This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Moved because it had become divorced from the appropriate paragraph anyway'
// Snarf uses his own name as punctuation but does have a fair amount of dialogue besides. — Growf
Looney Toons: Indeed he does; I've cut the cite. Also, Kendra (I think) — this sentence you added is a bit unintelligible itself. While the post-modern self-referentiality is appreciated <grin>, maybe you should revise it to say what you meant:
Kendra Kirai: I'm not sure what you meant to say, since that looks exactly like what I put in the first place, but I tweaked it a little bit to better clarify.
Looney Toons: I didn't change it, I just quoted it to point out the sentence that needed changing. On another topic, I must say I disagree with the statement
Given that Mokona is actually God and Ryo-Ohki appears to be at least as intelligent as a human child, if not more, I suspect they could have quite an extensive and interesting conversation...
Dark Sasami: Ryo-Ohki, being intelligent but unable to speak, is The Voiceless, not The Unintelligible. That probably holds for Mokona too. If I weren't leaving right now I'd fix it oops bye...
Looney Toons: Although I'm not entirely sure that classification is precisely right given the definition text in The Voiceless, I've made the change.
Kendra Kirai: That's because it *doesn't* fit the voiceless. They *have* a voice. They speak quite often. It's just that nobody understands them. (Well, some folks DO understand them..WE don't.) I'm moving it back, since if Mokona and Ryo-Ohki don't count for this, than neither do Pokemon or Mone-chan.
Dark Sasami: No, that's not right. Ryo-Ohki does not have language. Characters figure out what she's trying to get across from context. That makes her fit the description of what is currently called The Voiceless. Like I said on that discussion page, it's not currently well-named, though.
I'm not as sure whether Mokona has language. However, I gotta quit posting from work, so I'll return to this later...
-later-
All right, here's the deal. If it can talk in any language it's The Unintelligible. If it can't, it's The Voiceless.
That means that Pokemon, which can talk to each other in Pokemon-speak, are The Unintelligible. Ryo-Ohki does not have a language (although as I write this I realize yeah, better note that Magical Project S doesn't count) so that's The Voiceless.
What I think would make this all clearer is to switch The Voiceless and The Speechless. That means that characters like Spot (the non-talking cat who solves Hong Kong Phooey's cases) and Ryo-Ohki would be characterized as speechless, not voiceless, especially because some of them use their voices all the time—just not to make speech. At the same time, that would make characters who can talk but don't "voiceless," which is fine because hardly any of them actually grunt or whine. They are almost completely silent.
So I'm gonna do that, and God help me.
Later... Oh damn, that broke everything. I have a lot of manual fixing to do now. If only I'd known that the renamer copied instead of renaming...
...ok, everything's fixed. See if that all makes more sense now.
Looney Toons: Yeah, it does, though your temporary name certainly confused me for a while there. <grin>
Harpie Siren: Adding Donald Duck to the examples, Yea or Nay?
Ununnilium: Hmmmmmmmm, good question. I'd say no, usually because the people around him don't do the "You say you got a new job, Uncle Donald?" thing.
Tulling: What material are you basing it on? If it's the shorts from the 1940s, it doesn't qualify, because you can usually make out what he is saying. Like in this cartoon: http://youtube.com/watch?v=jIZkeYp0174
. Surely that is comprehensible to most?
Harpie Siren: But unintelligible temper tantrums are his shtick, when he goes off on one of those nobody can understand him, and there are a few jokes about people not being able to understand him. He, at the very least, deserves some sort of "honorable mention".
Heroic Jay: Whatever the case, I removed a simple "Donald Duck. Just Donald Duck." entry (not the exact words, but it really wasn't any more in-depth than that); he's basically unintelligible when having a tantrum, yes, but he's perfectly (if not easily) intelligible most of the rest of the time.
Empyrean: I'd suggest adding the Librarian from Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels to the list. All he ever says is "Oook" or "Eeek" but most characters have no trouble understanding him. People he has just met don't seem to be able to, though.
Question: a character like Hodor in A Song Of Ice And Fire, he's only ever able to say 'Hodor' (and that's why he's called that) and is a kind of mentally retarded Gentle Giant. Which kind of He Who Must Not Be Heard is he, Voiceless, Speechless or Unintelligible?
what should be done about characters that have a "panicky" or "upset" version of speech? In "Aaah! Real Monsters!", Krumm could understand "Panicky Ickis" without a problem, and in Scrubs, Carla is the only one who can understand Eliot when she's really upset.
Regarding Schnitzel from Chowder: In the episode "Gazpacho Stands Up" I was pretty sure I heard him say "OK" during his comedy routine. Did anyone else hear that? It's the only time I've actually heard him say anything other than Radda.
- This is a rather uncreatively-named trope. Would anyone be in favor of re-naming it "The Kenny", after the character who is possibly the most famous user?
Ikarus: Where would the "Whispers" from Lost go? Though people deciphered them, they are not understandable while viewing the show normally. Also I guess they cannot be attributed to a single entity/person, hence my question.
