History Main / BilingualDialogue

* BettyWhite and an African tribesman switch between an African language and English mid conversation in TheTag at the end of an episode of ''Series/{{Community}}''. This is so another tribesman won't be spoiled by the English half of their discussion of ''{{Inception}}''.

** A notable example of a human being able to understand a Pokemon does exist, however. It's consistent that Ash is able to understand Pikachu, though he doesn't appear to fully understand any other Pokemon.

-->'''Webster:''' (stares into the man's eyes for a moment, then let's him go) "Bullshit."

** When Sasha Cohen's (not to be confused with Sacha Baron Cohen) coach was Tatiana Tarasova, Tatiana spoke Russian to her, and Sasha (who understood Russian due to her mother being from the Ukraine) responded in English.

* ''Fanwork/ZanyToTheMax'': Used with the Zarner siblings. Jakko will explain plans to Takko and Zot in Finnish, and Takko and Zot understand him completely. [[spoiler: [[BilingualBackfire So does Sikko]].]]

* ''Fanwork/ZanyToTheMax'': Used with the Zarner siblings. Jakko will explain plans to Takko and Zot in Finnish, and Takko and Zot understand him completely. [[spoiler: So does Sikko.]]

Annette: "La plume de ma tante est sur le bureau de mon oncle."[[hottip:*:My aunt's pen is on my uncle's desk.]]

Annette: "Non, merci, c'est tout."[[hottip:*:No thanks, that's all.]]

* Averted in VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft: all Horde characters speak a native language and Orc (except orcs, who only know the latter), and all Alliance characters speak their native language and Common (except humans, who only speak the latter). The default languages are Orc and Common, but as a player you can switch to the other language your character knows at any time; anyone who also knows that language will then see exactly what you type into the chat just like you were using the default language, but players whose characters ''don't'' speak your language will see semi-random gibberish instead.[[hottip:*:It is not completely random. It appears the game uses a look-up table to replace every letter in the original chat message with a different one, so a given piece of text will always produce the same gibberish. The actual replacement letters depend on the language the speaker is using, so that for example Draenei will look different than Gnomish to players whose character speaks neither.]]

** This Troper having experience of Alsace, he can infirm it. Although Alsace is the place in France where dialect is the more common, it's still a rare occurrence. And knowledge of standard German might be important (compared to national average), especially for cross-border workers, but there most certainly aren't people who just understand French. '''Everybody''' speaks French.

* The various characters in the ''VideoGame/{{Tekken}}'' games speak English, Japanese, Korean, or Mandarin in their cutscenes and never seem to have the slightest trouble understanding each other (though subtitles are provided for characters who are not speaking the player's native language). Even novelty characters who communicate with clicks or animal noises manage to get their point across just fine.

** Is a common phenomenon all over South Asia, especially in [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers India]] and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Pakistan Pakistan]], where there are literally hundreds of languages. A good percentage of the population, , tends to be receptively multilingual, meaning they can ''understand'' other languages (having had enough exposure to them via PopCulturalOsmosis) but may not be able to actively ''speak'' in them. So for example if persons A and B meet, and person A can receptively understand person B's language but not actually speak it, and vice versa, they might both proceed to speak in their own languages and comfortably understand each other. As English is the official language of both countries while Urdu in Pakistan and Hindi in India is the "National" language, you have a situation where a person is actually "tri-lingual", they know English, Urdu/Hindi and their regional language and finally they also may speak or have an understanding of many other regional languages.

* ''Fanwork/ZanyToTheMax'': The Zarners do this.

* ''Bon Cop Bad Cop'', being a movie about the relationship between Ontario and Quebec as much as it is about the serial killer, has two bilingual protagonists, and several Francophone and Anglophone supporting characters. The dialogue of the movie is nearly equal in French and English, and there are a whopping SIX subtitle options on the DVD, for Francophones, Anglophones, and Bilinguals, with hard of hearing options for all of the above.

* The Pai Mei training scene in ''KillBill''. She even says flat out she only speaks 'a little' Cantonese, but he continues to speak as if she's fluent... and she understands every word he says, apparently, without any problems. In return, she speaks with extremely halting and limited Cantonese and Mandarin peppered with English and ''he'' has no problems understanding ''her''.

* {{Kukushka}} is based almost entirely on bilingual (sometimes ''trilingual'') dialogue. The three protagonists only speak and understand one of Russian, Finnish and Sami, so neither understands what the other two are saying. This makes for some [[FunWithForeignLanguages interesting]] [[HilarityEnsues misunderstandings]], some with [[spoiler:almost]] tragic consequences.

* In ''JoyeuxNoel'', which depicts the WorldWarI Christmas Truce between the French, British and Germans, most of the characters are unable to speak more than one language (and only two can speak all three), resulting in many exchanges of Bilingual and even Trilingual Dialogue.
* In ''GodzillaFinalWars'', the one American speaks entirely in English, while everyone else speaks Japanese. They still understand each other.
* I saw the DVD trailer for an old kaiju movie (I think 'Frankenstein Conquers the World'). During the discussion of what to do about the monsters, a half-dozen Japanese say their lines, then Nick Adams speaks in English (which is subbed for the audience). Which is no impediment.

Annette: "La plume de ma tante est sur le bureau de mon oncle."

Annette: "Non, merci, c'est tout."

* In ''{{Saiyuki}}'' Hakkai appears to understand Hakuryu/Jeep's chirps, although none of the rest of the party do nor the viewers. Hakkai occasionally acts as interpreter.