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Cunning Linguist
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The Squad or the Command Roster don't always have the luxury of operating in countries or planets where everyone conveniently speaks English, so it falls to the Cunning Linguist to be the interpreter with the locals, decode enemy transmissions, help them pass themselves off as enemy soldiers, and help interrogate captured POWs. In The Squad, the Cunning Linguist is often a white collar officer who has been "just transferred" into the squad, rubs everyone the wrong way, and worse, is completely and hopelessly lost in an actual battlefield. In the Command Roster, they fit in better. Subplots involving the Linguist usually have them grow a spine. Other times the linguist was always a part of the squad, but has been hiding their talents out of fear their friends will think the linguist is like their enemy, or unapproachably intellectual. May overlap with other squad archetypes. If their skill with languages is overplayed, they may become an Omniglot. It is also not uncommon for this character to be a Gentleman and a Scholar. Compare Inexplicable Language Fluency and The Smart Guy. A common subversion of this trope is to land the Cunning Linguist in a situation where they don't speak the language—often a ridiculously common one, like Spanish or French. Such people tend to have worked in intelligence, where the language skills required are generally more exotic. Another is to simply depict them as being bad at a given language they claim to speak well. See Informed Ability. Can easily overlap with the Communications Officer. See also Speaks Fluent Animal. If the fluency is magic-powered or otherwise unnatural, you might have an Omniglot on your hands. This trope is named for the cunning most linguists display throughout a given movie, always saving the squad's collective asses with only their quick wit and quicker language skills, and is not at all a pun on the word "cunnilingus" (that we took from James Bond). Not to Be Confused with The Power of Language, though these characters will often comment on that trope. Examples |
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| Cunning Linguist / int_10ddd3d5 | type |
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Shad fills this particular role in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Though everyone in the game (presumably) speaks and reads the current dialect of the Hylian language, Shad is apparently the only person in the kingdom who reads and understands Sky Writing, the written language of the ancient race called the Oocca, and is therefore the only NPC who can help Link with that necessary portion of his quest. | |
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Wonder Woman (1942): Diana is able to figure out basic level Saturnian in about a day. | |
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Wonder Woman (1987): Despite not having any languages in common with the Earthlings to start with, Nol Lapp and H'Elgn are able to teach Wondy and Natasha the pidgin language used by Sangtee Empire slaves, and teach Diana the language used by the ruling class. | |
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Besides English, X-23 has been confirmed to be fluent in French and Japanese, and it's implied that she may speak a number of other languages as well. | |
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X-Men Doug Ramsey from New Mutants is this trope taken to its most extreme example. A study buddy of Kitty Pryde's, he turns out to have the mutant power to understand any language he encounters, in print, spoken, or otherwise transmitted. (In one of his early appearances he dejectedly noted that his ability allowed him to shout "Don't kill me!" in any language.) This includes computer code, and there are hints that Doug would have been the greatest hacker in the world bar none, if it weren't for that whole dying thing. Now that he's been resurrected...sorta...it's shown that his powers extend to social cues, and he can perfectly interpret the relationships between people based on subtle gestures. He can also read body language, so he's handy in a fight. Various other members of the X-Men are also multilingual. In Giant-Sized X-Men #1, the first issue to introduce the "All-New All-Different" X-Men, Professor X recruited members from around the world, and telepathically downloaded knowledge of the English language into their minds to make communication easier. He has done this since on several occasions, and some of his students have learned other languages, either via telepathy or by simply studying them; Kitty Pryde has proven to be fluent in Russian, Japanese, German and Shi'ar. Other non-obvious examples: Rogue is fluent in French from her childhood on the lower Mississippi and was among the X-Men whom Xavier telepathically taught Japanese before Wolverine's attempted wedding to Mariko Yashida. In an Avengers story, hyper-scholar Hank McCoy was able to converse in Latin. Having lived for over a century, both Wolverine and Mystique probably have yet to encounter a language they can't understand in a story. |
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Big Boss is fluent in Russian and French and can handle himself in Spanish and Felyne, while Solid Snake is fluent in six languages including French and knows a few bits of Czech. Being perfectly fluent in seven languages, both Liquid Snakenote English, French, Spanish, Malay, Kikongo, Arabic and an unknown seventh and Revolver Ocelotnote English, Russian, German, French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese take the cake. | |
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Inverted in A Certain Magical Index. It seems everyone but the main character is a polyglot (and the fact that the main character isn't, makes him look like an idiot). It gets a bit absurd when we have to have a British middle school student translate Russian into Japanese for him. | |
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Star Trek: Enterprise: Hoshi Sato was a language expert brought in for the times when the still-being-perfected Universal Translator couldn't do its thing. (And Hoshi started as kind of a wimp, being somewhat afraid of space travel itself, as the second part of the trope dictates.) Even with the Universal Translator, Saru on Star Trek: Discovery learned ninety languages used in the Federation while trying to demonstrate he deserved to be in Starfleet. He later admitted that was probably overkill, but it turned out to be critical in one episode when the ship's Universal Translator malfunctioned and caused a Curse of Babel situation for the crew. |
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In Joe Ledger, Joe Ledger describes himself as a student of languages, from the first book, Patient Zero, he got on a Homeland task force because he could speak Farsi and other Middle Eastern languages that the people they were wiretapping spoke in. Throughout the series, Joe has demonstrated a knack for many languages, including Farsi, German, Czech, French with either a France or Canadian accent, Italian, Russian, Spanish and being able to speak a little Greek, but not able to read Greek. His boss, Mr Church, usually keeps his language abilities a secret until the time is right, but is hinted to be fluent in at least as many languages as Joe. Unusual for an adult, Joe continues to learn more languages, as he starts to pick up the secret language used by Arklight just from observation, allowing him to ease drop on its members A particularly fun moment where Joe's language skills came in handy was in Assassin's Code. Joe tries to bluff an Iranian Major that he was a Russian agent so as to disguise American involvement during that mission. The Major attempts to call the bluff by insulting Joe's mother in Russian. Joe not only understands the insult, but replies in Russian that the Major's "father dallied with little boys and ate pork during Ramadan" |
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Mouth plays this role in The Goonies. When they find an old Treasure Map annotated in Spanish, Mouth is there to provide a Conveniently Precise Translation. | |
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Knowledge of multiple languages becomes a plot point in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. As the vocal chord parasites are tailored to only target speakers of a specific language, identifying which language is targeted during the first parasite outbreak on Mother Base is not easy as almost all soldiers speak at least two languages and can pick up more. This also serves as early foreshadowing for the game's big twist. The Big Boss we know would not need an interpreter to understand Russian... | |
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A Memoir by Lady Trent: Suhail speaks so many languages that when asked how many, he has to stop and think about it before answering. He's also one of two people (the other being Isabella) to decipher the ancient Draconean language (Isabella isn't a linguist like him, but she lived among actual Draconeans for months, learning it as a living language. And she wouldn't have been able to do that if he hadn't already figured out the written form.). | |
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The Curse of the Blue Figurine (by John Bellairs): Main character and history professor Professor Childermass often helps shed light on the current mystery with his extensive knowledge of languages, from French, Spanish and German to Latin and Greek. He prides his knowledge of languages extremely, and at the end of the sequel The Eyes Of The Killer Robot, he is very put out by the fact that he did not recognize Arabic writing on a sword, thinking instead that it was only decorative engraving. | |
