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Gundam: The franchise is positively rife with foreign-ish names, some more successful than others. Most of the bizarre linguistics are a deliberate effort to distance the far-future humanity from existing cultures, especially in the space colonies. The one series with a date solidly pinned down in relation to modern day does fairly well with the names. Gundam Build Fighters meanwhile takes place in the "real" world (albeit 20 Minutes into the Future), and yet features an African-American character named Nils Nielsen. Unless he has some Scandinavian ancestry, the name comes off as kind of odd. |
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Death Note: In a case of Japanese-to-English, the author wanted realistic names that sounded American but didn't actually exist. The result is hit or miss. "Ray Penbar" sounds almost normal. "Knick Staek" and "Liab Zaopack" less so. Most of the victims' names are examples of this trope, as was L, whose real name is L Lawliet. In Death Note 13: How to Read, the writer of the manga admits that he made up the names of the victims randomly, so that no real names would show up as having been written down in the Death Note. In the Prequel Another Note, multiple characters' names are composed of random English words smashed together, such as Beyond Birthday, Quarter Queen, and Bluesharp Babysplit. |
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Fafner in the Azure: Dead Aggressor has a supposedly Irish character named "Kanon Memphis", which doesn't sound like the sort of name anyone would have, let alone an Irish person. | |
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Averted in the original Red Dawn (1984). The Russians generally speak Russian among themselves, and the Cuban/Central Americans speak Spanish. At one point, Colonel Bella switches effortlessly from Spanish to Russian when speaking to both types of troops. | |
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The Back to the Future trilogy: The Libyan terrorists from the first film speak some vaguely Arabic-sounding nonsense language. In Back to the Future Part II, the older Marty's Japanese boss has a name equivalent to "Mr. General Motors." Also, the Japanese street signs in the town square were found hilarious by Japanese tourists during filming. |
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In the Gemma Doyle Trilogy, French was clearly provided courtesy of a translation website. The (apparently) French Mademoiselle La Farge asks the titular character "Comment vous appelez-vous?" instead of just saying "Comment t'appelle-tu?" For those who don't speak French, "vous" is used when addressing strangers, elders who are not your family, and "tu" is used with acquaintances, and those of your own age and below. Google Translate always use "vous" whatever the situation. | |
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Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney and Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth feature cases with characters who speak Borginian, a "language" which consists of dingbats. | |
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Thinner contains passages supposedly in the Romani language. In fact, they're in Swedish, and mostly gibberish. | |
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Tangled: The Series: In "King Pascal", the Lorbs, a tribe of miniature talking leaves, say such ersatz German- or Dutch-sounding words as "kloopenhogen" to refer to their king, "freinfloofer" for servants, and "schmoovenvizens" for cheeks. | |
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In The Musical of Musicals: The Musical!, the "Cell Block Tango" parody has a "Foreign Speaking Chorus Person" speaking words that, aside from a Take That! at Liza Minnelli's wobbly singing, are largely unintelligible in Hungarian or any other language: | |
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Magellan: When creating an illusory world Maya needed some Russian sounding place names, Chang is quick to point this out. | |
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Gladiator: The 2000 epic movie's ending theme, titled "Now We Are Free", has lyrics that many claim to be either Latin/Hebrew/Arabic/German/Old Irish. The singer, Lisa Gerrard, points out in her website that the lyrics are from the language of the heart, a personal language she made up when she was 11 (heard also in some her songs with Dead Can Dance, fact fans). That doesn't stop people from arguing about it, though. | |
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The Italian 1970 western Compañeros had a main character that was supposed to be Swedish and was named "Yodlaf Peterson". Yodlaf is total gibberish and does not even remotely sound like any Swedish or Scandinavian names (the closest real name probably being "Jonas", or "Olaf") and while Petersson and Pettersson are common surnames in Sweden, Swedish surnames ending with -son almost always have two S's (as in "Peter's Son" contracted to Petersson). The surname would probably be excusable since occasionally people prefer to have their surnames written with only one S for aesthetic reasons, but the film does this more than once, also introducing an (fictional) brand of Swedish Safes named Svenson. The film also contains some Swedish speech, which was done surprisingly well — while badly-pronounced, all the lines where grammatically correct. | |
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The Daria episode "Of Human Bonding" features a Danish balloonist, Arno, who sports a heavy German accent. The Danish language — accent included — is actually very different from German, but is similar to both Swedish and Norwegian, as these countries belong to the Scandinavian part of Northern Europe. | |
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The city of Santé Benedicte in Sandpaper Kiss is a case of this, being a completely fictional possibly-Central or South American city. The language spoken there is vaguely based on Dutch. | |
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Sparks's "Hasta Manana Monsieur" from Kimono My House depicts a man struggling to woo a girl in her native tongue. Unsure of her nationality, he takes random, wild stabs at every continent. | |
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Sharon Apple's pop song "Idol Talk" in Macross Plus is completely untranslatable into French. The words are French, but the actual meaning is total gibberish. In fact, Yoko Kanno has said that most of Plus's songs were intentionally written to have lyrics that only resemble real languages, without actually being them. | |
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Invoked in one episode of The Boondocks, which features a character named Dewey Jenkins who, as part of his hyper-stereotypical and misguided attempts at being a black power activist, gives his middle name as "Obababa Oooh Mamase Mamasa Mamakusa." Huey, an actual activist, is less than amused. | |
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In Fierce People, the actor portraying the Shaman in Finn's dream was actually speaking Filipino. | |
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In Stripes, the communist soldiers of Czechoslovakia all speak with vaguely Russian-sounding grunts. | |
