History Main / PoirotSpeak

* When ''Fanfic/{{Retsuraed}}'' did an {{MST}} of the rather obscure fanfic ''When [[WesternAnimation/TinyToonAdventures Fifi]] met [[VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog Tails]]'', besides the use of GratuitousFrench for the rare few words that were actually used correctly, the authors seemed to think that French people pronounce their "Y"s as "V"s and add random "Z"s at the end of almost every word. As [=XxSuperDriverxX=] put it...

* Gott und Himmel! War comics, especially titles like ''ComicBook/{{Commando}}'' and StockParodies thereof, tend to emphasize this, especially for ThoseWackyNazis, Englander Pigdogs.

** While most Latin-derived\Romance languages are equal, Portuguese and Spanish are an egregious example - given Spain is Portugal's only neighbor. There's even the Brazilian equivalent of Spanglish, "Portunhol". In Spanish, this is called "Portañol" or "Espagués" jokingly.

* ''Même les pommes de terre ont des yeux'', a French text adventure for the UsefulNotes/AppleII, has some text mixing French with a Spanish accent with Spanish and English words, mostly in the "Explicassione" setting forth the plot (which has a translation into proper French):

The TropeNamer is Creator/AgathaChristie's Literature/HerculePoirot, a Belgian detective who used this mode of speaking to [[ObfuscatingStupidity lead suspects to think]] he's simply a FunnyForeigner.

* Peter Serafinowicz (got it in one) lampooned this by having [[Literature/HerculePoirot Poirot]] say that he doesn't actually know French, he just uses enough French words to convince people he does.

* Named for Detective Literature/HerculePoirot, who spoke this way as part of his FunnyForeigner facade. Hercule speaks perfect English at the end of each story [[TheSummation as he explains step-by-step how he solved the case]]. Other characters and the detective himself have commented on it. Poirot is in fact something of a subversion, as he uses his accent to disarm suspects, making them think he's only a FunnyForeigner when it's really "[[ObfuscatingStupidity just an act]]". From ''Literature/ThreeActTragedy'':

See YouNoTakeCandle (and its subtrope TontoTalk) for cases where foreigners consistently talk with very poor grammar and lack of vocabulary. See also GratuitousForeignLanguage and AsLongAsItSoundsForeign, wherein nobody's supposed to understand ''any'' of the words. Sometimes overlaps with UnexplainedAccent, where a character has an accent (doesn't necessarily have to be a ''foreign'' one, mind you) that sounds out of place in the setting they're in. Compare and contrast EloquentInMyNativeTongue. Not to be confused with "[[TalkLikeAPirate Pirate Speak]]" written with a FunetikAksent.

* This is generally not all that uncommon for the average[[note]]Above a certain level of skill, you can start to ''think'' in the second language as fluently and holistically as your first, and pretty much none of this applies any more.[[/note]] speaker of foreign language. Certain common standard words are so ingrained in your speech patterns that it can be hard to drop them without conscious effort when using them in casual speech, ranging from words like "thanks" or "bye" to swearing. Generally the more surprised you are, [[ReflexiveResponse the more likely you are to respond in your native tongue]] regardless of the surroundings. The most obvious example is probably when a startle causes you to swear: it is nearly impossible not to slip into your native language when doing it and, conversely, swearing in a different language requires a conscious effort for which you don't have time when startled.
** Unless you learned swearing mostly from movies, music, the internet and other kinds of anglophone cultural export. Also, teens absorb this kind of English language pop culture right when they start rebelling against their parents' "no swearing" policies, and the parents often won't understand a hissed "Shit!", so you get away with it more easily. Words like "fuck" and "shit" and pretty much all kinds of sexual terms seem ''much'' less offensive than the equivalent words in languages like German. In ''Anime/PantyAndStockingWithGarterbelt'', for example, almost all swears spoken are in English rather than Japanese - the censors didn't mind, but the intended audience would know what they meant.
** It is not just a way to hide swear words from parents. Swear words loaned from another language (read: English) tend to have much less emotional impact than their translation in the native language. This makes it easier to throw in a "shit" in the presence of other people, as opposed to a native swear word. Add internet anonymity and otherwise normal kids will [[FlameWar call you a "retard"]] for making a mistake in a video game.
*** There's also the fact that some "foreign" common phrases for swearing seem ''hilarious'' when translated literally. A particular Dutch term of opprobrium, for example, translates to "cancer ape". "Oh yeah, well ''you're'' ... did you just call me 'cancer ape'? Seriously?" And there's the Quebecois form of swearing in which words that literally mean "shit" and "fuck" are considered mild epithets, but if someone says "sacred Christ of the tabernacle of the host of the sacrament of the holy ciborium" (except in French, of course) then he's ''deadly serious''.
* This is essentially the origins of "pidgins" -- crude languages formed by haphazardly combining words and grammatical structures from multiple languages. Typically developed as a "make do" language between groups who do not share a common language or language family, and who maintain a significant geographical or cultural distance, typically for the purpose of enabling trade between them.
** Many of these pidgins eventually become fully fledged creole languages later on, combining many aspects of the languages they were derived from.

