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"We do not even have a language! Just a stupid accent!" "She's right! We all talk like Maurice Chevalier!"
Occasionally, a film or TV show will be set in a foreign country, where another language is spoken. Instead of having the actors speak normally, or having them attempt to speak in their characters' actual language, the characters instead speak English - except in a ridiculous accent to constantly remind viewers that these characters are foreign. A Translation Convention that bats you over the head with the Rule Of Perception.
Occasionally, their speech will be peppered with some words and phrases from the language they are attempting to emulate via accent, but these will be rare, and only the simplest ones that the audience is intended to know, such as "oui" or "hai" (and perhaps a Foreign Cuss Word or two).
This is not to be confused with Poirot Speak, where a foreign character speaking English will pepper their speech with words and phrases from their native language. Although the effect is much the same, Just A Stupid Accent can grate a little more, as the viewer is left to surmise that Doktor Von Evil speaks flawless English but somehow never learned the word for "yes" (though this is somewhat justified in that a spontaneous response to something is likely to trigger your mother language, especially if it's something that can be said without the need for sentence building in your head.)
This also occurs when two foreign characters who speak the same language meet up in another country. Instead of conversing in their native language, they still converse in their broken second language. However, note that if the characters are meant to be speaking English, an accent is often justified.
Rarely used outside cartoons anymore, although once more prominent in live-action comedy films.
For the written version, see Foreign Looking Font.
Examples
Anime and Manga
- Some of the foreign students in School Rumble were meant to have a strange way of speaking Japanese. When translated in the manga for Western readers, however, it was willingly decided to keep their "strange foreigner accent' by incorporating it to the translated English for some attempt at Translation Convention. The result?
Film
Literature
- Averted throughout The Bourne Series.
- In the Harry Potter series, the character Fleur Delacour's dialogue is rendered phonetically with a goofy French accent (as in, " 'Arry, zees belonged to my grandmuzzer.") The Bulgarian characters receive a similar treatment ("I vould like some vine as vell!"). Though it should be noted that it's mentioned that the French characters speak to each other in French, and only speak English to the British main characters.
Live Action TV
- Averted in Heroes, where Japanese characters speak in Japanese, with subtitles in English.
- Although the Indian characters never spoke in Hindi or any other language spoken in India, English is widely spoken in Madras, where the Indian scenes were set.
- A great deal of English gets spoken in India; although only four percent of the population speaks it as a first language, most educated people have it as a second language. Considering there are fully twenty-two native languages with significant populations, ESL
 this common second language is very important.
- And hey, four percent of India's population is still forty million people.
- Heroes gets props all around. Rather than being troubled by the stigma of subtitles, they've embraced them and just let the conversations take place in their original tongue. This last episode (second of Season 2) had, at the least, French, and what seemed to be Portuguese. They rapidly switch to "Oh, you speak English?" after a few sentences in some but not all cases. And the subtitles for the Japanese convey the general meaning but often not anything like what has actually been said — almost like two separate conversations. This is possibly because the actor who plays Hiro translates his lines personally.
- We'll let the "Jasus an' Begorrah!" Irish accents slide. Just this once.
- We certainly will NOT. The Rebel County will not be scorned.
- The Spanish conversations in the second season, though, had lines like "¿Usted recuerda a nosotros?" that were quite painful for native Spanish speakers.
- The line is meant to be, "You remember us?", which would actually be something like "¿Usted nos recuerda?"
- Is painful because is the Spanish equivalent to somebody saying "You to us remember?" Each word is correct on its own but in that combination is pure grammatical nonsense. And looks like it was just translated from Babelfish.
- Ironically, Babelfish will give you a better translation.
- Also note, the Translation Convention was used for the Heroes: Destiny webisodes set in Peru.
- Similarly, is it just me or is it singularly bizarre to hear Kaito Nakamura calling himself 'watashi' instead of 'boku'? (I could be wrong, but isn't that a diminutive, so the head of an international conglomeration is calling himself a little girl?)
- No, 'watashi' is used in the general meaning of 'I'. If he called himself 'boku' on the other hand, this troper would start wondering why the elderly executive referred to himself as a young man.
- 'Watashi' is also the most likely form to be used in relatively formal speech. In order to become effeminate, it should become 'atashi'.
- SOP in Mission Impossible, and other spy shows of the time.
- Taken to the ludicrous extreme by Seigfried in Get Smart.
- Also parodied in one episode where Maxwell Smart is suddenly confronted by a KAOS mole who up to then was speaking normally. When Smart asks why he's suddenly talking with an accent the mole replies: "Vat accent? Zis is my veal voice!"