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In-universe example in Despicable Me: After carefully checking that Miss Hattie doesn't know Spanish, Gru tells her in a romantic tone "You have a face como un burro." ("You have a face like a (male) donkey.") Unfortunately, she later gets a Spanish dictionary and is not amused. | |
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Invoked in Hot Tub Time Machine. After being mistaken for Russian spies by the ski patrol, Nick wards them off by brandishing the can of Chernobly like it was a bomb and disjointedly shouting basic Russian words such as "Dosvedanya!*Which would make sense in their case, since "dosvedanya" roughly translates to "Until next time", and they're preparing to jump forward into the future.", as well as stuff like "Martina Navratilova!" and "Smirnoff Ice!" The ski patrol jocks buy it and back off. | |
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The Auld Elvish used in Bored of the Rings (a parody of The Lord of the Rings) is strings of nonsensical, vaguely foreign-sounding gibberish. Much of it is random English words mixed with foreign loan words, and a couple lines are English with a phonetic accent. The translations provided in the book also don't quite match up with the excerpts. Have a gander. | |
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The French dub of Futurama replaces Amy's (typically accurate) bursts of Chinese with Ching Chong-sounding gibberish that sounds vaguely like Chinese if you don't know what the language sounds like. | |
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Code Geass. Many characters from the Britannian Empire, that is supposed to be an alternate-reality version of either UK or US, have ridiculously non-English names (such as Rivalz), even surnames as first names (Nunnally sounds like an Irish surname, Lelouch is a French one). On the other hand, there are some characters with quite acceptable names, such as Gilbert G.P. Guilford. And then there's Rolo, which could be a candy bar or a character from Sanford and Son. | |
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The creator of Hetalia: Axis Powers, in response to a fan question, gave suggestions as to what the Nations as People would be named if they were human, and the fanbase has since run with them. However, many of the names fall squarely into this. Austria has a Jewish last name despite being presumably Catholic (Edelstein), Hungary's name is listed as (probably, going by Romanization) "Elizebeta" even though the Hungarian version of Elizabeth is "Erzsébet," Greece's name literally translates to Herakles Watermelon, one of Belgium's suggested French names ("Henri") is masculine (though "Anri," a name derived from it, is a feminine name in Japan), Egypt for whatever reason is named "Gupta," a Hindu name he wouldn't even be able to pronounce (though his middle and last name, "Mohammed Hassan," just happen to be accurate), and the list goes on and on. Then there are weird mix-ups of surnames and first names like Sweden being named "Berwald" or Turkey having "Adnan" as his surname, despite the fact that "Adanir" is a real Turkish surname. On occasion, diminutives seem to be used instead of the actual names they would be diminutives of, like Ukraine getting "Irunya" or Switzerland "Basch" (often misspelled as "Vash" by early fans, which is an even bigger example of this trope) as opposed to "Iryna" and "Sebastian." The most egregious cases, however, have to be the main character himself and his brother: Italy's name is "Feliciano Vargas," a rare Italian last name used as a first name and a Spanish last name, and South Italy's name is "Lavino," a name which doesn't even exist (though is possibly a corruption of the rare Italian name "Lavinio"). English-language Fanon name alteration attempts are not uncommon for this reason. However, there are also plenty of characters who were given perfectly plausible, if at times old-fashioned, names, which makes the bizarre names stand out even more (granted, Japan was given the name "Kiku Honda," "Kiku" being usually a feminine name). | |
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In the parody travel guide Molvania, travellers are advised to add random j's and z's to words if they get stuck. For example, the Molvanian for 'hotel' is 'hotjl'. | |
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Legend of the Five Rings has guidelines for players and Game Masters to name their own characters, and so the accuracy of the names used by players varies. Kurohito, a guy born with stark white hair and fair blue eyes, whose name means "Black Man". The name "Toturi" is meaningless in Japanese, even if you see it as an alternative spelling to "Totsuri". Many other names are completely made-up Japanese-looking nonsense. Sometimes the names aren't even Japanese-looking at all, very easily getting into Chinese and Korean territory, resulting in cases where characters have a Japanese surname with a Chinese personal name. Even the Kami haven't escaped this; their names all have a Japanese sound to them (though most of them are nonsense), and then you got Fu Leng. |
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The Most Popular Girls in School: We have Mrs. Zales' Asian dialect, and whenever she speaks it. | |
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The Producers: While Uma Thurman certainly tries to speak Swedish, it fails to the point of her lines having to be subtitled on Swedish releases. The whole thing is a bit odd since they managed to get some stuff right and some stuff plain odd. Like her "catchphrase", "God dag min vännen", which translates to "Hello my the friend". Probably it's a mistake for "vänner", which would make it "Hello my friends." But her accent is in no way Swedish, just generically North European, and apart from baby grammar, she indicates foreignness by referring to herself in the third person. Why this should sound "foreign" is anyone's guess, since pronouns are the first thing one learns. | |
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Strahd von Zarovich of Ravenloft bears a name that is a mix of Slavic and German influences; if you squint a lot, you can juuust try to derive it from real roots, but ultimately it is essentially Ruritanian rather than anything else. Which is true to the spirit of the setting, really. | |
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Nightwish's song "Creek Mary's Blood", about the Trail of Tears, has an outro of spoken Lakota by singer and flutist John Two-Hawks. The Lakota are one of the Plains Indian tribes, hundreds of miles away from the tribes affected by Andrew Jackson's little ethnic cleansing operation. The band said at the time that Two-Hawks was the only Native American performer they were able to contact when they were recording the album. This got worse in 2013 when a Shoshone member of the Nightwish forum played the song for a Lakota friend, who informed her that the spoken Lakota was gibberish: Two-Hawks had since been exposed as a fraud, and the poem at the end, which was composed by songwriter Tuomas Holopainen in English, had been translated to Lakota exactly as one might have done if all one had was an English-Lakota dictionary and no actual knowledge of Lakota grammar. | |