* Often justified in real life. Children raised by parents who primarily speak one language in a place where most people speak another will often grow up speaking to their parents in unusual combinations of both. Typically, verbs, pronouns and grammatic structure will remain in the parents' native tongue, while nouns and adjectives will shift far more quickly to the new language. The result is something almost identical to Poirot Speak. In some cases, it can be how pidgin languages, like Bungee or Chiac in Canada, are formed.
** Franco-Manitobans (and other fully fluently bilingual people) do this, leading those of us who have to switch brain-language gears before changing languages completely in the dust.
* Creator/JeanClaudeVanDamme is particularly known for this in France, where he has kept using English words in the middle of his French sentences like his infamous "aware". The fact that his "philosophical" sentences are as clear as someone being high and drunk at the same time doesn't help either to understand him, no matter the language used.
* In areas where two languages come in close contact, languages will often become mingled in a phenomenon called code-switching. In the United States, a particularly well-known case is Spanglish, which is widely spoken along the US-Mexican border as well as in areas where English and Spanish speakers mingle frequently (especially restaurant kitchens). It's very similar to, though a bit less stable than, the formation of pidgin languages. (On the International Space Station, it's not that uncommon for the astronauts and cosmonauts to speak in a mixture of English and Russian.)

** Welsh is a language that predates industrialization - where it has to use a technical vocabulary, words are borrowed from English and given a Welsh gloss.
** While most Latin-derived\Romance languages are equal, Portuguese and Spanish are an egregious example - given Spain is Portugal's only neighbor, and [[MyFriendsAndZoidberg not counting Suriname and the Guyanas]] (which have no or minimal transport links with Brazil, border Brazil deep in nearly uninhabited rainforest, and are tiny anyway) both Spain and Portugal colonized all of South America. There's even the Brazilian equivalent of Spanglish, "Portunhol".
*** In Spanish, this is called "Portañol" or "Espagués" jokingly.

