History Main / StrangeSyntaxSpeaker

** The Rikti in ''VideoGame/CityOfHeroes'' speak like this as well. They are a race of telepaths and it is only late in the game during certain missions that one gets the new Mark III translator and can not only suddenly speak English properly, but can now understand it just as well. He finds our childish vulgarities rather quaint.
** ''VideoGame/StarControl'''s Daktaklakpak provide a similar challenge -- their language is so mathematical and formulaic that initially the tech teams don't even think they're ''sentient.'' Once you obtain a translator their speech remains formulaic and stilted: "Statement: Daktaklakpak are superior to Humans. Interrogation: What are Humans doing in our space?"

** In the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "Darmok", Captain Picard is stranded with an alien who speaks a language [[SpeaksInShoutOuts composed entirely of figurative phrases]]. The Universal Translator gets their ''literal'' meaning just fine, but without knowing the stories they're alluding to, it's impossible to decipher what they're actually talking about.
** ''Series/StarTrekVoyager''. In "Nemesis", Chakotay is shot down in the middle of a war zone, and is aided by the human-looking Defenders who speak in a Creator/GeoffreyChaucer-like dialogue evoking heroic fantasies in their fight against the AlwaysChaoticEvil Kradin. TheReveal is that Chakotay has been captured and is undergoing propaganda brainwashing to turn him into a Defender. Whether the Defenders dialogue is due to translation issues or something to do with the process is not revealed, but Chakotay is [[GoingNative shown talking the same way as the brainwashing takes effect]].

* River Tam from ''Series/{{Firefly}}.'' It's uncertain whether she's speaking from some consistent internal syntax, or her dialogue is a result of her [[IllGirl traumatic background]]. It generally sounds like she automatically says whatever pops into her head before her thoughts are finished. Simon says something to that effect in one episode.

* ''VideoGame/{{Control}}'' features [[EldritchAbomination an otherworldly, extradimensional being]] known as The Board whose "voice" is largely incomprehensible radio static, yet is nonetheless comprehensible if it's directly talking to you, represented through subtitles. However, some of the words they "speak" are of multiple choice, [[SelfDemonstratingArticle sometimes all being true/equal/satisfactory, sometimes being contradictory/nonsensical/horse]]. This gives the impression of a being operating on a much higher level of understanding than humans, but having trouble condensing its hyperreal concepts into plain English... which is exactly what The Board is.

* Jelonzo, who runs the clothing shop in ''VideoGame/{{Splatoon}}'', speaks in mangled Engrish. This is because jellyfish have their own native language, and Jelonzo is not a native Inkling speaker.

* Franchise/Superman: [[OddballDoppelganger Bizarros]] usually talk in Bizarro speak, which has them say the opposite of what they really mean with HulkSpeak thrown in. The large amount of [[ConfusingMultipleNegatives double negatives]] this causes, as well as how the usage of Bizarro-speak varies from Bizarro to Bizarro (and from [[DependingOnTheWriter writer to writer]]), its practically impossible to piece together what they’re actually trying to say.

* In the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "Darmok", Captain Picard is stranded with an alien who speaks a language [[SpeaksInShoutOuts composed entirely of figurative phrases]]. The Universal Translator gets their ''literal'' meaning just fine, but without knowing the stories they're alluding to, it's impossible to decipher what they're actually talking about.
* ''Series/StarTrekVoyager''. In "Nemesis", Chakotay is shot down in the middle of a war zone, and is aided by the human-looking Defenders who speak in a Creator/GeoffreyChaucer-like dialogue evoking heroic fantasies in their fight against the AlwaysChaoticEvil Kradin. TheReveal is that Chakotay has been captured and is undergoing propaganda brainwashing to turn him into a Defender. Whether the Defenders dialogue is due to translation issues or something to do with the process is not revealed, but Chakotay is [[GoingNative shown talking the same way as the brainwashing takes effect]].

* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Home}}'', the Boov (especially Oh) regularly mix up tenses, verbs, nouns, and English grammar in general with phrases like "Can I come in to the out now?" and "It should to hover much better now."

* ''ComicBook/TheTransformers'':

* The Junkions from ''WesternAnimation/TransformersTheMovie'' speak entirely in commercial jingles and other pop-culture soundbites. A visitor's ability to understand them depends entirely on one's ability to "talk TV".

* As established in ''WesternAnimation/TransformersTheMovie'', [[Franchise/TransformersGeneration1 Junkions]] on the television series speak in odd mishmashes of television quotes.