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Welcome to Japan, Ms. Elf!: Kazuhiro took a skill in the other world, Language Proficiency, which allows him to learn various languages in the other world much faster than people normally could. This allows him to speak and befriend various "monster" races like lizardmen and dragons, and acts as a translator. He's also Marie's Japanese teacher. Wridra also counts, being able to pick up fluent Japanese within a mere half-day stay in Japan, while Marie is still struggling to speak Japanese with passable fluency even after a month. | |
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In The Dirty Dozen, one of the reasons that Joeseph Wladislaw (Charles Bronson) was picked for the squad was that he was fluent in German. | |
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Nathan Drake of Uncharted fame. He is fluent in English, Spanish, Latin, and Indonesian, and has some ability in Arabic and Tibetan. | |
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G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero: Sergeant Slaughter's hobby of learning ancient Greek became very practical after both the Joes and Cobra travel back in time to the Greek civilization. | |
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It's played straight in The World Is Not Enough, when he masquerades as a Russian physicist, complete with heavily but believably Russian-accented English. However, when asked, in Russian, about his good (for a Russian) English, he answers in Russian that he studied at Oxford, in Russian, apparently fluent enough to pass without comment. | |
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This also goes for opera singers. As they already have to learn to sing texts in many different languages (most operas were written in Italian or German, but a lot of the most popular ones are in French (e. g. Carmen, The Tales of Hoffmann), Czech (Jenufa, The Bartered Bride), Russian (Boris Godunov, Yevgeny Onegin), or even English (Peter Grimes)), but as it also helps to communicate with the other musicians in the opera houses of the world, it is a fairly small step to actually learn to speak some of these languages. For instance, the Mexican tenor Rolando Villazón hosts a program on German television (actually the Franco-German culture channel arte) in accented, but grammatically almost flawless German. | |
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Metro: The eponymous Metro can speak and read English, Arabic, Russian, Danish, and Old Norse, and is vaguely conversant in some others, though his Danish needs some work. | |
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Lutecia of Lyrical Nanoha was revealed in StrikerS Sound Stage X to be very adept at reading and translating Ancient Belkan when Vivio needed some help doing research on the Mariage. She had since been used in ViVid as the go-to person for Ancient Belkan texts. Jail Scaglietti was the one who taught her the skill. | |
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In Galaxion Vessa is generally overqualified for her job (or for any job, really). She speaks several Earth languages, AND Myradi, the alien language spoken by very few humans. Also, attempts Orehu, but she's only had so much to go on, so, as she wryly notes, she might have just as well asked for an anteater. | |
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In Combat Kelly and his Deadly Dozen, Laurie Livingston can speak 10 languages fluently. | |
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Barchuk in the Conqueror books fills this role at first, being a Mongol who speaks fluent Chinese. He also teaches the language to Temuge, allowing him to play the same role. Ho Sa, a Chinese soldier who speaks decent Mongolian, may also qualify. | |
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In Stand Still, Stay Silent, Tuuri is a Finn who took both Icelandic and Swedish as second languages, which makes her the only one able to speak with everyone else on her Multinational Team. This effectively makes her the translator, while her official jobs on the team are mechanic and skald. | |
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Threshold: Ramsey's linguistic skills don't get much use, as the series stays in the US. In one episode, he identifies where a pilot grew up by his exact accent. He later notes that when they asked about the flight, the pilot slipped back into his regional dialect, indicating that he was hiding something. | |
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In The Sparrow, Emilio Sandoz is sent on the Jesuit mission to Alpha Centauri, to a large degree, because of his skill acquiring new languages. His methods are studied for use in computerized language learning programs. | |
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Fighter of 8-Bit Theater displays incredible linguistic knowledge in this strip, and explains its source in the next one. Black Mage's exasperated response to this revelation lies in the fact that, 99% of the time, Fighter is a total moron. | |
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In Cradle 2 the Grave, Fait is a jewel thief who ends up having to team up with Jet Li's character Su. When asked who he is, Su gives his credentials. Fait's arms dealer friend Archie takes the ID and figures out that Su is a Taiwanese Intelligence operative. When Fait asks Archie if he reads Chinese. Archie replies that he doesn't but knows "cop" in every language. | |
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Sofie Fatale in Kill Bill serves as this to the Crazy 88, being fluent in Japanese, French and English. As with the above example, her actress Julie Dreyfus speaks all three in real life, and spent many years as a gaijin tarento in Japan, even teaching French on NHK's educational channel. | |
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In The Great God's War, there is Tchwee, a man whose innate understanding of language is so advanced that he only needs to hear a language spoken for a while to become able to speak it fluently himself. Or at least that's how he explains being able to speak the Bellegerin language despite claiming never to have heard of the country itself - it's not exactly clear how honest he is. | |
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City of Bones by Martha Wells: Khat's patchwork background has made him fluent in a truly exceptional number of languages, including trade tongues, the Manean Classical Tongue, and the long-dead Ancient Script known only to a few scholars. Since he's squarely at the bottom of the Fantastic Caste System, this greatly surprises people who expect him to be an unlettered lout. | |
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Aya in the Tantei Team KZ Jiken Note series bears the epithet of "the language expert", after all. While the franchise doesn't have many occasions involving foreign languages (and it'd more than likely be French if there were), in those occasions she learns the languages in question—computer languages included—in semi-Instant Expert speed. | |
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Rory McGrath proved to be this during the recording of the later series of Three Men in a Boat. His degree in modern languages gave him not only the ability to make himself understood in several European languages (most prominently German and French), but also allowed him to pick up the basics of several more (most notably Serbo-Croatian) with almost eerie speed. | |
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Mike Thorton in Alpha Protocol, which is one of the main reasons he got employed by the agency in the first place. According to at least one of his backgrounds (field agent), Mike speaks fluent Farsi, Arabic, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Mandarin (Chinese) and Japanese in addition to English, and visits multiple places in the game where he puts those skills to good use. Translation Convention kicks into gear whenever you do, though. | |
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Sharpe: Harris speaks fluent Spanish - handy, considering the characters spend most of the series in Spain. He is also fluent in French (also important as they fight French), Latin and Greek, and has an at least working knowledge of Portuguese. But he's still a competent soldier though. | |
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Critic Harold Bloom grew up in a Yiddish-speaking Jewish neighborhood and didn't learn or speak English until he was older, he also knows Spanish well enough to read Don Quixote and many other authors in the original language. Bloom nonetheless became perhaps the most famous and influential literary critic of his time, and a major scholar on William Shakespearenote Himself an aversion, since as Ben Jonson said, he knew little Latin and Greek. | |
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The eponymous Harry Dresden of The Dresden Files occasionally relies on Lash, a mental reflection of the fallen angel Lasciel, as a sentient translation device. | |
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In Django Unchained, Dr. King Schultz speaks English, German, and French. Not surprising since, as mentioned below, Christoph Waltz, who plays him, speaks all three languages. | |
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The Secret Saturdays: Drew Saturday can speak 37 different languages. Doc, not so much. | |
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Also in Discworld, Rincewind displays an amazing facility for languages (especially given his ineptitude at anything other than fleeing). Apparently, he can scream for help in many languages, and just plain scream in many more. (Explained and shown to be important, as "Aarrrgggh" translates to many things including: "Your wife is a big hippo", and more vitally: "Yes, more boiling oil!") His linguistic abilities were established even earlier on, in The Colour of Magic, causing him to become the Discworld's first tour guide after meeting Twoflower. He's not the first to try to take advantage of Twoflower's willingness to part with gold, only the most successful because of his language skills. | |