* Due to the popularity of India-based outsourcing, this is quite common in the IT industry, particularly the US and Great Britain. Typically, it's an English vocabulary combined with Hindi grammar and idiomatic usage. The degree to which the trope applies depends on how fluent the speaker is in English. On the extreme non-fluent end, it often ends up with a collection of English words arranged in an almost incomprehensible (to a non-Hindi speaker) structure. One of the most infamous phrases in IT is "Please do the needful", which means the Indian worker is asking for assistance, but has come to be known by those in the western nations who receive the requests, as "please do my job for me and fix this yourself without bothering me again" by outsourced workers who don't care or aren't intelligent enough to fix the issue they are escalating.
* Common in the sciences, at least in the United States. Many scientific terms and nomenclature were developed by English-speaking researchers, however, international students and post-docs are gaining greater representation in American universities. Since many of these students received primary and/or undergraduate education in English, it's not uncommon to overhear conversations in Hindi interspersed with words like "DNA" or "plasmid".
** Justified in that it's common to derive scientific terms from the "sciencey" languages (Latin, Greek, German and English).
** And sometimes justified in that there ''is no'' official translation from the German/Latin/Greek/English word, or, alternatively, that the official translation is to leave it as it is. It happens with foreign words in English as well - a few examples of untranslated foreign words in English scientific vocabulary would be "[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremsstrahlung bremsstrahlung]]" in physics (German for "braking radiation", but the German word is used untranslated) or, also of German origin, "eigenvector" and "eigenvalue" ("Eigenvektor" and "Eigenwert" in German) in mathematics, which do not refer to a mathematician called Eigen (as some people mistakenly assume), but simply mean "own vector" / "own value". That happens for non-scientific vocabulary as well, of course, such as "tsunami" rapidly replacing "tidal wave" after December 26th, 2004.
** In Spanish, there is a false friend of this trope where the scientific term is indeed translated, then abbreviated through Spanish grammar to sound just like Poirot Speak. ADN is DNA, for example, from ácido desoxirribonucleico, from deoxyribonucleic acid.
** It has more to do with convenience, similar to bilingual case, then undergraduate education. For example, in conversational Polish, one can drop words like "coursework" etc. Usually, it is an aversion of Poirot Speak as the words borrowed tend to be connected with specialization - not generic ones.
** This is common in other countries as well, thanks to almost all international publications and communications in the sciences being in English. For example, while there are German terms for some bioscience terms (and you could legitimately invent translations for the rest), they aren't really in use anymore. These days, it's less work writing your bachelor's thesis entirely in English than trying to translate all the technical terms into unwieldy German for your pedantic professor. You're going to have to learn it anyway, if you ever want to publish anything, so why not start early? They've even started introducing master courses that are conducted entirely in English to prepare the students because it's easier to just stick to one language.
* This is also common in countries where a particular subject is taught in a language not native to the country. For instance, medicine in most Arab countries outside Syria and Algeria is taught in either French or English (or, for Israeli Arabs, Hebrew), depending on what other country has colonial or other historic ties. As a result, you get Egyptian and Jordanian doctors speaking Arabic with English words like "blood pressure" and "intravenous" and "lung cancer" showing up...which makes it difficult to talk to a Lebanese doctor, who will know them as "pression artérielle", "intraveineuse" and "cancer du poumon", and both would confuse the hell out of the Syrian doctor, who knows only "daght ad-damm", "qastara wardiyyah", and "saratan al-ri'ah" - but at least the Syrian doctor can ''somewhat'' understand an Israeli Arab doctor, who uses "lahatz dam", "toch-vridi", and "sartan re'ah". All, mind you, while speaking Arabic.
** To top the MindScrew even further, the Israei Arab doctor's ''Jewish'' colleagues will actually use "arterial'noye davleniye", "vnutrivennoye", and "rak legkih" - the reason being that 90% of Israeli doctors are either Arab or immigrants from the former Soviet Union.
* It is extremely common for Muslims of any language and ethnicity to pepper their own native tongue with literally hundreds or thousands of different bits of Arabic religious parlance, to the point where many sentences of theirs could hardly be said to be in any other language at all. Naturally this, along with many Muslims being unable to make out the difference between being Muslim and Arab, creates endless confusion and frustration for those of us in the faith (sorry, "ummah") who don't know much Arabic.
** It probably works this way for most religions: walk into a Jewish kindergarten class, sit back, and don't have a clue. But on the bright side, the Shabbos Ima and Shabbos Abba will most likely share some nosh with you, because Morah taught them about ''v'ahavta l'reyacha kamocha'', and they want to practice the ''mitzvah.'' Depending on the area and the demographic, it's also common to hear English spoken with aspects of Yiddish grammar.
*** To make that just a little bit worse, both Hebrew and Yiddish are involved. On rare occasions, the kids may have learned a bissel Ladino as well.
*** This is known as [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeshivish Yeshivish]] when spoken by adults, most of whom are male Orthodox yeshiva students.
** As for Muslims using Arabic words/phrases, this is less a case of non-Arab Muslims not being able to differentiate between the faith and the ethnic/linguistic group, but rather tied to the fact that Islam originated in the Arabian Peninsula and thus, Arabic was the tongue in which the Quran was written. Add to that the Islamic belief that only that "original" Arabic version of the Quran is considered to be "divine", seeing as it was supposedly dictated to Muhammad by Gabriel/Jibril (yeah, the archangel), and the belief of the stricter Islamic groups/sects that ''only'' the Arabic Quran is binding...then it's quite understandable why Arab terms and phrases would be used for core concepts in Islam.