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ARIA: Singer Eri Kawai admitted that a lot of songs have nonsensical lyrics, in an attempt to make them sound vaguely Italian. One song, a canzone sung by Alice during her graduation ceremony, has some verses in Esperanto, likely to achieve the same effect without becoming too silly. | |
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Queen's Blade has this in spades, despise the setting being in a Fantasy Western Medieval world, especially with the few characters with full names: We have the main heroine and her sister Leina and Elina Vance respectively (Spanish first name with a American English last name) and her elder sister Claudette (French), and from the sequel Rebellion, we have Annelotte Kreuz (French first name with German last name). The rest of the cast aren't better: We have Menace from the Egyptian-inspired Amara (a pun from the Pharaoh Menes), Airi, despite from not being from the Japan-inspired Hinomoto (From which Tomoe and Shizuka came from) or even being alive for that matter, and many others. | |
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In one scene of Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Robin Hood is saying goodbye to Maid Marian in different languages. All of them are correct besides the final one, "Ting tao tay!", which sounds like Chinese but means nothing. Rule of Funny applies, though, as the joke is about how ridiculous Robin sounds saying it. "Zà i jià n" is less amusing. | |
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The Princess Diaries and The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement play this trope straight over a cliff by inventing a European country, "Genovia," in which the queen (Julie Andrews) is English, the peasants speak either French or English with French, English, and American accents, and the princess's name is Princess Amelia Mignonette Thermopolis Renaldi. The books do give some explanation — for some reason, it's a Francophone country which used to be part of Italy. And the Amelia and Thermopolis parts come from her (American) mother. And no accents, obviously. In the books Genovia is between France and Italy (it's basically Monaco) but in the movies it's between France and Spain (taking after Andorra instead). Mignonette is a flower. Queen Clarisse (Julie Andrews) could very well have been an English princess who married the Genovian King. The fact that she is styled "Dowager" would usually mean that she was a queen consort (married into the royal family) rather than queen regnant (ruling in her own right). |
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Gundam Build Fighters meanwhile takes place in the "real" world (albeit 20 Minutes into the Future), and yet features an African-American character named Nils Nielsen. Unless he has some Scandinavian ancestry, the name comes off as kind of odd. | |
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In Child's Play, Chucky's possession chant is meant to sound like French, or maybe Creole. While some of the words really are French, most of it is gibberish, and even some of the real French is either mispronounced or otherwise wrong E.G at one point he's presumably trying to say "Pouvoir des morts" (power of the dead) but instead says "poivre de le morte" (pepper of the dead). | |
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In Back to the Future Part II, the older Marty's Japanese boss has a name equivalent to "Mr. General Motors." Also, the Japanese street signs in the town square were found hilarious by Japanese tourists during filming. | |
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Catch-22 character Lieutenant Scheisskopf gets his Meaningful Name from a common mistake about German. It supposedly means "shithead" (by combining scheiße, "shit", with kopf, "head"), but this word doesn't actually exist in German: the equivalent term is "Arschloch". | |
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Certainly true of the sort-of Indian cult in Help!. Made funnier by the fact that the British actors make essentially no attempt to conceal their... Britishness. | |
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Zulu: According to legend, the Zulu messenger was instructed to simply 'say something' in his native language as he collapsed at King Cetewayo's feet. This was a mistake, as what he chose to say was 'kiss my behind' or words to that effect. The Zulu actor playing the king managed to keep a straight face. But audiences of their compatriots didn't. | |
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Million Dollar Baby: Mo chuisle is mispronounced as "muh kwushla" rather than the actual "muh khushleh". The phrase is shown spelled in a nonstandard way. Also, Clint Eastwood's character claims to be translating William Butler Yeats' poetry from Irish (or "Gaelic", as he incorrectly calls it) into English—but Yeats only had a basic knowledge of the Irish language, and never wrote any Irish poetry. This one is especially blatant, since the poem that he "translates" is "The Lake Isle of Innisfree", one of Yeats' most famous poems, and one of the most famous English poems ever written. | |
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Reborn! (2004) is a repeated offender for its attempts at Italian names, most notably Bianchi is used as a (female) first name — it is actually a surname. | |
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Lionel Richie's "All Night Long" features some African-sounding gibberish in its breakdown section. Richie originally wanted an authentic translation, but after learning there were thousands of languages spoken in Africa, he decided it was easier to just make something up. | |
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In Digital Fortress, one of David Becker's many assets is that he can convincingly fake a Burgos accent. So convincing is his accent, he fools a Spaniard used to spot people faking accents over the phone into thinking that he's a native of Burgos before even dropping the city's name. In reality Burgos, being the heart of Old Castile, has no accent but Standard Castilian, the same used by most people and media in Spain. Spaniards jokingly say that people from Burgos have no accent. | |
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In Modern Toss, foul-mouthed signmaker Mr Tourette and his customers speak in a kind of gibberish that resembles French. | |
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PvP's Brent Sienna took a semester of mock German in college once. | |
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In The Dark Crystal the speech of the Podlings was vaguely based on the Serbo-Croatian language. Producer Gary Kurtz has noted that audience members fluent in Polish, Russian and other Slavic languages could understand some of those sentences. | |
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The Boy Who Cried Werewolf: Despite this being set in Romania, most of the names stem from neighboring Slavic languages, or even German. Wolfsberg, a castle in Romania with a German name. Dragomir is a Romanian male first name, but his last name Vukovic is Serbian. Goran is a male first name common in South Slavic countries like Bulgaria, Croatia, Serbia etc. Igor Van Helman Stanisvlasky, a Romanian with a Russian, Dutch, North-German, Polish name. |
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In Congo, Tim Curry plays an ex-Romanian philanthroper named Herkemer Homolka. Homolka is a Czech surname, Herkimer a German one. | |