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The Closer: Brenda Leigh Johnson, who had apparently spent her early career working for the CIA in Central Europe: | |
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In Invasion: Earth, Nadia Adrianova is a Russian linguist, assigned as the Soviet representative in humanity's dealings with the Oinn. Naturally, Nadia starts learning the Oinn language, despite Hes'bu being clearly reluctant to teach her. Besides her native Russian, Nadia speaks fluent English and Spanish. When negotiating with the hostile Blettr, Nadia is shocked to discover that these other aliens speak the same language as the Oinn. This is what tips off the human authorities that the Oinn and the Blettr are actually working together to scam Earth out of its resources. | |
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In Destination Tokyo (1943) an officer is brought along on a surveillance mission because (although he is not Asian) he grew up in Japan. He knows the area around Tokyo Bay and is also fluent in Japanese. They will transmit their coded information in Japanese so it will take longer for the Japanese to realize it's a foreigner sending it. | |
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In X-Men: First Class, Erik is fluent in German, English, French and Spanish. This is consistent with the comics, where he has been shown speaking French, and knowing Spanish isn't much of a stretch for someone like him. | |
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Hilariously subverted in Euro Trip, where Scotty acts like one, but most certainly isn't. His botching of German is the reason for him going to Europe in the first place, and when he and his friends are broke and attempt to catch a ride to Berlin from a German truck driver, Scotty acts as the group's translator and as it turns out, he misunderstands the driver who states he's actually escaping Berlin, where he sexually assaulted a horse and stabbed a woman. Scotty at least puts a qualifier in the sentence before he starts talking to the driver: "I speak bad German." |
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Uhura in Star Trek (2009), though she isn't really able to put her skills into action on screen. Not true of the original timeline Uhura, who has a bad time with a Klingon dictionary in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. It’s showcased a little more in Star Trek Into Darkness, when they’re hunting down “John Harrison�. Her understanding of speech patterns plays a pivotal role in Star Trek Beyond as her time attempting to negotiate with Krall allows her to identify his true identity as long-lost Starfleet captain Balthazar Edison from ship logs and reveal why he's so hell-bent on destroying the Yorktown station. |
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Recruiting HK-47 in Knights of the Old Republic is necessary if you want a peaceful resolution on Tatooine because he is the only person on the planet who can translate into the Tusken tongue. His homicidal tendencies are just an added bonus. The Player Character also has shades of this. Carth comments that the amount of galactic languages you speak are pretty rare for a raw recruit, but should come in handy being stranded on the rear end of the Outer Rim. He's right. A great example of this is when confronting Sasha ot Sulem, a stowaway on the Ebon Hawk, who apparently only speaks an ancient dialect of Mandalorian. The player character goes from utterly confused to being semi-fluent and capable of holding a conversation in a manner of minutes. Later revealed to be because the player character is actually the brainwashed Darth Revan, who was a skilled Omniglot and capable of learning languages incredibly fast... when not using the Dark Side to simply rip them out of people's heads, of course. |
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The Twilight Zone (1985): In "The Cold Equations", Marilyn Lee Cross was studying linguistics on Mimir before she stowed away aboard an Emergency Dispatch Ship bound for Woden. | |
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Westworld: As a madam, Maeve Millay knows multiple languages, which comes in handy in Season 2 where she is able to communicate with hosts in Japanese and briefly poses as a translator. | |
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Crusade: Max Eilerson is good with not only most Earth languages but both knowing and deciphering most alien languages, which is part of why he landed his job with the archaeological company IPX. A scene in an episode even shows his thought process as he's attempting to decipher an alien ship Captain's Log. Once he's got the basic concepts down, the rest of the translation is pretty easy, although it's implied that he uses sophisticated IPX software to do the grunt work. | |
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In Skyrim, your character being a Dragonborn can learn to speak the language of the Dragons, which allows him/her to use powerful language-related abilities. Non-Dragonborn can also learn to speak the language but do so with greater difficulty. The Dragons themselves seem to know both the Dragon language and the basic language of Tamriel fluently. However, while the Dragonborn can instantly learn new Words of Power and use the Thu'um, they actually do not gain a full understanding of the Dragon-Language itself. Alduin mocks and berates them for having the audacity to call themselves "Dov" when they don't understand their language, while Arngeir only realizes the Dragonborn's lack of fluency when they had to ask what was being said during their initiation ceremony. | |
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It's a given than several characters from Metal Gear are this trope: Big Boss is fluent in Russian and French and can handle himself in Spanish and Felyne, while Solid Snake is fluent in six languages including French and knows a few bits of Czech. Being perfectly fluent in seven languages, both Liquid Snakenote English, French, Spanish, Malay, Kikongo, Arabic and an unknown seventh and Revolver Ocelotnote English, Russian, German, French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese take the cake. Knowledge of multiple languages becomes a plot point in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. As the vocal chord parasites are tailored to only target speakers of a specific language, identifying which language is targeted during the first parasite outbreak on Mother Base is not easy as almost all soldiers speak at least two languages and can pick up more. This also serves as early foreshadowing for the game's big twist. The Big Boss we know would not need an interpreter to understand Russian... |
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Transatlantic (2023): Albert is fluent in English, French, Italian, and German. He uses the latter in the first episode, pretending to be a Gestapo officer to scare off some French border guards. | |
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Cunning Linguist | |
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James Bond shows signs of this, inasmuch as he's a one-man squad, when dealing with Russian spies, French money launderers, and Middle Eastern arms dealers. Moneypenny in Tomorrow Never Dies even drops the trope name when he is "brushing up on his Danish" though also using it with the innuendo intact. (The third Austin Powers movie riffs on the innuendo in the trope name with the line "you might be a cunning linguist, but I'm a master debater!") You Only Live Twice establishes he excelled at Oriental languages in Spy School, when he refuses the Japanese phrasebook Moneypenny offers him because he doesn't need it. Subverted, however, in Tomorrow Never Dies, when Bond is completely bamboozled by Wai Lin's keyboard. (It's meant as a joke, by the way. Chinese computers [or Mainland China ones, at least] either use Pinyin or Wubi [a system of four-digit codes to stand for characters] for word input and processing.) It's played straight in The World Is Not Enough, when he masquerades as a Russian physicist, complete with heavily but believably Russian-accented English. However, when asked, in Russian, about his good (for a Russian) English, he answers in Russian that he studied at Oxford, in Russian, apparently fluent enough to pass without comment. |
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In "Okuyyuki", Reilly's spirit-possessed katana teaches him flawless Japanese. His buddies aren't surprised to hear him speak it, either. In their experience, he usually comes up with even weirder things than that. | |
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Moe Berg was a third-string catcher who played for five Major League teams in his career. Despite being known as a mediocre player at best, he was invited on a tour of Japan with a group of All-Star players including Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig primarily because Japanese was one of the ten languages he spoke. He also used the trust speaking the language gave him to film Tokyo Harbor and give the footage to the US government for war planning. | |
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Ma'at: The protagonist knows many languages, as said in the first chapter: | |
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The Pokémon Squad: Main lead RM can speak English, Japanese, Chinese, German, and Swedish. In particular, he sometimes swears in German or Swedish, pretends to only speak Swedish to drive away Jehovah's Witnesses, and uses his skill in Japanese to his advantage while on a heist to retrieve an ancient artifact. | |
