Asian Speekee Engrish

Chop-Chop was created in an age before ethnic stereotypes became politically incorrect.

"Goddamn Mongorianzh! Shtop breaking down my shitty warr!"^translationGoddamn Mongolians, stop breaking down my city wall! ^note Kim is actually a Subverted example, because it turns out he's not Chinese -- he's really just a white guy with DID

— Tuong Lu Kim, South Park

Oh, herro! Talkee 'bout Asian Speekee Engrish here.

This is a trope about race that is now largely a Dead Horse Trope.

This trope is in play when an East Asian character (sometimes, but not always a recent immigrant) uses stereotypical mangled English, either for comedy or to establish their foreignness. Common mistakes they make in their English include:

• Swapping "L"s for "R"s and vice versa;
• Omitting articles and particles like "the", "this", "that", and "it";
• Adding "ee" to the end of nouns or replacing the actual final consonant with "ee" ("ticket" becomes "tickee");
• Dropping the leading "A" from words ("about" becomes "'bout"; "across", "'cross"; "away", "'way" and so on);
• Eliding entire verb clauses ("With no ticket, you can't get your laundry" becomes "No tickee, no laundry.");
• Extreme politeness to the point of obsequiousness;
• Extreme self-denigration;
• Complete lack of tense differentiation ("he takes", "he will take", and "he took" all become "he take").

Of course, this is a caricature—good luck finding a real East Asian immigrant who has all these traits! However, due to language differences, some Real Life immigrants may have some of these tendencies, and some of the trope's characteristics derive from Chinese Pidgin English. If a foreigner who can speak perfect English deliberately speaks like this for amusement, this is Elective Broken Language.

May be used to have a character represent the Yellow Peril. Some either sloppy or racist (or both) works will have Chinese characters speaking Japanese Ranguage, even though the "L" initial sound^note in contrast with the rather different "L" final sound is very common in China and Chinese people have no problem saying it. Other common character types that use it include Asian Rudeness, Asian Store-Owner, Chinese Launderer, Japanese Tourist, and Mighty Whitey and Mellow Yellow. If due to a translation convention or error rather than deliberate characterization, it's "Blind Idiot" Translation instead of this trope. Subtrope of You No Take Candle. Compare Tonto Talk for the Native American version, and Stereotypical South Asian English for the South Asian version.

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Examples:

Advertisement

• This Jell-O ad.
• This Calgon ad, though in a subversion only one Asian speaks this way (and it might be an act).
• Kellogg's Corn Flakes at one point had a tie-in for a "Cornfucious say" jokebook (complete with Chinaman stereotype) along with Cornfucious tagging along with country comedy duo Homer & Jethro (their normal spokesmen at the time).
• When the Isuzu car came out, TV ads placed a Japanese dealer with a customer who was unable to say "Isuzu" properly. It ends with the dealer saying "It's all right, bud. I can't say 'Chevroret'!"
• So-Hi shills for Post Rice Krinkles. You won't believe the premium.
• A series of ads for Glico candies follows a detective attempting to solve a serial murder. She figures out that a major clue is the vowels in the victims' names when written in romaji. She pronounces it like "bawl".

Anime And Manga

• Hetalia: Axis Powers does this to some extent in the Gag Dub with China and Japan. They seem to become slightly more grammatically articulate when speaking to each other or monologuing than when they speak to the Europeans, which implies switching between languages, though they keep up the Japanese Ranguage.
• In Fullmetal Alchemist, Ling's English is normally perfect, but he briefly does this as part of his Obfuscating Stupidity; after his bodyguards have a fight with the Elrics that destroys half the town, the Elrics try to tell the increasingly angry mob that it's Ling's fault. He replies "So sorry! I no understand much language of this countly! Ok, bye-bye now!" and scarpers.
• Shenhua of Black Lagoon speaks like this in both the Japanese and English dubs, something Revy makes fun of whenever they see each other to the point of nicknaming her "Chinglish". Bonus points because Revy herself is Chinese-American and doesn't partake in this, having grown up in New York. However, Shenhua is apparently this due to a case of Eloquent in My Native Tongue.
  "My English not good because I am pure Taiwanese. Maybe you like me to skin your ass, bitch?"