* Sometimes, when two people who know only a little bit of the other person's language are talking together (say, English and German), then if the English-speaker knows enough German to basically package the English in a German format, it makes comprehension much easier.
* The UsefulNotes/EnglishPremierLeague attracts a lot of foreign players and it is interesting to contrast those who learn English and then move, with those who move then learn English. The former usually speak English with an accent - either their native or American, while the latter often acquire some of the dialect local to the club they play for. A particular treat is a player who was exposed to some English at home but hasn't yet taken formal lessons and is picking up stuff from teammates and listening to the crowd. It incorporates this trope for their general utterances mingled with odd phrases in a broad local accent when talk turns to actually describing football. One such word that often comes from German & Spanish native speakers is describing all sorts of plays as "an action" which is just enough different from what a native English speaker will say (who use more specific words like shot, pass, tackle, goal) to stand out when it is said.
** (In)famously, the Danish midfielder Jan Mølby speaks English with a Scouse accent, the local dialect of Liverpool, where he played football for several years, and was even made an 'Honorary Scouser' by the local Mayor. Fellow Dane Kasper Schmeichel also has this, but speaks with a Northern accent as he grew up mostly in Cheshire and Manchester, where his father was playing at the time.

** They're called "dialects", but most of them are about as closely related as English and German (or further).

** To make matters worse and in line with this trope, some people learn Indonesian alongside their ethnic/native language, and unconsciously pepper their standard Indonesian with local equivalents, such as Javanese, Sundanese, Bataknese, Minang, etc., simply because that's the word they understand. It's more apparent in the capital, Jakarta, as many less-than-polite words used are just those words ''translated into another language'', since Indonesian is ''so'' simple that it lacked profanity.
** Then there's the great national pastime of acronymizing every word in existence like it's going out of style, resulting in sentences that ''sound'' like this trope, but actually [[SubvertedTrope subvert it.]] This is probably how Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a former president, got the nickname SBY.
** And sometimes there're just words that don't work if translated, for reasons such as simply having different connotations, or the official translation provided being ''just that bad'', or a more correct translation being awkward to pronounce. For example, "effective" is officially translated as "mangkus", but most people just use its loanword form ("efektif") anyway. Not to mention it sounds lame.
* Some foreign language teachers speak like this, especially if they are native speakers of the language they are teaching. Mainly it's words like "yes" or "no", or "please" and "thank you" or even "um".
** Some will also give you partial credit if you can put your English words into the foreign language's grammar should you forget your vocabulary during a test. "''Sushi wo'' ate-''mashita''" is an acceptable sentence in beginning Japanese. [[note]]The missing verb stem is ''tabe''.[[/note]]
** In some language-learning programs, this is an EnforcedTrope, to keep all the students at the same level. If the program hasn't covered a word yet, even if you know it, you're expected to say it in English until you officially learn it.

* It's often said that if someone is especially fluent in a foreign language, then the most reliable way to identify their native language is to listen closely when they start counting things, because although one would assume that numbers are the same everywhere, the words '''for''' individual numbers often follow language-specific patterns that make counting objects out something that even the most fluent speaker of a foreign language will probably fall back to their native language to ensure they're accurate. This is so true that children who emigrated with their families at a very early age and began schooling in their adopted country will count with the numbers they learned at school - even when speaking their native tongue, ''and even if they move back to their native country as adults.''

** [[Series/AllInTheFamily "No soy un meathead!"]]

* A classic film example is Inspector Clouseau from the ''Franchise/ThePinkPanther'' movies, expertly played by Peter Sellers. Subversion: Clouseau's horrendous (and fake) French accent was so thick the French characters in the movies had moments where they could not understand him. Several of the jokes are actually based on people '''expecting''' him to speak like this: for example, he says English ''room'' like the French ''rhume'' (cold [the virus])...