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Wolf Hall: Starting as a boy, Thomas Cromwell picks up Welsh from his brother-in-law. When he goes to the continent to flee his father and seek his fortune, he picks up Italian and French serving as a mercenary soldier, as well as Latin and Spanish, and then Flemish when he works as a cloth merchant in the Low Countries. All of this proves terribly useful as Master Secretary to Henry VIII (though he eventually loses the Welsh when he gets older). | |
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Inglourious Basterds Hans Landa shows fluent command of his native German, plus French, English, and it is implied, Italian good enough to spot accent issues in other non-native speakers. Helps that Christoph Waltz, who plays him, is in reality fluent in French, German and English. The same can be said of Diane Kruger, who plays Bridget von Hammersmarck and is also trilingual in English, French, and German. Subverted with The Squad's translator, who nearly gets them in trouble with his accent. And ends up getting himself and several other members of the squad killed, anyway because though he has the spoken language down, he committed a big mistake when it came to hand gestures. |
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Ransom, the protagonist of The Space Trilogy, is a philologist. It's an extremely good thing, because he wouldn't have been able to learn the alien language otherwise. | |
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Lara Croft from the Tomb Raider games, by dint of being an Adventurer Archaeologist, is fluent in/can read and understand several languages including ancient ones such as Greek and Egyptian hieroglyphics. Tomb Raider: Legend has her speaking Japanese, and the films have her speaking Mandarin, Cambodian and a Siberian dialect. | |
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Bubbles sometimes fills this role in The Powerpuff Girls, knowing at least three other languages (Spanish, Japanese, and Squirrel). Not bad for a kindergartner. | |
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Cunning Linguist / int_671d5c19 | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_67f5ac91 | type |
Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_67f5ac91 | comment |
In Hunter's Hellcats, Snake Oil speaks several languages, and can speak Japanese well enough to pass as a native speaker (at least briefly). | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_67f5ac91 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_67f5ac91 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
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Cunning Linguist / int_67f5ac91 | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_6ac55ec7 | type |
Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_6ac55ec7 | comment |
Not too hard to accomplish in Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition, even without magic. Most races get at least two languages (Common and one specific to their race), and several backgrounds give you two additional languages. Play as Genasi to gain Primordial, which lets you inherently understand its four dialects of Aquan, Terran, Pyran and Auran, take the Sage background (or any other with 2 languages), and finally take the Linguist feat to gain 3 more. You can now speak a total of 7 languages fluently (10 if you count the Primordial dialects). | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_6ac55ec7 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_6ac55ec7 | featureConfidence |
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Cunning Linguist / int_6ac55ec7 | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_6c2c4bf3 | type |
Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_6c2c4bf3 | comment |
X-Men Film Series In X-Men: First Class, Erik is fluent in German, English, French and Spanish. This is consistent with the comics, where he has been shown speaking French, and knowing Spanish isn't much of a stretch for someone like him. Mystique in X-Men: Days of Future Past is fluent in Vietnamese, French, and possibly other languages as well. |
|
| Cunning Linguist / int_6c2c4bf3 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
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1.0 | |
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Cunning Linguist / int_6c2c4bf3 | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_6cd3b44f | type |
Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_6cd3b44f | comment |
Subverted with Rock from Black Lagoon. His being a Japanese salaryman guarantees that he alone knows both English and Japanese. This led to a Narm moment when the head of a Russian mafia pretends to speak broken English so that he can translate a negotiation. This is actually a result of the way the Japanese audio track worked out. In-universe, English is the primary language of Roanapur, but the voices are all in Japanese. Then, in the final arc of Second Barrage, when Revy, Rock, Balalaika and her team actually go to Japan. There, their voice actors begin speaking (naturally broken) English whenever they are in conversation with Japanese-speaking characters, but vocalize in Japanese voices again when conversing amongst themselves. The English Dub matches events in-universe much better as a result, although now the Japanese characters have new English voice actors when conversing amongst themselves (and in some instances, when speaking directly to a character who actually speak English, i.e. Chaka to Revy). One wonders why they didn't just preserve the Japanese characters' Japanese audio through the entire arc. |
|
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Cunning Linguist / int_6cd3b44f | |
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Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_6ce0d19c | comment |
Quantum Leap: It's surprising how little this trope is put to work in given that protagonist Sam Beckett is an expert in everything under the sun (the man even knows kung-fu), and sidekick Al flat-out declares that Sam speaks many languages (including, staggeringly, hieroglyphic Egyptian). In spite of all that, vanishingly few episodes called on Sam to speak anything other than English. One episode has him leaping into a man married to a Japanese woman. In one scene, he surprises himself when he's able to converse with her in fluent Japanese, prompting the abovementioned revelation from Al about his fluency in many languages. | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_6ce0d19c | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
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Cunning Linguist / int_6ce0d19c | |
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Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_6ddef913 | comment |
One of the more painful elements of Twilight: 2000 is that, at some point, you need to speak every possible language. Not having a team member with the ability to speak, say, Tajiki, can make beating a mission impossible. Language is strictly a product of nationality. There's little to no rhyme or reason to when each language might be useful. The result? A strangely Pan-Eurasian team of Cunning Linguists. | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_6ddef913 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_6ddef913 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
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Cunning Linguist / int_6ddef913 | |
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Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_6e1d5f36 | comment |
Farscape: Max Eilerson's Sikozu species can't have Translator Microbes implanted, but they pick up languages very easily, to the point where Sikozu learns English mostly from Crichton pointing to things in the cargo bay and naming them, in addition to a few minutes of attempted conversation (although Crichton tries to sabotage her efforts a bit by shouting a phrase in Klingon). When Moya's crew reaches Earth sans Crichton, her actual knowledge of English (as opposed to the others' reliance on Translator Microbes and halting attempts to learn the language) proves useful. | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_6e1d5f36 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
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Cunning Linguist / int_6e1d5f36 | |
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Cunning Linguist | |
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Smallville: Chloe (while under the influence of an alien parasite) invoked this trope to insult a language expert. | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_6f734712 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_6f734712 | featureConfidence |
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| Smallville | hasFeature |
Cunning Linguist / int_6f734712 | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_70814599 | type |
Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_70814599 | comment |
Stargate SG-1: Though originally an archaeologist, Daniel Jackson often served this purpose—so it was a good thing he had lots of other talents, considering how common Aliens Speaking English were. Rather realistically, he was an expert on cultures, which is a skill commonly in possession of real-life military translators—and archaeologists, at least within their areas of expertise. He spoke twenty-seven languages with varying degrees of fluency, was able to affect accents, and could also read the non-English alphabets used by the Aliens Speaking English. When he encountered aliens who didn't speak English, the fact that Sufficiently Advanced Aliens effectively founded most of Earth's culture and languages also helped him communicate with them. This role was later taken by his Suspiciously Similar Substitute, Jonas Quinn, after he left the show, though only for a season, then he was brought back. It helps that Jonas has a wide variety of interests (including linguistics, physics, and meteorology) and has very good observational skills and a near-perfect memory. |