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Freesia Yagyu from Jubei-chan 2 is half-Japanese, half-Russian. Her first name, however, does not exist in either culture. | |
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The comedic (and Oscar-nominated) 1968 short film The Dove (with Madeline Kahn in her film debut in a small role) is an Affectionate Parody of Ingmar Bergman, and can basically be described as "The Swedish Chef writes a Bergman screenplay" (though it predated The Muppet Show by a decade). The whole movie is done in hilarious mock-Swedish (with English subtitles) that's largely just English words with "-en" or "-ska" added at the end, with "translations" like "phalliken zymbol" (cigar) and "H2Oska" (water). | |
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Montel Vontavious Porter's entrance theme in New Japan Pro-Wrestling is named "Most Valiantly Person". It's really just a remix of VIP Ballin...which ironically plays more of the original song's lyrics than WWE ever did. | |
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Zero Escape: Subverted in Virtue's Last Reward. Early in the game the players come across a phrase "two milkmen go comedy" written on the wall. At first glance it looks like pure nonsense, but it's an anagram of the perfectly sensible "welcome to my kingdom". Later in the same game, a second anagram features a typo. One that the characters acknowledge, and one that (as is sometimes the case with anagrams) is needed for the real phrase to make sense. |
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In Blazing Saddles, the Indian Chief (played by Mel Brooks) speaks Yiddish. This was done on purpose as a joke on an old Hollywood stereotype where American Indians were played by Jewish actors, and an even older belief that they are descended from the Lost Tribes of Israel. | |
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While Ilivais X has this in abundance. Iriana and Seyne Estchell are supposed to come from Serbia, but their names are vaguely French if anything, and Estchell doesn't come from anything. Essen Dywell isn't an English/Chinese name at all, Sura Verandis is more nonsense than Scandinavian or Arabic, and plenty other examples that come from vague backgrounds. Mille Chanteau, while a bit archaic in French, is perfectly valid though. | |
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The rock group Blondie is notorious in certain circles for gratuitous French lyrics that, while not exactly gibberish, tend to be painfully literal and non-idiomatic translations from English. To a fluent speaker, the French verse of "Sunday Girl" in particular is little more than a Dick and Jane level translation of one of the English verses; other songs are almost as bad, and "Call Me" throws in random stings of gratuitous Italian as well. | |
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Used for effect in Blade Runner: Edward James Olmos' character Gaff speaks in a mixture of Spanish, French, Chinese, German, Hungarian, and Japanese, both to make the character more interesting and to indicate some huge language drift happened in the future. Olmos created a small dictionary of words for the so-called "City Speak". | |
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Divergence Eve: Lieutenant Commander Lyar von Ertiana is German, which we know because her name has "von" in it. Luxandra Frail is similarly supposed to be Mexican and is colored right for a mestiza, but her name is blatantly not Latin American. | |
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Toto in The Palm Beach Story speaks an indistinguishable (presumably European) language. | |
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The Palm Beach Story | hasFeature |
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My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: There is an African-analogue character, a zebra named Zecora. In her first episode, she speaks a few lines of what is supposed to sound like Swahili. Lauren Faust explained that they were originally going to find someone who actually knew Swahili, but due to time constraints, Zecora's voice actor was told to just say some Swahili-sounding jibberish instead. Played with in regards to her name; it's not Swahili, but it is a real word. Specifically, it's Oromo (an Ethiopian language) for "zebra." The Breezies speak Swedish-sounding gibberish, which only Fluttershy can understand. |
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In the Asterix animated movie Asterix Conquers America, the Native Americans are saying a random mix of North American place names that were taken from words in the languages of the Native American tribes that lived in those regions. Leading the medicine man to say such things as "Minnesota Manitoba. MIAMI!" | |
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Lemon Demon's "Hyakugojyuuichi 2003" has a whole verse of Mark "Toxic" Hughes talking pseudo-Japanese gibberish in the style of the announcer from Pokémon: The Series Image Song "Pokémon Ieru Ka Na?" (also known as "the Japanese Poke-Rap"). This was so the gibberish could be Mondegreened into dadaist lyrics in the Animutation style for the flash cartoon made of the song. | |
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The YouTube video "What Languages Sound Like to Foreigners" is a girl speaking gibberish meant to sound like what a language sounds like to people who don't know the language, for people who know the language. | |
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Nobody Scores! does this in-universe with Shibamame. | |
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Fear Itself introduced Splitlip, a dwarf blacksmith whose speech is peppered with profanities, covered up by writing them in Norse runes. If you actually translate the runes, you will find out it's gibberish. Even the Asgardian version of the old Norse language probably does not have words like "eabrkmthw". | |
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Limitless has a scene where Bradley Cooper is speaking Chinese to a waiter at a Chinese restaurant. There aren't any subtitles, but ask any Chinese person what he said and they'll tell you that it's incomprehensible. | |
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True Lies: Lampshaded. Harry isn't paraphrasing when he translates the tail end of one of Aziz's speeches as, "Now no man can stop us. We are set on our course. No force can stop us, we're cool, we're badasses, blah blah blah blah." The actual line is literally just Arabic-sounding gibberish. | |
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Freezing has the supposedly English protagonist bear the decidedly non-English sounding name Satellizer El Bridget, which sounds almost French, if not for the fact that Satellizer is an obviously made-up name which just sounds like a portmanteau of 'satellite' and 'laser'. Maybe Stella is what the author was going for? | |
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In The Gods Must Be Crazy, the filmmakers allowed the bushman actor N!xau make up all of his own lines because the audience is never expected to understand him. The narrator always explains what his character is saying instead. Because N!xau was disgruntled by the filmmaking process, the lines he says are often critical of the scene or the film as a whole. For example, when his character triumphantly returns to his village, he starts chastising the tribe for not rushing up to embrace him, as a real tribe would do. | |