* In Series/TheWalkingDead the Scavengers speak a strange clipped version of English. No explanation has been given as to how they came to develop such an odd diction in only two or three years.

* Eric Idle's ''Rutland Weekend Television'' had the host of a short chat show and his guest talking like this.

* ComicBook/{{Starfire}} of ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitans2003'' and ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitansGo'' learned English through [[MagicKiss a superpowered kiss]], and for whatever reason, her approach to the language is fluent, but quite idiosyncratic. She rarely uses contractions, has a tendency to misplace or misuse articles, and when combined with [[BluntMetaphorsTrauma her loose grip on colloquialisms]], she comes across not too dissimilar to an ESL speaker in the real world (plus, it results in gems like "Let us kick the butt!").

'''Rodimus Prime:'''"We're gonna get killed.

** Both Foul Ole Ron in the ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' novels and Mrs Tachyon in ''[[Literature/JohnnyMaxwellTrilogy Johnny and the Bomb]]'' speak in nonsense phrases, a favorite being "Millenium hand and shrimp". Whether their mutterings actually have a coherent underlying syntax is undetermined, though Gaspode (Ron's talking dog) clearly understands him. 'Millenium hand and shrimp' itself apparently came from a Chinese food menu and the lyrics to "[[Music/{{Flood}} Particle Man]]" in a random word selector.

* SelfDemonstrating/Spamton from ‘’VideoGame/Deltarune’’, the personification of junk mail and spam advertising, has [ONE WEIRD TRICK!!] in his dialogue where certain words are switched out for [LIMITED TIME ONLY], [NON-FUNGIBLE] advertising jargon and salesman lingo. Some of his sentences contain missing , too many [EXCLAMATION MARKS!!!!] or, just like in real scam emails, grammatical and spelling errors in [Specil] places. The most intriguing aspect of his speech is [HYPERLINK BLOCKED], a phrase he’s seemingly censored from saying by an outside entity (common theories are that it means “soul”, “freedom” or “LOVE”, as in ‘Level of Violence' from ‘’VideoGame/Undertale’’. A full analysis of his dialog quirks can be found [[https://cyberzuzu.tumblr.com/post/665206148324114432/spamton-dialog-quirks-guide-after-hours-of-work-I here.]]

** The only Kraang to fully avoid this is [[TheDragon Kraang Sub-Prime]], who gives his subordinates a tongue-lashing after getting sick of listening to them.

* In ''VideoGame/PlanescapeTorment'', the [[WitchSpecies Night Hag]] Ravel Puzzlewell has a dialect that can only be summarized as "odd". Like Yoda, she tends to use an Object-Subject-Verb speech order, is a ThirdPersonPerson, and she's prone to partially or wholly repeating sentences by substituting words with their textual homophones. She may also go off on something of a tangent or switch topics entirely based on a homophone that particularly catches her attention. [[ElectiveBrokenLanguage Except when she chooses to speak in the proper speech order and/or use first person perspective dialogue, which she randomly does]]. It's left ambiguous if she always talked like this, or if maybe it's a side-effect of going more than little nuts over centuries in an extraplanar prison.

* Abigail from ''[[Literature/GlovesOfVirtue Gloves of Virtue]]'', yet another {{Cloudcuckoolander}}.

** [[InsistentTerminology Freelance Peace-Keeping Agent]] [[ComicBook/DeathsHead Death's Head]] who was introduced in the Transformers comics turns most of his statements into questions by adding the word "yes" to the end, yes?

* In ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick'', orcs (and half-orcs) seem to always refer to themselves in the third person, pay no heed to verbal conjugation, skip copulas and [[AllLowercaseLetters use lower-case everywhere]] until...:
-->'''Mungu''': mungu rather finish grammar lesson for today.\\

* In ''[[VideoGame/PuyoPuyo Puyo Puyo Fever 2]]'', Gogotte, an elf-like humanoid with an obsession with mushrooms, speaks with each half of his sentences switched around, not unlike Yoda (e.g. "My special soup, this is").

* ''WebOriginal/StarsInBlack'', for StarWars parody it is, a Yoda-like speaker must have.

** High Priest Dios, from ''Literature/{{Pyramids}}'', never uses the past tense under any circumstance, leading to sentences like the below. It’s not that he has trouble with the language, he’s just tremendously fixated on tradition and precedent.