|
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Cunning Linguist / int_70814599 | |
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Cunning Linguist | |
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Wonder Woman (2017): Sameer combines skills with at least four languages with being an effective Con Man and actor. | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_7149a731 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_7149a731 | featureConfidence |
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Cunning Linguist / int_7149a731 | |
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Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_760ce135 | comment |
Blindsight does it really weirdly, as with most things in the book. Everyone on the crew speaks multiple languages, and in fact uses them all the time with each other. Except for the translator, who speaks in English. They have a translator because they're going to communicate with aliens. And then it turns out the aliens speak English. | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_760ce135 | featureApplicability |
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| Blindsight | hasFeature |
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Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_761813a6 | comment |
Band of Brothers: Both David Webster and Joseph Liebgott are cunning linguists, this case being translators for Easy Company. This skill becomes a tragic burden towards the end when a linguist must tell a group of Holocaust survivors they cannot leave their death camp. | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_761813a6 | featureApplicability |
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| Cunning Linguist / int_761813a6 | featureConfidence |
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Cunning Linguist / int_761813a6 | |
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Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_77582c7b | comment |
Mystique in X-Men: Days of Future Past is fluent in Vietnamese, French, and possibly other languages as well. | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_77582c7b | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_77582c7b | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| X-Men: Days of Future Past | hasFeature |
Cunning Linguist / int_77582c7b | |
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Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_7fd403f8 | comment |
Galaxy Quest lampshades this trope with Gwen Demarco, whose entire job is to repeat everything somebody says to the ship's computer. And repeat what the computer says in response, also with appropriate lampshading. This reaches a point where the Thermians actually designed the ship's computer to listen only to her. | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_7fd403f8 | featureApplicability |
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Cunning Linguist / int_7fd403f8 | |
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Cunning Linguist | |
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Batman, in Justice League. | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_8125b468 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_8125b468 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
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Cunning Linguist / int_8125b468 | |
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Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_819b8c9e | comment |
Warehouse 13: Agent Myka Bering, who appears to be able to read or speak every single language on the planet (at minimum, French, Russian, Japanese and Latin, and at least some Arabic, Chinese and Portuguese. And English). It's become something of a running gag. | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_819b8c9e | featureApplicability |
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Better Bones AU: Bumble speaks the languages of Tribe cats, town cats, and park cats, so she becomes a valued translator for the Clans. | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_877bfaf7 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_877bfaf7 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
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Cunning Linguist / int_877bfaf7 | |
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Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_87e00d8e | comment |
The Teen Titans (2003) have a polyglot in Raven, who in Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo claims to be able to read "English, German, Latin, Romanian, Ancient Sumerian, and Sanskrit"...but not Japanese. A potential example would be Starfire, whose species can instantaneously learn any spoken language via simple lip contact making out with a speaker of the desired language. In the comics she learned English (and probably Romany) by tackling and kissing Dick Grayson...the beginning of what is still an on-again, off-again romance. The episode "Go" revealed she learned it the same way in the cartoon. In the comics, where she also has this power, she admits it only requires any physical contact, but she prefers to do it "the fun way". |
|
| Cunning Linguist / int_87e00d8e | featureApplicability |
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Cunning Linguist / int_87e00d8e | |
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Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_8966f7cc | comment |
In The Fire's Stone, Aaron takes this role. For all that he has less formal education than his companions, he is far more well-traveled than they are and speaks far more languages—and while Chandra is quite intelligent, her knowledge is heavily focused on magic only, while Aaron is the one who conceives most of their plans. | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_8966f7cc | featureApplicability |
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Strong Medicine: Andy mentions being fluent in at least 6 languages and is heard speaking two of them (French and Tagalog) with patients who don't speak English. She explains by having grown up with a father in the Army—frequent moves to other countries made it necessary to learn the languages in order to keep up. | |
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1.0 | |
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Cunning Linguist / int_8ae8bad8 | |
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Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_8d81bb26 | comment |
Subverted on its spin-off, NCIS. Although it wasn't the reason she was brought on the team, Ziva David can speak ten languages (English, Hebrew, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, Arabic, Turkish and Pashto), and since she has Mossad training, she is more than capable of holding her own in the field (in fact, she starts out the series a little overzealous with the battle skills) | |
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Law & Order: Ed Green, who spoke fluent Spanish as well as a decent amount of French and Russian. | |
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1.0 | |
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Cunning Linguist / int_8dfbdff2 | |
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Wonder Woman: One of Wondy's most consistent traits is her wide array of known languages. Growing up on a peaceful island that promotes intellectual pursuits is helpful and Athena granted her an unnatural ability to pick up new languages quickly. Wonder Woman (1942): Diana is able to figure out basic level Saturnian in about a day. Wonder Woman (1987): Despite not having any languages in common with the Earthlings to start with, Nol Lapp and H'Elgn are able to teach Wondy and Natasha the pidgin language used by Sangtee Empire slaves, and teach Diana the language used by the ruling class. |
|
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| Cunning Linguist / int_9bc68a3f | comment |
Joanna Bonifacio of Smaller & Smaller Circles is not only a cunning reporter, but also a linguist who speaks six languages: besides English and Tagalog, she knows French, German, Japanese, and Italian. What's more, she switches languages in her head depending on the situation—Japanese for heavy traffic, French for annoying people, German when she needs money … and Italian for, presumably, special cases—like discovering the Serial Killer's next victim. | |
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1.0 | |