- Played with in the British sitcom 'Allo 'Allo, set in France at the time of the Second World War. Everyone speaks English but the two British Air Force officers speak with a posh accent, which is meta-English, and can't understand the rest of the cast who speak meta-French. The British policeman also speaks with a posh accent when talking in "English" but when addressing the other characters in "French" (which was a second language) he has a deliberately distorted accent leading to some of the humor in the show such as saying "Good morning" as Good moaning and "passing by" as pissing by. Surprisingly this wasn't censored by the strict regulations for pre-watershed BBC programming, and this joke was used almost every time his character was on screen.
- Michelle of the Resistance, the only French character who speaks "English", does so by putting on the same posh accent as the RAF officers and the policeman.
- In one episode, the 'ghost' of Renee speaks actual French "J'accuse! J'accuse!"; when talking about it later, the accused guy wonders, 'who is this 'Jacques Hughes'?
- The BBC seems very fond of dubbing over Japanese speakers in Johnathan Ross's Japanorama with people speaking English, but with very pronounced Japanese accents.
- Used in Hogans Heroes for the Germans, bar the occasional use of well-known German phrases. This is subverted with French, however, as LeBeau talks to himself and other Frenchman in actual French. One reason for this may be that everyone understands German (and so does the audience), but only LeBeau understands French and so the audience is left in the dark like everyone else.
- Also, the (American, British, and French) prisoners seem to be able to pass themselves off as German when the situation calls for it simply by speaking English with a heavy German accent
- In Babylon 5 Londo and Delenn stand out by being the only aliens who don't seem able to master an American accent when speaking English. In Delenn's case it's the actress's real accent, but Londo's actor was just going for a general Eastern European accent just for the hell of it (it's actually a pretty exact match to a Hungarian accent).
- It got weirder in later seasons when other actors playing Centauri didn't bother trying to match Londo's accent, so eventually it was explained that his accent was from a remote part of the Centauri homeworld.
- Lord Refa seemed to share a lighter version of Londo's accent, so this troper assumed it was an accent for some specific level of social order in the complex aristocratic order that the Centauri are so fond of.
- There's also a Centauri servant woman in one of the TV movies, who speaks in thick, obviously French accent.
- Averted in Doctor Who's Season 4 Finale, where Martha Jones and a German woman actually speak German most of the time and since they are in Germany even the Daleks flying by shout "Exterminieren!".
- Yeah, but the German woman (and the Daleks) spoke German with a heavy English accent...
- Shows up on Lost with Iraqi characters, but entirely averted with the Korean characters (because their actors actually speak Korean.)
- Parodied in Arrested Development when it becomes apparent that Buster thinks you speak Spanish by putting on a Mexican accent.
- Then there's the Czech brothers in Saturday Night Live - Dan Ackroyd's accent is clearly aiming for Eastern European, but Steve Martin's is just...bizarre! Then they converse in 'Czech' double-talk and it's just compounded.
- Hilarious in-universe example in How I Met Your Mother, when Lily for reasons not important wanted to act like she was Brittish and ended up with Just A Stupid Accent.
Radio
- The Reduced Shakespeare Company Radio Show adds a flashback scene to Romeo and Juliet, performed in a ridiculous Italian accent ("don't-a mention the spaghett'").
Stand Up Comedy
Tabletop RPG
- In Feng Shui, based on Hong Kong movies and involving time travel, everybody speaks Cantonese. Even in Ancient Rome, the Wild West, modern New York and Victorian England.
- (Translated into English subtitles for English-speaking players, of course.)
Theater
- In the musical version of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Neville and Helena Landless are supposed to be played with ridiculous and geographically untraceable accents to go with their ridiculous and geographically untraceable clothing. This is meant to indicate that the British theatre groups putting on the production of Drood are ignorant as to what exactly people from Ceylon look or sound like. It's even lampshaded by the actress playing Helena as she breaks the fourth wall.
- Justified with Aldolfo Pirelli in Sweeney Todd: he speaks with a gratuitous Italian accent because he's a fraud who's actually from Ireland.
- Used to devastating effect in the play Translations. The characters seem to alternate between English and Irish accents. We eventually realize that the English accents represent the English and Gaelic languages, and though we can understand everyone, the characters can't understand each other.
- Gilbert And Sullivan's The Grand Duke, which features a German theater troupe with an English lead actress, plays with this one: everyone speaks unaccented English, except for the English character, who is written with a thick German accent.
Video Games
- Possibly lampshaded in Fable; everyone speaks in British accents (presumably due to developer Lionhead being based in the UK), except for a Trader in the game's opening prologue who has an accent that is utterly impossible to place.
- This accent returns in Fable 2 as the accent of the trader Mungo, who starts off the whole adventure with the help of Theresa.
- We are not sure what accent Force Commander Boreale is using when he talks to his SPESS MERHENS!! in Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War Soulstorm, but we can tell that its very thick and vaguely British.