Comic Books

• Unsettlingly, many American comics used a Japanese variant of this, especially during WWII, as a form of propaganda. It's enough to make most modern readers flinch.
• Tintin
  • Tintin: The Blue Lotus villain Mitsuhirato talks like this, and is depicted with all the worst Japanese stereotypes, including buck teeth, thick glasses, big ears, bad pronunciation etc. At the time the character was written, Imperial Japan was at war with China, and engaged in a very brutal occupation of much of its territory. Hergé sympathised with the Chinese, and made no attempt to conceal it (Zhang Chongren, a Chinese exchange student in Belgium, asked to participate in the album's writing to ensure the Chinese characters wouldn't be depicted as badly as the natives in Tintin - Tintin in the Congo. He ended up Tuckerized as the character of Tchang in the album, but was hardly an unbiased source). This even carried over to the Nelvana adaptation.
  • Thankfully, he got better, as The Crab with the Golden Claws features a far more heroic Japanese police officer who, despite speaking with a stereotypical accent in the Nelvana version, is not portrayed as being stereotypical at all. Of course, it was published during the Nazi occupation...
• Chin-Kee from American Born Chinese talks like this. Intentionally, as he is determined to make Danny confront his embarrassment about his status as a Chinese immigrant.
• A Chinese character in The Sandman (1989) uses this as Obfuscating Stupidity, switching from perfect English in a private discussion to "velly solly, me no speakee" in order to get rid of an opium addict.
• In Superman Smashes the Klan, Roberta talks like this when she gets nervous, speaking in short, broken phrases and dropping articles. Chuck mocks her for it until she calms herself and speaks fluently.
• Wonder Woman Vol 1: During her de-powered "Mod Phase" Diana's martial arts teacher Ching ended up accidentally renamed by an author confused by his broken speech. He said "Permit me to introduce self. I *CHING!*", that is, I am Ching. Eventually someone took this to mean his name was I Ching.
• Inverted in Atomic Robo, where instead of having, say, Japanese characters speak in broken English, Robo is so bad at languages that he can only manage broken Japanese.
  Robo: (in Japanese) Thank you on voyage. My hope for the weight was not too many.
  Mailman: Your accent is atrocious.
  Robo: Apologising. I am foreign robot man.

Fan Works

• In The Legend of Total Drama Island, Duncan invokes this trope when the Asian or half-Asian Heather tries to sit with him and Ezekiel during the Awake-a-thon. Duncan says, "She so horny, love us long time" with a stereotypical Far Eastern accent and a bad imitation of Heather's voice.
• Plan 7 of 9 from Outer Space. Captain Proton has a flashback to when he was facing the invading airfleet of the evil Hung Long. For his Do Not Adjust Your Set speech a Panasian air marshal starts quoting Zero Wing using this trope until Hung Long loses patience and tosses him into the nearest gong so he can threaten our heroes in a more fluent fashion.
• Justified and downplayed in Amazing Fantasy. While he has the best grades in his middle school English class, Izuku has never had to actually use English in conversation before meeting Peter Parker. While he's mostly intelligible and grammatically correct, his phrases come off as broken and awkward and he sometimes forgets articles or pronouns. His usual Heroic Self-Deprecation and guilt over accidentally electrocuting Peter with his newly found spider-powers didn't help in the "overly apologetic" department.
  Izuku: I am most sorry, sir! [bows apologetically] I have just received my Quirk, and have struck you without thought! I most humbly apologize!
  Peter: [holding Izuku's phone] Kid, you don't...
  Izuku: I humbly request for phone! We must notify hospital for your recovery and...
  Peter: No hospitals!

Film — Animation

• Finding Jesus, an obvious Mockbuster of Finding Nemo, has a character named Mr. Sushi, who is a living sushi roll in a world of fish. He very exaggeratedly talks this way, despite this film having come out in 2020.
• The script for the scrapped Circle 7 version of Toy Story 3, unearthed by the Lost Media Wiki in 2020, was going to have Woody do this at one point in an attempt to speak with a group of Taiwanese toys. It's little wonder this incarnation of the film never saw the light of day.
  Script narration: Instantly, the toys begin to CONVERSE EXCITEDLY IN CHINESE. And as Woody tries to converse along with them, all at once...
  Woody: What? Sorry! English anyone? Wocka Wocka? Directions? Toy factory?
  Script narration: ...he resorts to the LAMEST thing a tourist can do.
  Woody: (bad Chinese accent) So solly! Me no speeky Taiwaneesy!
  Script narration: Instantly, the locals stop talking, and glower.