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The Elder Scrolls In the series' backstory, the Maormer (Sea Elves) King Orgnum is served by one of these. When Orgnum met with Queen Potema to forge their alliance in the 3rd Era, he was said to have a translator who was fluent in all the languages of Tamriel, Pyandonea, Atmora, and Akavir. Also from the backstory, the ancient King Ysgramor is credited with creating the old Nordic Runic writing system, said to be the first written language of Men in Tamriel based on Atmoran and Aldmeri (Elven) linguistic principles. In Morrowind, the ancient Telvanni wizard Baladas Demnevanni proves to be one. During the Mages Guild questline, you'll come upon several books which contain clues about the disappearance of the Dwemer, including one that is written in both Aldmeris (the extinct ancestor language to many modern languages) and Dwemeri (which, to date, has not been able to be translated.) Baladas can read Aldmeris and will be able to use it to translate the Dwemeri it for you. (Alternatively, if you've made it far enough in the main quest, you can take it to Yagrum Bagarn, the last living Dwemer, who logically translates it easily.) In Skyrim, your character being a Dragonborn can learn to speak the language of the Dragons, which allows him/her to use powerful language-related abilities. Non-Dragonborn can also learn to speak the language but do so with greater difficulty. The Dragons themselves seem to know both the Dragon language and the basic language of Tamriel fluently. However, while the Dragonborn can instantly learn new Words of Power and use the Thu'um, they actually do not gain a full understanding of the Dragon-Language itself. Alduin mocks and berates them for having the audacity to call themselves "Dov" when they don't understand their language, while Arngeir only realizes the Dragonborn's lack of fluency when they had to ask what was being said during their initiation ceremony. |
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| Cunning Linguist / int_9d7ec380 | comment |
The Good Place: Chidi Anagonye's first language is French (being born and raised in French-speaking Senegal). He's also fluent in English, German, Greek and Latin ("Just in case it ever comes back"). | |
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Cunning Linguist / int_9d7ec380 | |
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Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_a78fff6d | comment |
SeaQuest DSV: Communications Officer Lt. Timothy O'Neill, who both is fluent in most existing Earth languages and occasionally helps figure out ancient ones, though even he has his limits. | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_a78fff6d | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
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Cunning Linguist / int_a78fff6d | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_a9570fac | type |
Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_a9570fac | comment |
In military thriller, Victoria, former Marine officer John Rumford is an eminent polyglot: In addition to his native English, he knows German, French, Spanish, Latin, and apparently at least a little Russian and Greek. Justified at least in part by his military education and experience, as well as his private interest in the classics. | |
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| Victoria | hasFeature |
Cunning Linguist / int_a9570fac | |
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Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_aa1cb7f1 | comment |
Corporal Garrett in Medal of Honor: Vanguard understands German, this allows him to translate what the German Soldiers are saying in the mission, 'A Shallow Grave'. | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_aa1cb7f1 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_aa1cb7f1 | featureConfidence |
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| Medal of Honor: Vanguard (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Cunning Linguist / int_aa1cb7f1 | |
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Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_aae9b70b | comment |
In Rhapsodies, bandmember, Hsin, has been shown to be fluent in several Chinese dialects, Russian, Korean and may know several more. Because of his atrocious English, this usually catches his friends by surprise. English, he's quick to point out, is his "last" language. | |
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Stargate, which came before the series, has Daniel Jackson fit this trope to near perfection. He is a non-military scientist stuck together with a team of commandoes, and he annoys the other members of the squad (mostly because he trapped them on an alien planet...). His linguist skills do come in handy, though. | |
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| Cunning Linguist / int_b1c94339 | comment |
The first Horatio Hornblower novel has the title character's ship sent to prop up a Nicaraguan rebellion largely because he knows Spanish. He's also the captain assigned to lead a joint operation between British and Spanish forces in Spain for the same reason. (Both ventures are miserable flops for various reasons.) Interestingly, his French is said to be poor in these books until he overwinters in a French household, but stories set earlier in his career have him quite fluent and establish that he learned it from an expatriate tutor as a boy—evidently as his service took him hither and thither, his French skills rusted and his Spanish (learned later during a two-year spell as a prisoner of war) improved. Because he's trilingual, Hornblower tends to be uncomfortable when he does confront a language he doesn't know and has to rely on someone else's interpretation skills. | |
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Game of Thrones: Daenerys encounters a slave woman, Missendei, who translates for the slavers in Astapor. Later, Missendei enters Dany's service as her official translator, saying that she speaks 19 languages, including the Common Tongue, as well as High Valyrian and Dothraki. Dany herself speaks several, particularly High Valyrian and Dothraki. | |
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Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_b3708bb4 | comment |
U-571 has sailor Bill Wentz, he's perfectly fluent in German and helps get the crew aboard the eponymous sub to help steal the Enigma machine. He wants to keep his skill a secret though for fear of alienating his friends. | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_b3708bb4 | featureApplicability |
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Cunning Linguist / int_b3708bb4 | |
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Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_b370c498 | comment |
In Taxi 2, German exchange cop Petra surprises Commissaire Gibert with her Japanese skills. He should have known about them because they're mentioned in her file, but they're mentioned after her measurements where he stopped reading. | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_b370c498 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
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Cunning Linguist / int_b370c498 | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_b3c40983 | type |
Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_b3c40983 | comment |
Sharon is fluent in Italian in the 1990 version of Captain America, the only explanation for this ability being that she spent a summer in Italy once. | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_b3c40983 | featureApplicability |
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Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_b4882594 | comment |
80 Days. Passepartout speaks not only French and English, but proves capable of conversing in Spanish, German and Portuguese as well. Sadly, it is not enough, and his inability to communicate in Arabic, Russian Farsi, Cantonese, Hindi, Japanese and Swahili can become plot points. Furthermore, his Mandarin is severely limited, and his Greek limited to what he picked up during a night of passion with a... very talented acrobat. One particularly amusing encounter is when he meets a fellow Cunning Linguist in East Asia, only to find that they have no languages in common. | |
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Cunning Linguist | |
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In Morrowind, the ancient Telvanni wizard Baladas Demnevanni proves to be one. During the Mages Guild questline, you'll come upon several books which contain clues about the disappearance of the Dwemer, including one that is written in both Aldmeris (the extinct ancestor language to many modern languages) and Dwemeri (which, to date, has not been able to be translated.) Baladas can read Aldmeris and will be able to use it to translate the Dwemeri it for you. (Alternatively, if you've made it far enough in the main quest, you can take it to Yagrum Bagarn, the last living Dwemer, who logically translates it easily.) | |
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Cunning Linguist / int_b5a2b326 | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_b5ab36eb | type |
Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_b5ab36eb | comment |
You Only Live Twice establishes he excelled at Oriental languages in Spy School, when he refuses the Japanese phrasebook Moneypenny offers him because he doesn't need it. | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_b5ab36eb | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
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Cunning Linguist / int_b5ab36eb | |
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Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_b5f08143 | comment |
Saving Private Ryan has Timothy Upham who is the naïve kid, dispatched from the officer pool to help find Private Ryan. Spends the movie getting his hands dirty and learning to be a soldier, manages to end the movie sitting out the climactic battle because of a Heroic BSoD. Hilariously, Upham's German is, in fact, terrible, despite the claim of the character that his accent is "clean, with just a touch of Bavarian". His French isn't much better, particularly his grammar. | |
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| Cunning Linguist / int_b6886bfd | comment |
It’s showcased a little more in Star Trek Into Darkness, when they’re hunting down “John Harrison�. | |
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Cunning Linguist / int_b6886bfd | |
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Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_b8404ba7 | comment |
