About: As Long as It Sounds Foreign   Sponge Permalink

An Entity of Type : owl:Thing, within Data Space : 134.155.108.49:8890 associated with source dataset(s)

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 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. And that's assuming any native speakers are still living, as many languages have died out for one reason or another. 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.

AttributesValues
rdfs:label
  • As Long as It Sounds Foreign
rdfs:comment
  • 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 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. And that's assuming any native speakers are still living, as many languages have died out for one reason or another. 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.
dcterms:subject
dbkwik:all-the-tro...iPageUsesTemplate
dbkwik:allthetrope...iPageUsesTemplate
abstract
  • 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 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. And that's assuming any native speakers are still living, as many languages have died out for one reason or another. 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. This could be explained if their name was anglicized, though the practice has fallen out of favor in recent decades. In most cases, the author just didn't care. 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 only 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 Puree Title. See also Foreign Looking Font, Fictionary, Black Belt in Origami. See also Speaking Simlish. Canis Latinicus and El Spanish-O are subtropes specifically dealing with Latin and foreign affixes, respectively. Also consider Esperanto, the Universal Language Examples of As Long as It Sounds Foreign include:
Alternative Linked Data Views: ODE     Raw Data in: CXML | CSV | RDF ( N-Triples N3/Turtle JSON XML ) | OData ( Atom JSON ) | Microdata ( JSON HTML) | JSON-LD    About   
This material is Open Knowledge   W3C Semantic Web Technology [RDF Data] Valid XHTML + RDFa
OpenLink Virtuoso version 07.20.3217, on Linux (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu), Standard Edition
Data on this page belongs to its respective rights holders.
Virtuoso Faceted Browser Copyright © 2009-2012 OpenLink Software