Film — Live-Action

• Mickey Rooney's "Mr. Yunioshi" in Breakfast at Tiffany's is one of the more enduring (and, to a modern audience, excruciating) examples of this.
• Hoy, the Chinese servant in Red Dust, is a very unpleasant Asian stereotype, complete with broken English.
• In Full Metal Jacket, a Vietnamese prostitute offers her services to the main characters with statements like "Me so horny," "Me suckee suckee," and "Me love you long time."
• One of the crew in the original King Kong (1933) is a Chinese stereotype who plays this trope constantly.
• Charlie Chan dropped pronouns and articles, called himself "humble self", and uttered wise proverbs, but used few of the other conventions, which are typical of "pidgin". Earle Derr Biggers, his creator, specified that Chan learned English by reading poetry. In one story a man he's been working with catches a fake pretending to be him over the phone because he says "savvy," which Chan would never do. Sidney Toler and Warner Oland, who played him in the movies, for the most part kept to this characterization.
• Inspector Sidney Wang talks like this in Murder by Death. This is apparently Lionel Twain's Berserk Button:
  Milo Perrier: What do you make of all of this, Wang?
  Sidney Wang: Is confusing.
  Lionel Twain: It! It is confusing! Say your goddamn pronouns!
• Subverted in the "Mr. Moto" films. The title character can speak perfect English with virtually no accent^note (apart from Peter Lorre's normal one, that is), but he sometimes adopts the stereotypical pidgin style as a form of Obfuscating Stupidity.
• Team America: World Police had Kim Jong Il speaking exclusively like this. He also sings like this. Specifically, the song "I'm So Ronery".
• At the end of A Christmas Story, the waitstaff of a Chinese restaurant attempt to sing Christmas carols to Ralphie and his family, but their accent is so thick that they sing the "fa la la" line in "Deck the Halls" as "fa ra ra." The maitre d', whose accent is respectable, keeps trying to correct them, but they get no better. When they start to butcher "Jingle Bells," he shoos them away.
• Usually avoided with Fu Manchu. Despite being the archetypal Yellow Peril villain, he speaks perfect English.
• The women in The World of Suzie Wong do some of this, mostly dropping pronouns.
• 7 Faces of Dr. Lao:
  Ed Cunningham: Hey! How come you speak perfect English all of a sudden?
  Dr. Lao: Oh, it comes and goes. Whatever dialect the mood requires.
  Ed Cunningham: Oh, it just comes and goes?
  Dr. Lao: Whassa matta you? Alla time asking silly questions! Wise guy!
• In Impact (1949) detective Charles Coburn tries to question an aged Asian played by Philip Ahn. When he doesn't answer immediately the detective asks him "Savvy English?" To which he replies (in perfect English): "Yes. Also French, Italian and Hebrew")
• The Departed: Jack Nicholson's character says, "No tickee, no laundry," to insult some Asian gangsters with the broken English and Chinese laundry stereotypes.
• In Keeping the Faith, Ken Leung plays a One-Scene Wonder karaoke salesman who appears to be full of this trope. It turns out to be an act that he quickly drops when he realizes Ben Stiller and Edward Norton's characters aren't buying his sales pitch. From that point on, he speaks perfect English.
• Parodied in Lethal Weapon 4:
  Riggs: Maybe we can get some food. Flied lice?
  Benny Chan: Flied lice!? It's called "fried rice", you plick!
• The Private Eyes: Mr. Uwatsum is a modern day samurai with exaggerated Japanese mannerisms, ineffectively describing Japanese vowels, ending a sentence with "ah-so" and offending Inspector Winship, and offering fish eyes and hummingbird cookies.
• Rat Race: In a tour bus full of I Love Lucy fans dressed as Lucy Ricardo, an Asian woman says, "He ruined our whole wacation!"
• The Indian Taxi Driver in TRON: Legacy speaks with broken English when Sam lands on his roof while escaping ENCOM HQ at the beginning of the film.
  Driver: No free ride! No free taxi! You pay!
• The Pest: The Chinese Restaurant scene.
  Manager: (to Pest) Why I no understand any you chinese?
• Su-Chin from Juno speaks in mangled English that evokes this trope, but no accent whatsoever, to rather surreal effect.