In the web-novel Domina, we have yet to encounter a language Lizzy can't speak. English, Japanese, Spanish, Vietnamese, Yiddish (or possibly Hebrew), Icelandic, Irish...normally she's a bit stupid, but she is an absolute genius with language. Might cross over into Omniglot. | |
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| Cunning Linguist / int_b84973a9 | comment |
The Dan Brown novel Digital Fortress has David Becker, a linguistics professor. He uses his skills to track down Tankado's ring in Spain. At one point, he calls the same escort service twice in a row, once posing as a Spanish local and the second time posing as a German tourist. | |
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Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_b8c3cc30 | comment |
Young Justice (2010): During his time in Cadmus, Superboy had numerous languages downloaded into his mind, which lets him speak and understand fluently. These include Spanish (letting him understand Bane's plan to use the team to get his factory back from Kobra) and Atlantean, with Word of God also listing French, Arabic, Korean, and Russian. | |
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Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_b9821fa9 | comment |
The Dark Crystal: Having been adopted and raised by the Podlings, Kira learned their language and speaks it fluently, in addition to the Gelfling language. | |
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Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_bca5b926 | comment |
In The Magicians, the study of magic requires its practitioners to understand a wide variety of languages and dialects in order to master the increasingly multicultural library of spells - up to and including correct pronunciation and grammar. Among the languages mentioned over the course of the series include Middle English, Latin, Old High Dutch, Estonian, Old Church Slavonic, Arabic, Aramaic, and Minoan. Naturally, Alice proves to be the most fluent of them all. | |
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Cunning Linguist | |
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In The Thorn Birds, Father Ralph is one and so is his son Dane (something else that should have tipped him off to the fact that the boy was his), but it's also an Informed Ability, as there are few scenes where either of them get to demonstrate this. | |
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Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_c0fa6de5 | comment |
A subverted example in Warhammer Fantasy Divided Loyalties: Asarnil the Dragonlord agrees to a suggestion to dictate his memiors, but only if the account could be written in Eltharin, an entire language of double, triple, or even quadruple meanings. A scholar from the University of Altdorf arrives to do so, but the man's understanding of Eltharin is stilted and formal and Asarnil sends the scholar away in disgust. The quest's main character, a Grey Wizard named Mathilde Weber, feels some schadenfreude watching him go, as the University of Altdorf has a school rivalry with the Colleges of Magic. | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_c0fa6de5 | featureApplicability |
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Cunning Linguist / int_c0fa6de5 | |
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Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_c211d8bf | comment |
Her understanding of speech patterns plays a pivotal role in Star Trek Beyond as her time attempting to negotiate with Krall allows her to identify his true identity as long-lost Starfleet captain Balthazar Edison from ship logs and reveal why he's so hell-bent on destroying the Yorktown station. | |
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Cunning Linguist / int_c211d8bf | |
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Cunning Linguist | |
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Doug Ramsey from New Mutants is this trope taken to its most extreme example. A study buddy of Kitty Pryde's, he turns out to have the mutant power to understand any language he encounters, in print, spoken, or otherwise transmitted. (In one of his early appearances he dejectedly noted that his ability allowed him to shout "Don't kill me!" in any language.) This includes computer code, and there are hints that Doug would have been the greatest hacker in the world bar none, if it weren't for that whole dying thing. Now that he's been resurrected...sorta...it's shown that his powers extend to social cues, and he can perfectly interpret the relationships between people based on subtle gestures. He can also read body language, so he's handy in a fight. | |
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Cunning Linguist / int_c346fa94 | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_c7f59f7d | type |
Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_c7f59f7d | comment |
In the comics, where she also has this power, she admits it only requires any physical contact, but she prefers to do it "the fun way". | |
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Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_c7fbcf5f | comment |
Horatio Hornblower: The title character is shown to be fluent in French in the television movies. This causes a Bilingual Backfire for a French captain who "secretly" tells his men to wait for his order to attack, and in the earlier films acts as a translator for The Captain, who only is shown to speak English. In an interesting play on the trope, he has to interpret between a Spanish officer and Captain Pellew (who only speaks English), but the Spaniard ends up speaking French since Hornblower doesn't know Spanish. He gets the opportunity to learn in the third film when he's held prisoner in Spain with an affable jailer and very little else to do but work his way through Don Quixote using a dictionary. | |
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Cunning Linguist | |
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In the Hägar the Horrible comic, Lucky Eddie fills this role when necessary. | |
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Cunning Linguist / int_c90faa8c | |
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Cunning Linguist | |
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Early in Halo: Nightfall ONI and the Sedrans are trying to get information on a Covenant terrorist attack out of an alien prisoner named Axl. Col. Randall Aiken is trying and failing at the Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique when Jameson Locke and the ONI team walk in, and Locke then rather quickly gets the information they need by speaking Axl's language and playing Good Cop/Bad Cop. | |
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Cunning Linguist / int_ca846d7d | |
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Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_cac20f89 | comment |
JAG: Mac, as she speaks English, Russian, Japanese, Spanish, Persian, German, Arabic, and reads Hebrew. Nowhere near the degree of Mac, Meg Austin is fluent in Spanish, as befitting a well-educated Texan. Subverted on its spin-off, NCIS. Although it wasn't the reason she was brought on the team, Ziva David can speak ten languages (English, Hebrew, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, Arabic, Turkish and Pashto), and since she has Mossad training, she is more than capable of holding her own in the field (in fact, she starts out the series a little overzealous with the battle skills) |
|
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Cunning Linguist / int_cac20f89 | |
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Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_cad40a0e | comment |
The translator in The Bridge on the River Kwai, who is said to have taught South-East Asian languages at Oxford(?) before the war seems at ease in the jungle, and seems to be more at home there than the other commandos. | |
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In Babel-17, the protagonist, Rydra Wong, is an actual linguist, a poet, and generally a master of languages. She is able to recognize that Babel-17 is actually a language, and not just a code, after seeing just a few poorly transcribed examples. | |
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Cunning Linguist / int_cd7bf8e3 | |
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Cunning Linguist | |
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Yakitate!! Japan has Pierrot, a world-class clown, who can speak in 135 languages and, as such, is able to communicate to all the participants of the Monaco Cup, who came from all around the globe. | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_ce009416 | featureApplicability |
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Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_d32d5a07 | comment |
Thrawn starts with an imperial mission in the Unknown Regions, which are outside the programming of translator droids. So cadet Eli Vanto, who originates from this region of space, is used in this quality simply because he knows a few local languages, starting with the local trade language, Sy Bisti.note Eli Vanto is confirmed to speak the native language on Lysatra, Basic and Sy Bisti. Over the course of his adventures he also learns Cheunh, the language of the Chiss Ascendancy. | |
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Milo Thatch of Atlantis: The Lost Empire, to the point where he's the only one who can translate the Ancient Atlantean text carved into a wall to contemporary Atlanteans. | |
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Barney Miller: There's a funny bit where Wojciehowicz briefly interprets for two elderly Polish men, caught dueling with swords in the park until they're able to pull themselves together. Naturally, Wojo's a beat behind and continues translating even after they begin speaking English. | |