- If Rome: Total War is an indication, the Greeks, Egyptians, Eastern peoples, Carthaginians, Numidians, and the various barbarian tribes, all spoke perfect English aside from their accents. Medieval II Total War takes this one step further: Scots speak in a thick Scottish accents, The Holy Roman Empire and France speak in thick over-the-top German and French accents and throw in Gratuitous German/French on a regular basis, the English speak in a posh British accent, the Moors, Turks and Egyptians speech is in an Arabic accent and is laced with Arabic terms, the Spanish, Portuguese, various Italians, and the Byzantines all speak in a generic Southern European accent, the Eastern European factions (and, for some reason, the Danes) speak in a generic Eastern European accent, and the Mongols and Timurids speak in an especially egregious East-Asian accent that makes one wonder how the creators didn't get their pants sued off their bodies.
- Perhaps because all the accents are so over the top it's obvious it's a parody.
- Possibly averted in Civilization 4 and it's expansions. With the expanded game you have some 30 different nationalities to choose from. When ordering units around, they acknowledge the orders in their native language. All of it at least sounds authentic.
- I ask you to find a localized Dragon Quest game after VIII without these everyewhere. The battle narations use British speak in the US and Canada. Though justified, as they're localised over there.
Web Comics
- Used as a gag in Gorgeous Princess Creamy Beamy with the natives of French West Stereotypia: "Eet eez a small nation, deevoted to upholding zee stereotypes of owair fairfazzers! Cheese, wine, love, berets, stripy shairts, a zense of cultural zuperioretee, and talkeeng like zis instead of speaking ze actual French!"
- There's also a character from Russian East Stereotypia, who randomly uses Russian reversals.
- IrregularWebcomic uses this in comic no. 2435, and (as expected) has a link back to this very trope.
Web Original
- Parodied (Lampshaded?) in the blog novel Fartago. In Chapter 3, the protagonists Farta and Tago meet Artiste, a member of their tribe whose dialogue is written in a bad French accent (saying "zis ees" instead of "this is," for instance). When Farta asks him about this, Artiste replies, "Since monolith come, I become French." Although, of course, it is unclear - in fact, doesn't seem to be the case - if the words Farta and Tago are "grunting" are even English in the first place. But if they're not, then how could Artiste speak English words with an accent? Given that the novel frequently engages in Playing With A Trope of various forms, it's possible this could be one more example of that. It's also worth noting, given all the other often subtle references the author makes to evolutionary paleontology (even as he - apparently intentionally, according to comments he's made - incorrectly pluralizes "Homo habilis" as "Homo habilii") that Artiste's "transformation" into French is as much a reference to cave paintings - the oldest known human art, found in several famous sites throughout France - as it is a reference to the stereotype that the French are artists.
Western Animation
- Used throughout Looney Tunes, especially "Speedy Gonzales" shorts.
- Likewise the Pepe Le Pew shorts.
- Used more recently in the action cartoons Jackie Chan Adventures and Xiaolin Showdown, where Chinese people never actually speak any Chinese.
- In the case of Jackie Chan Adventures it's understandable as the main characters live in America. In fact, in the first episode Jackie thinks Jade doesn't speak English and tries to talk to her in Chinese (it doesn't work since she's just being surly and not talking at all).
- Plus, since Jade is from Hong Kong, her knowledge of English would be pretty good.
- Also justified in Xiaolin Showdown, where only three of the seven main characters are even implied to speak chinese, and all seven of them (six if you don;t count the thoughtspeak ghost until she gets a human form) have English as at least a second language.
- Averted in the South Park episode "Chinpokomon", where the Corrupt Corporate Executives speak perfect Japanese to each other (without subtitles), but spoke very amusing Gratuitous English to everybody else. It helps that Trey Parker knows Japanese.
- Used straight in The Simpsons by a number of characters. However, Luigi Risotto, the Italian chef, is the only one to admit to this so far. He cannot speak a single word of Italian; instead, "I speak-a, how-a you say, 'Fractured English'. It's what-a my parents spokinthe home."
- Swisgaard and Toki in Metalocalypse speak with truly atrocious accents to accentuate their Scandinavian origins.
- It's less an accent than a verbal tic. Say what you will, but I've never met a Scandinavian who affixes an 's' to the end of every other word for no reason. For the record, Toki's is actually otherwise relatively accurate to southern Norway.
- Used by Oblina in Aaahh Real Monsters. This is even pointed out by The Nostalgia Critic
- Ed Edd N Eddy has Rolf. As he's from that universe's version of Cloudcuckooland, he has no distinct accent.
- This was standard practice on Pinky And The Brain.
Advertising
Real Life
- Sorta... Australian news programs, when dubbing a news report, will usually use a translator with an appropriate accent.
- All documentary-style shows seem to follow this trope,really. Most notably the Discovery Channel and the History Channel. Whoever does the dubbing for a non-English speaking interviewee will apply the appropriately expected accent.
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