* Ahti the Janitor from ''VideoGame/{{Control}}'', who is from Finland. He speaks English with a heavy Finnish accent, occasionally slips back into Finnish and uses several Finnish idoms, which he translates to English literally.

* ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitans2003'', at least, uses this for Starfire in the stilted but understandable version. She also adds articles (usually "the") before the names of villains ("the Cinderblock" or "the Mumbo") and is also an example of PardonMyKlingon with her use of untranslatable Tamaranian words in numerous contexts. The fact that Starfire does this is [[FridgeLogic even more vexing]], considering her entire understanding of the English language stems from a direct psychic download from a native speaker, meaning she should have instant and near-perfect understanding of the language. The ''only'' words from her own language she should be using are ones without direct translations.

** Marie is a light version of this. Her {{CatchPhrase}} "Vive la France" is pretty much the only thing she says in French.

* ''ComicBook/RobinSeries'' villain Jaeger constantly talks with a heavy German accent with the occasional bit of German slipped in. This helps clarify that Jaeger really is German since he's very good at avoiding capture and his actual name and background remain hidden from the authorities and the readers for years.

* A later Pixar film, ''WesternAnimation/{{Coco}}'', does something similar to ''Ratatouille'' with its Mexican setting: the characters' English is perfect but accented, both the Spanish and English pronunciations of "Mexico" are heard, and we get moments like Miguel being offered another helping of food and responding first "''No gracias''" and then "''Si''". Unlike ''Ratatouille'', which used very few French phrases, Spanish phrases are heavily used throughout, to the point that you could say the entire film is in Spanglish.

Both this invoked form and the straight form can easily be TruthInTelevision -- as anyone who has learned a second language will tell you, it is difficult to break the habit of applying syntax and [[BlindIdiotTranslation awkwardly translating idioms]] from one's native tongue to other languages, particularly when learned later in life. Slipping into native tongue is also rather common for those who are not completely fluent with a foreign language, particularly when stressed. Any of these can be doubly true for someone who has a strong accent in their original language to begin with, especially if they take pride in it.

* As the current page image shows, ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2''. The Medic, the Heavy, and The Spy all speak mostly fluent English, but will revert to their native [[{{Fauxreigner}} (]][[FakeNationality ?]][[AsLongAsItSoundsForeign )]] languages for things like "Yes", "Thank you", and the occasional ForeignCussWord.
** As the developers mentioned, this is a part of StylisticSuck.

* ''Theatre/CyranoDeBergerac'': Lampshaded by Ragueneau at Act II Scene VII, who hears only a few words spoken in Gascon dialect to realize that [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy The Cadets are a regiment composed of Gascons]]… and to be fearful of them [[SociopathicHero (they have a reputation)]]. Notice those are the only Gascon words in the play (apart from some in Act IV), because the Gascon Cadets all talk in [[SurprisinglyGoodEnglish Surprisingly Good French]]:

* Amano Pikamee, of WebVideo/VOMSProject, has a bilingual history: while a native Japanese speaker, she is [[ButNotTooForeign half-American]] and lived in "Virtual Texas" for a time. While her English is [[SurprisinglyGoodEnglish mostly fluent]], she has a handful of VerbalTic[=s=] wherein she slips Japanese into her English, such as describing situations as "Yabai" (dangerous) or ending sentences with "dayo" (a sentence-ender that adds emphasis like an exclamation mark).

* In the novel version of '''[[Film/TwoThousandTenTheYearWeMakeContact 2010]]'' (which portrays rather friendlier Soviet-American relations than the film), the "Russlish" spoken aboard the craft is something of a running joke among the crew of the ''Leonov'', with "STAMP OUT RUSSLISH" posters being mentioned at one point. The American viewpoint character, Heywood Floyd, even mentions speaking to another American (Walter Curnow) in Russian at one point. This is, as noted below, TruthInTelevision: mixtures of Russian and English have proven to become remarkably common in space, where Russian cosmonauts and American astronauts frequently spend months together (first aboard ''Mir'', and now on the ISS), although when the book came out (1982) only one US-USSR joint project (1975's Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, which lasted all of 44 hours) had ever been tried.