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Madam Secretary: Elizabeth McCord is shown to speak Arabic in one episode. She's not fluent, but she's good enough to be able to use it for dramatic effect when brokering a deal with the President of Iraq. Also a one-shot Vietnamese woman Liz brings in to speak to a congressional committee on a microloan program. Everybody expects her to need an interpreter, but then she addresses the committee in English, which she learned from the son she was able to send to school thanks to a microloan. |
|
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Edmund Dantes, in The Count of Monte Cristo: | |
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Cunning Linguist / int_ded0e62f | |
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Cunning Linguist | |
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Louise Banks from Arrival is the foremost expert on linguistics in the USA, and it's the reason she's invited into the research team in order to communicate with the aliens called the Heptapods landed on Earth. She eventually becomes the only one to crack the heptapods' language enough to rewire her brain into it. | |
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Cunning Linguist / int_df870b3f | |
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| Cunning Linguist / int_dff75793 | comment |
In Macross: Do You Remember Love?, Misa is shown able to understand Zentraedi language and, after some initial trouble, decipher the Protoculture one (from which the Zentraedi's derives). This allows her to translate the title song (originally a Protoculture song), and, indirectly, end the war in the good guys' favor when Minmay sings it. | |
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In White Sand, Kenton knows several Dayside and Darkside languages, making him the translator of Khriss' group. | |
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1.0 | |
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| Cunning Linguist / int_e22b4ac3 | comment |
2 Broke Girls: Caroline has been depicted as speaking fluent Japanese and passable Arabic, French and Hebrew. This may be justified by her wealthy upbringing and her Wharton MBA. Subverted in the third season when she has trouble understanding her French boyfriend and his wife's argument. When Max calls her on it, Caroline says she speaks enough French to impress Americans. This may apply to other languages, as well. | |
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Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_e293455a | comment |
In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer novel Portal Through Time, the Scooby Gang takes a temporal trip to save past Slayers from being killed out of history. Too many dead and the whole world changes. Fortunately, they only go to time periods where English is spoken (the Civil War) or Giles can speak the local dialect. | |
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1.0 | |
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| Buffy the Vampire Slayer | hasFeature |
Cunning Linguist / int_e293455a | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_e31a4abd | type |
Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_e31a4abd | comment |
A running theme in Megatokyo, where the series starts with Piro being fluent in Japanese from playing lots of dating sims, Largo knowing zilch Japanese, Kimiko and Ping knowing zilch English, Erika and Miho being fluent in English and therefore capable of communicating with Largo, and Yuki clumsily speaking what little English she can master. Later on, Ping gets a translation module that renders English words as Intentional Engrish for Funny Japanese subtitles... initially taken from porn flicks, much to Ping's very great confusion. Eventually Largo corrects it and she speaks perfect English. | |
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Cunning Linguist / int_e31a4abd | |
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Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_e4d5575 | comment |
In Warcraft (2016), Garona is the only character to speak both human and orc tongues, and acts as a translator during the meeting between Llane and Durotan. She's also seen translating Draenai's pleas to Gul'dan early in the movie, and it's implied that Gul'dan keeps her around in part to be his translator. | |
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Cunning Linguist / int_e4d5575 | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_e8f67e69 | type |
Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_e8f67e69 | comment |
The Secret Garden: Mary's upbringing by Indian servants exposed her to various dialects from birth, and she was formally taught French. Several times, she tries to imitate the broad Yorkshire accent under the impression that it is a different language (which isn't exactly a stretch). | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_e8f67e69 | featureApplicability |
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Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_ed01bf4 | comment |
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters: The Japanese Monarch scientist Keiko Randa (née Miura) is fluent in her mother tongue, in English, and in Russian. | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_ed01bf4 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_ed01bf4 | featureConfidence |
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| Monarch: Legacy of Monsters | hasFeature |
Cunning Linguist / int_ed01bf4 | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_edaffe15 | type |
Cunning Linguist | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_edaffe15 | comment |
In The Bartimaeus Trilogy, magicians' spellbooks are often written in dead languages, partially for tradition's sake and partially to keep commoners from learning about magic. Nathaniel is shown to have knowledge of Latin, Ancient Greek, and Coptic, among others. | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_edaffe15 | featureApplicability |
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Cunning Linguist / int_edaffe15 | |
| Cunning Linguist / int_eef69f10 | type |
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| Cunning Linguist / int_eef69f10 | comment |
The eponymous Greek Interpreter in the Sherlock Holmes story is a part of no squad, but he worms vital info out of a hostage without the hostage's captors being any the wiser - the key is likely that he uses written Greek to smuggle tidbits out during the conversation. | |
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| Cunning Linguist / int_f15f622e | comment |
MacGyver (1985), of course. He is proficient to a greater or lesser extent in Russian, German, French, Italian, Spanish, and American Sign Language, and knows how to use International maritime signal flags and Morse code. In Real Life, Richard Dean Anderson (MacGyver's actor) is multilingual as well. | |
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Buffyverse: Giles, Wesley and Lorne know not only human languages, but a whole whack of demon ones as well. Of course, they generally use their skill in deciphering texts, not actually speaking it. In one episode of Buffy, we learn that Spike speaks Fyarl. It is also implied that Spike understands Luganda. And it's shown that he can read Latin (which actually makes some sense; as a Victorian gentleman with literary ambitions, he would be expected to have a working knowledge of both Latin and Ancient Greek). Gunn later gets a demon language upgrade as part of his Wolfram Lawyer Status. Of course, like with all Buffyverse magic, it came with a horrible price. Including golf skills (as business deals tend to be made on the links) and a "whole mess of Gilbert & Sullivan" "for elocution" which he started singing at random times, seemingly without noticing it. Angel himself doesn't speak any demon languages, but he speaks at least eleven human languages. As part of her Character Development to The Smart Guy, Dawn has learned at least Turkish and Sumerian between Seasons 6 and 7 of Buffy. Glory can speak any demon or human language. |
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Burn Notice: Michael Westen is fluent in Arabic, Russian, Persian, and Czech, has recently learned French and German, and even speaks a bit of Urdu. However, even though he grew up in Miami, he doesn't speak a lick of Spanish. This comes up in an episode where he pretends to be a Moscow Centre operative sent to re-establish ties with a pro-Russian sympathizer in a Latin American country. He speaks Russian with a local officer, who responds but then asks to switch to Spanish, as his Russian is rusty. Michael is clearly panicking for a second before offering to switch to English instead. By Season 7, Michael does pick up Spanish. The circumstances are abnormal. | |
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Pokémon X and Y: During the Looker sidequest, Emma takes this role due to being the only one present who can speak the language of Kanto when a Kanto woman comes looking for help. Looker claims he can understand a wide variety of languages (he has appeared in both Sinnoh and Unova, each of which speak different languages than Kalos), but then he also mistakes the woman's story about her Pokemon being stolen as being a request for tea. | |
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Subverted, however, in Tomorrow Never Dies, when Bond is completely bamboozled by Wai Lin's keyboard. (It's meant as a joke, by the way. Chinese computers [or Mainland China ones, at least] either use Pinyin or Wubi [a system of four-digit codes to stand for characters] for word input and processing.) | |
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