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Baccano!: The series takes place in America but has a Japanese author, so the characters' names tend to veer into this. Expect characters to be given names like Jacuzzi Splot and board a train graciously named the Flying Pussyfoot. "Claire Stanfield" is a perfectly normal woman's name. The problem is, Claire Stanfield is a man. This one gets lampshaded in the anime adaptation's English dub during an episode preview. In the thirties, when the first arc takes place, that could be a man's name. The problem is that the masculine version of the name was spelled Clare. |
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The lyrics of "Warszawa" are pseudo-Polish gibberish, tying in with the song's impressionist invocation of the atmosphere that Bowie felt when visiting Poland, at the time a Soviet satellite state. The melody of that portion of the song was inspired by a recording of the Polish folk song "Helokanie" by the choir ÅšlÄ…sk, and apparently the lyrics also took phonetic inspiration from the recording. | |
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You Don't Mess with the Zohan. The hero is called "Zohan Dvir". While "Dvir" is a real Israeli surname, "Zohan" is... well, not. The closest first name to Zohan Hebrew has is "Zohar". | |
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Disney's RocketMan: When talking to the President, he starts singing "I've Got The Whole World in My Hands". Everyone, including the President, picks up the song. Then Fred switches to other languages, and we're shown people all over the world singing along with him, despite what he's singing not being even remotely close to the original meaning, just a bunch of foreign words thrown together. | |
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As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_cfac1f50 | comment |
Hendy of the Blackhawk squadron is a nice example too, Hans is OK, Hendrickson is slightly un-Dutch, fitting a Dutch-American better than an unhyphenated Dutchman, "Hendricksen" is genuinely Dutch, but "Ritter" is the German word for "Knight", Dutch would be "Ridder", a title, not a name. It gets so much worse with Polish characters. Janos Prohaska has a Hungarian first name and a Czech last name. And Stanislaus Drozdowski's first name isn't even real, sounding like some kind of mix between Belarusian Stanislau and Latvian Stanislavs. At least his last name is actually Polish. |
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The various works set in the Nasuverse, especially Fate, practically run on this trope. Just about every western character who isn’t Historical Domain or Public Domain has an exotic vaguely European-sounding name, all of which typically fall somewhere between 'slightly off' to 'completely made up'. Examples include Illyasviel von Einzbern, Luviagelita Edelfelt, Bazett Fraga McRemitz, Kayneth El-Melloi Archibald, Sola-Ui Nuada-Re Sophia-Ri, Kishur Zelretch Schweinorg, Sion Eltnam Atlasia, Riesbyfe Stridberg, Celenike Icecolle Yggdmillenia, Olga-Marie and Marisbury Animusphere, Romani Archaman, and Mash/Mashu (Possibly a corruption of Matthew) Kyrielight. It ends up culminating in a guy named Scandinavia Peperoncino, whose name is so ridiculous even by Nasu standards, even everyone in-universe thinks he's using a fake identity which turns out to be true, with his real name being somewhat less absurd Aro Myorenji. There's at least some justification to it — almost the entirety of the original western cast are members of the Mage Association, which has its own culture that really works to distinct itself from regular people. Romani also lampshades this by preferring to be called the much more plausible sounding Dr. Roman, in one chapter admitting even he thinks his surname is kind of dumb, plus he is also a character who chose his own name, as well as Mash’s, which may explain why her name is so bizarre too. | |
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Jonny Quest is notorious for this. Hadji is supposedly a Hindu, but his name is a Muslim honorific for one who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca. Any non-English language you hear on TOS is complete gibberish. For instance, the "Arabic" spoken by Kareem's men in "The Curse of Anubis", and the "Japanese" spoken by Dr. Ashida in "The Dragons of Ashida" are little more than cool-sounding nonsense. |
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Internet radio show 2 Sense tends to replace foreign names the hosts can't pronounce with "Schleigelhoffen". | |
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The Twilight Saga: The name of the Quileute chief in the legend about "the cold ones" is Kahela. Kahela was the name of a semi-legendary Hawaiian chief. Scenes that feature characters speaking a foreign language are clearly written in English and then run through an online translator. |
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Mitsuharu Misawa's powerslam Finishing Move is sometimes written as "Emerald Flowsion" and sometimes as "Emerald Frosion". There's no one correct way to spell it, since the second word is not actually English. | |
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Father of the Pride: In "Possession," Sarmoti teaches Hunter the ancient predatory ways of Mombasa. However, this tradition is actually the name of a large coastal city in Kenya, so Sarmoti probably fabricated the whole thing. | |
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Given an interesting spin in the previous Clone Wars series. The Nelvaan language is a mix of Russian and Hungarian, read phonetically by voice actors who don't speak the language, to give it a non-natural "alien" sound. | |
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In the Blade Trilogy, Esperanto is used for the street signs and posters in "foreign" cities to make the locale seem "generically European". Kris Kristofferson seriously studied speaking Esperanto for his brief scene buying a newspaper. In another scene, Hannibal King rests in a hospital watching Incubus, starring William Shatner, one of only two Esperanto feature films in existence. | |
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Any signage shown in Aladdin is either English in a Foreign-Looking Font or meaningless scribbles that resemble Arabic. (There's a possible exception in a sign above Jafar's door that might possibly have his name and the word wazir on it, which leads to a bit of Fridge Logic; why would he need a sign that nobody else sees to just have his name and title on it?) | |
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In Cat Street, the school's called El Liston, which according to its principal means "walking path" in French. However, El Liston isn't French but Spanish, where it means "long and slim piece of wood" and not "walking path" (and it should actually be El Listón). | |
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Amistad: Both the crew of the Amistad (a Spanish ship registered in Cuba) and the Tecora (a Portuguese ship) speak Mexican Spanish. [The two Spaniards that claim damages for the loss of the Amistad are played by a Mexican-American and a Puerto Rican actor who use their native accents. | |
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Subverted in episode 10 of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, where in-show foreigners Suzuki Sato and Tanaka Watanabe, both CIA agents, don't bother to check their Japanese aliases for simple things like using two surnames as a full name before entering the country. The Japanese officials with whom they interact are understandably befuddled upon seeing their calling cards. They're obnoxious Americans with their own sinister agenda and we're supposed to dislike them anyway. To add insult to injury, they look and act very much like some racist stereotypes of the Japanese, which is probably supposed to reflect their opinions of the country they've been assigned to. | |
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In one episode of The Replacements, Tasumi says her favorite thing about field trips is "No parents around to say things like 'Ichi ni san shi go!'" However, while it doesn't make sense for her parents to be saying "One two three four five", some parents use a count as 'you're this far from getting in trouble for whatever you're doing'. | |
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In one episode of Sailor Moon, Ami gives a student a printout of what she says is a NASA website. The printout is not gibberish. What it is, however, is the lyrics to "Danger Zone" from the movie Top Gun. There are English-spoken phrases being a combination of English and Japanese or simply very grammatically incorrect. "Let's dancing" is actually rather common in Japan. | |
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The Time... Guys mostly averts this, except for the odd British accent, but played straight with Julius Caesar and King Confucius. | |
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One of South Park's creators is fluent in Japanese, so all speech in Japanese is accurate (albeit on occasion slightly off, such as "sore no" instead of "sono" or "sonna"). Other languages are just gibberish, though. Lampshaded in "Good Times With Weapons", where the lyrics of the Japanese theme song are a Bilingual Bonus and a Take That! to anyone who thinks that it's cool as long as it sounds foreign. "Broflovski" is not a real Polish or Pole-Jewish surname, though this is probably intentional. Done twice in "Pinkeye". The first time, the astronauts on MIR speak Russian-sounding gibberish which consists of Russian last names. Later on, when Cartman watches a video on Hitler, the German gibberish consists of made-up and reversed phrases, including "You don't know shit," and "You have lovely breasts," ending with "Goddammit!" "Osama Bin Laden Has Farty Pants" features Afghan children and Taliban operatives who speak fluent, accurate Persian (albeit with Iranian accents), while Osama bin Laden speaks random Koranic words, such as "jihad," "Ramadan," "Mohammad," "fatwa," mixed with gibberish. In The Movie, Cartman sings "Kyle's Mom's a Bitch" in several languages, which seem to be Chinese, French, Dutch and an African language, judging from the backgrounds and costumes. It sounds nothing like those languages. Justified in that Cartman is giving his interpretation of what those languages would sound like. Also averted in "The Passion of the Jew" in which Cartman speaks proper German (albeit horribly mispronounced). In another episode, Mr. Mackey speaks correct Spanish, even down to saying "¿está bien?", a correct translation of his "mm'kay?" Verbal Tic. Played for Laughs when Chef joins the Nation of Islam in "Chef Goes Nanners". Played straight in "Tom’s Rhinoplasty". The language the Iraqis speak when piling Miss Ellen into a rocket headed straight for the sun is just gibberish. |
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The first book of Rivers of London features a Danish trophy wife named August Coopertown, née Fischer. August Fischer is a perfectly acceptable, if a bit archaic-sounding, Danish man's name. | |
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Tex Avery MGM Cartoons: The short Flea Circus also uses undisguised English for "French" words by tacking "Le" in front. However, this sounds wrong for French speaking people, as French has two articles, "Le" for masculine and "La" for feminine words. This is especially noticeable as one of the main characters named "Fifi le Flea" is a girl and "puce", French for "flea" is a feminine word. The same applies to other written "French" like Le Church, Le Maternity and Le End, which are all feminine in French. Had the writer done the research, Fifi la Flea would been to la Church, then la Maternity before the happy la End. The mistake is a common one (Spanish works similarly, with "El" for masculine words and "La" for feminine.) because English is one of the few languages where the vast majority of nouns are genderless, thus the assumption by the English-speaking animators that one version of "the" works for all situations. |
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The opening song from How the Grinch Stole Christmas! includes several lines of Seussian gibberish. After it aired, the studio got dozens of letters from people wanting translations for the "Latin lyrics." | |
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In Tales of MU, the Yokai Girls from Japan-like "Yokan" fall into this category, with names like "Maliko" that almost sound Japanese but not quite. However, a recently revealed bit of plot indicates that all Yokano names are originally Japanese-derived, but that there is a story-related reason why all 4 of the characters introduced from that region have "jarringly" un-Japanese nicknames. | |
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In The Brady Kids we have Ping and Pong, a pair of twin pandas the kids adopt who supposedly only speak Chinese. | |
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The Meth Minute 39 episode 24, "Japandering", is chock-full of this, given that it's all about international celebrities starring in Japanese commercials. There's also 2-3 lines of Japanese-looking text that keeps appearing in different orientations. A number of YouTube comments claim some dialogue sounds more Korean than Japanese. | |
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The Railway Series: The Welsh-sounding name of Ffarquhar (the town where Thomas' branch line terminates) is in fact derived from "Far-away quarry". And for the record, Farquhar — spelled with one "f" – is a Scottish surname, not a Welsh one. | |
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The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! pokes fun at this when two French waiters converse in mock French. | |
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Era, a French New Age Alternative genre band, features songs which lyrics sounds Latin, but actually devoid of any meaning. Humorously, one of their songs is called "Divano", which is an attempt at saying divino (Divine) but actually translates to "couch". | |
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Chaplin's Hitler-like role in The Great Dictator delivers a foaming-at-the-mouth speech in Tomanian, one of the funniest fake foreign languages ever: a pastiche mixture of English, German, and Yiddish nonsense in which such words as "Sauerkraut" and "Katzenjammer" recur. The film also has an Italian equivalent in a character parodying Mussolini. | |
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Apocalypse's birth name is said to be "En Sabah Nur", which is said to mean "The First One", hinting at the fact that he's one of the first documented mutants in history. Not only does "En Sabah Nur" not actually mean "The First One" (it roughly means "The Morning Light"), it's an Arabic phrase. Apocalypse was born in Egypt around 3,000 B.C., several millennia before the Arabic language existed. | |
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Colossus' real name is Piotr Nikolayevitch Rasputin. "Rasputin" is a common surname in the area of Russia where he's from, which is fine. And the patronymic is correct, even better. Then his sister Illyana Rasputin is introduced. Slight oops: since Russian surnames have masculine and feminine forms, her last name ought to be "Rasputina". The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe eventually gives her full name as "Illyana Nikolaivitch Rasputina (Anglicized to Rasputin)", but even that isn't completely right: Russian patronymics have masculine and feminine forms too, and "Nikolayevitch" ("son of Nikolai") is a masculine patronymic; since Illyana's a girl, her middle name should be "Nikolayevna" ("daughter of Nikolai"). Eventually, about forty years after her introduction, this was corrected. | |
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There are panels from Urusei Yatsura of Lum's mom speaking in Mah-Jong tiles that combined with her Chinese-style dress (implies "As Long As It Looks Chinese") and a French lady speaking in... interesting picture combinations in Lupin III. And early in the manga, where French and Chinese commentators on Ataru's game of tag with Lum spoke in, respectively, inane phrasebook style questions and Chinese food names. | |
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Family Guy: In "McStroke", Peter Griffin thinks he can speak Italian simply by virtue of his mustache. It sounds a lot like "beepity boopity boppity bappita" with accompanying hand gestures. The Italian butcher he's arguing with, however, is speaking almost proper Italian: some of what he says is badly translated ("I'm gonna punch you on the head" is translated as "ti dò un pugno nella testa" instead of "ti dò un pugno sulla testa"), and his accent is clearly not a native Italian one. In another episode, the family pass a Chinese take-out shop with its name in both English and (although correct) Japanese katakana. Despite supposedly being Portuguese, Santos and Pascoal (Peter's former fishermen employees) speak in heavily accented Brazilian Portuguese. Consuela is a name that only exists in Tinseltown. Consuelo, meaning "solace" or "consolation" (yes, it ends with an "O"), is a common woman's name. Consuela is the third person singular conjugation of the verb consolar. In the episode "Death Is A Bitch", a cutaway showing if Hitler was still alive has him hosting his own late show. The number to call for tickets is 213-DU WERDEST EINE KRANKENSCHWESTER BRAUCHEN, which is just German for "you will need a nurse". Of course, the only thing that matters here is that the phrase is shouted angrily. |
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The execrable The Wild World of Batwoman (given a sound thrashing by the guys on Mystery Science Theater 3000) had the main characters' seance frequently interrupted by a Chinese spirit. The spirit's Chinese mainly consisted of saying "ching", "chang", and "chong" over and over again in random combination, causing Tom Servo to deadpan "You know, that may not be real Chinese." As Mike says, "To every Asian and every human being, we apologize for that last scene." | |
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Vantage Point's Big Bad is named Tehuel Suarez. He is Moroccan. His last name is Spanish. And his first name is the name of a native tribe in Argentina. | |
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In Time of Eve, what are supposed to be a robot's error messages are actually from Microsoft Exchange Server. | |
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Kindred of the East has the authentically Chinese character æ°£ qi ("life force") on the cover. On most of the interior illustrations though all the Oriental writing is represented by meaningless scribbles. | |
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In The Mummy Returns, the oasis where the Scorpion King resides is known as "Ahm Shere". Amshir is the Arabic pronunciation of the sixth month of the Egyptian calendar, Meshir. What this has to do with Ancient Egyptian kings, who knows. | |
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Used for humorous effect in G-On Riders: two American street thugs speak entirely in random quotes from the Gettysburg Address. "Government!" "Of the people!" | |
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Saiyuki gives the female name Hazel to a male priest... Slightly offset by the fact that he is rather Bishōnen, anyway. Word of God said it was by combining the words "Beisun" (a type of alcohol) and "angel" and mucking with the pronunciation until you get "Heizeru." His full name is "Hazel Grouse," a type of bird, thematically linking him to Ukoku, who is heavily associated with crows. | |
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Some of the German names in Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow sound quite odd to a native speaker. Gnahb? | |
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In Trojan Odissey by Clive Cussler, a Nicaraguan maid replies "me casi acaban" when the main characters find her cleaning their hotel room. What she's supposed to say from context is that she is almost finished cleaning. What she's actually saying (in crude grammar) is that someone almost finished her. | |
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As Long as It Sounds Foreign / int_eef5470a | comment |
In the Kyoto Arc of Rurouni Kenshin, Yahiko come across three girls who say nothing but "chow" while gushing over a dog (an official Chinese translation just went with wingdings); he thinks to himself that they can't possibly be speaking Japanese. Considering the time period and that Yahiko, born and raised in Tokyo, is in Kyoto, it's probably a (rather well-known, actually) Kansai accent joke. ("Chigau", a word meaning "that's wrong", gets shortened to "chau" in Kansai, and since the dog they're talking about is a Chow-Chow, Watsuki just had a little too much fun with it.) | |
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Trey Parker's college film Cannibal! The Musical is a film set in Colorado in 1883. At one point, they come across some "Nihonjin" Indians who are clearly Japanese people masquerading as Indians. "Nihonjin" means "Japanese person/people." At one point, the chief tries to assure the dubious main characters that they are, indeed, legitimate Indians by pointing out their teepees, one of which is made out of a Japanese flag. | |
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In Speed Racer Royalton's German is off when quoting a phrase from his childhood "When I was a child, we used to say: Pänkuchen sind Liebchen! — Pancakes are love." | |
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In The Court Jester, the English Hubert Hawkins (Danny Kaye) pretends to be a jester from Italy. When a guard asks him why he doesn't have an accent, he replies that he is fluent in many languages and demonstrates it by talking a lot of nonsensical gibberish that sounds very much like French, Italian, and German. (This skill was then known as "double-talk", and Kaye was a famous master of it.) The guard, who doesn't understand any of this, allows him to pass. | |
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Nico Minoru is of Japanese descent; however, her surname is actually a masculine given name in Japanese. Her teammates a Victor Mancha (Mexican) and Klara Prast (Swiss). "Mancha" is a real Spanish word, but it means "stain" and isn't a surname, while "Prast" is a real surname, but it was not very common in the time she or her husband were born. | |
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Ling Ling in Drawn Together speaks vaguely Asian gibberish, called "Japorean" by the show's creators. According to "Drawn Together Babies", in-world he speaks a language he made up with his dead twin. In another episode, Ling Ling undergoes an operation to speak English. | |
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The Yu-Gi-Oh! card Des Volstgalph. "Des" is used in place of "Death", but "Volstgalph" doesn't mean a thing in any language, only done to make the monster's name seem cool. (Indeed, the card isn't very useful in a deck, just collected because of its neat artwork.) | |
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In HOUBA! On the Trail of the Marsupilami, the language of the Paya tribesmen is mostly funny-sounding gibberish, with a few obscure references thrown in. | |
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Katawa Shoujo has "Iwanako" and "Yamaku" — by the time the dev team realized they weren't real names at all, they had decided not to change it. They rectified it by still trying to conform to name standards anyway and use kanji with meanings (Iwanako's name having the kanji for a type of fish) Kenji actually touches on this in Shizune's route. | |
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In Fantastic Four (2005), there's a cargo ship named "Головка пальца ноги", which means "Head of toe" (not "toe head") in Russian. The ship's owner must be a very original joker. | |
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The choruses of the Ying Tong Song sound to English speakers like Chinese (or nonsense Chinese), but were never intended by Spike Milligan to be anything other than pure nonsense. The lyric was derived from the name of a friend of Milligan's called Edgington (nicknamed "Edgyingtong") who bet Milligan that he couldn't get a song with only two chords into the record chart. | |
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Similarly, the opening from the Hellsing TV series, "The World Without Logos". Yeah, there are a few distinguishable English words in there, but most of that is just nonsense. | |
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The backing vocals on Paul Simon's "The Boy in the Bubble" from Graceland — sung by Simon himself — consist of nonsense words that sound vaguely African. | |
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Jackals is set in America at the tail end of the 19th century. Its main protagonists are Nicole D. Heyward (a Puerto Rican man) and Huya Godfrey (a white guy). Some translations try to soften the blow by romanizing the first guy's name as "Nichol", but they're not fooling anyone. Also, his mother, who is actually from Puerto Rico, is Lokishii Heyward. The fan translation has tried to make that less ridiculous by changing it to "Roxy", but that's not quite what the kana spells out. And no, she's never been married. Roxy Heyward from late 19th-century Puerto Rico. Sheeeeesh. This also overlaps with unfortunate implications if you take into account how the many countries outside the American continent looks Puerto Rico. | |
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When being interviewed about Mandrake the Magician, cartoonist Lee Falk reportedly explained that he named the African sidekick in the strip "Lothar" because that sounded like an African name to him. "Lothar" is actually a name from Germany, which, both geographically and culturally, is about as far from sub-Saharan Africa as one can get. Although there were a number of German colonies there until 1918, which left a bit of a cultural imprint that, e.g., in Namibia, lasts until this day. | |
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The assassin Kwannon (best known as the woman whom Psylocke swapped bodies with) is ostensibly Japanese. "Kwannon" is a rarely used Japanese variant of "Guan Yin", the name of a Chinese Buddhist goddess associated with mercy and compassion (the most common Japanese variant of her name is "Kannon"). Granted, it is at least a real name, but it still isn't something that a Japanese parent would name their child. | |
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Eleanor & Park has been accused of this: While Park is one of the most common Korean surnames, it's virtually never used as a given name. The birth name of Mindy, Park's mother, has received similar criticism. Her birth name was Min-Dae, which isn't even a real Korean name. |
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FLCL, or ''Fooly Cooly," was thus entitled because the meaningless phrase, according to the design staff, "sounded English." Likewise, character name "Atomsk" was chosen by the director because he saw it in English on a book cover (presumably this one) and thought it looked cool. | |
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The Robotbox and Cactus episode "Foreign Film" has the characters' speech translated in subtitles as they say things like "Zippa-dip dippa doo". | |
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One of the main characters in the Alex Rider series is a Russian contract killer named Yassen Gregorovich. The given name "Yassen" ("ياسين"‎) is of Arabic origin, and it's far more common in the Middle East than in Russia. "Gregorovich", while not completely unheard-of, is much more common as a patronymic than a family name, since it just means "Son of Gregory". The first part was addressed in the prequel novel Russian Roulette, which reveals that Yassen's birth name was "Yasha" ("Яша"), a far more common Russian name. | |
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New Mutants' Roberto da Costa sometimes says sentences in Spanish... even though he came from Brazil, where the language is Portuguese. (His native language remains Portuguese, so it's not simply a case of speaking a minority language for his country.) | |
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In Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Willie Scott sings Cole Porter's "Anything Goes" in Chinese that is so badly pronounced that native speakers struggle to understand what she's saying. Here's a Chinese speaker's best guess. This trope is averted for Mola Ram, who speaks flawless Hindi and whose lines make perfect sense in the context of the plot. He was played by Amrish Puri, already famous for his roles as a villain in Bollywood films, who did his own translation. However, whenever a villager speaks, it's Sinhala, not Hindi. This is because the Indian government didn't allow shooting in the country unless the script was changed to be less offensive to Indians. The studio moved production to Sri Lanka rather than caving. |
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