• In The Cobbler, when the hero shapeshifts into an Asian man, he is surprised to hear himself talk Engrish.
• Everest (2015): Averted. When Beck asks Ang Dorje if he can speak English, Ang Dorje replies with "Probably better than you" to much laughter at Beck's expense. Played with when it comes to Yasuko; it's made clear that English isn't her first language and she simply avoids speaking most of the time.
• Freaky Friday (2003) - Pei Pei, the hostess of the Chinese restaurant, speaks in broken English.
• Invoked in Eden where the titular Eden is forced to wear a Qipao and speak in this type of accent. Despite the fact that she speaks perfect English normally.
• Referenced in The Muppets Take Manhattan: When a dog owner speaks to his pet using Baby Talk, Rowlf deadpans, "You speak Chinese like a native."
• UHF has a gag near the end where one of the mooks who's kidnapped George and Stanley opens a closet marked "Supplies" to find Kuni and his friends from the martial arts studio, who shout "SUPPLIES!" before kicking the bad guys' asses.
• Men in Black 3 features Wu, the owner of a Chinese restaurant who is actually an alien in disguise, and speaks and dresses like an exaggerated stereotype. Agent J actually calls him out on this by saying he should "quit that chop socky shit".
• Lampshaded and played for laughs in Crazy Rich Asians when Peik Lin's dad, Wye Mun, introduces himself with a horribly broken Engrish accent — then confesses a moment later that he speaks fluent English and attended college in the United States.
• Played for Laughs in Dumb And Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd with Cindy, a Chinese exchange student who only speaks in broken engrish. Eventually it's revealed that she not only speaks perfect English, but does it in a normal American accent, but intentionally plays up this trope just to get boys.
• Averted in Sixteen Candles by Long Duk Dong. Despite perfectly valid complaints about the character being a cringeworthy Asian stereotype, while English is clearly not Dong's first language, his speech does not include any of these features.
• In Godzilla vs. Kong, Bernie Hayes tries this when Madison Russell and Josh Valentine visit his home, putting on an awful attempt at an Asian accent and saying that he's seen their faces and will contact the authorities. Madison points out that he doesn't trust the authorities, then gives her name, knowing he'll recognize it and let them in.
• It's a brief comedic moment in The Wind and the Lion, as President Theodore Roosevelt is presented with his birthday cake, candles lit, with foreign dignitaries at the table:
  John Hay: (to Japanese dignitary) You... likey knifey? You... likey forky? Splendid.
  Japanese dignitary (in a toast, after President Roosevelt blows out the birthday candles): May the breath of Theodore Roosevelt be like the wind that he has sent across the Pacific: wind that bends the trees of aggression and injustice, but a true wind marked also for its warmth. An American wind.
  Japanese dignitary (to John Hay): You... likey speechy?

Jokes

• A joke making the rounds has a Chinaman at his broker wondering why the stocks he invested in were losing money. The broker tells him "Fluctuations." The Chinaman responds "Fluck you Amelicans, too!"
• What time is it when a Chinaman goes to the dentist? 2:30 (Tooth hurty).
• One joke mocks and subverts this trope. A (presumably white) woman at a banquet is sitting next to an Asian man. Turning to him, she asks, "Likee soupee?" He nods and they continue eating. After dinner, it turns out that the Asian man is actually one of the speakers. Approaching the podium, he gives a speech, intelligently discussing difficult subject matter in perfect, unaccented English. Returning to his seat, the man turns to the woman and asks, "Likee speechee?"
• This may have actually happened. In 1992, a linguist in Japan, his eyes twinkling, told an American colleague that the Japanese were very interested in President Clinton's "erection".
• A boy asks a Chinese girl for her phone number. She says, "Sex! Sex! Sex! Free sex tonight!" He says, "Wow!" Then her friend says, "She means 666-3629."
• From the Don Imus radio show: an executive is delegating duties in preparation for a visit from the company higher-ups. He says "Mr.Jenkins, you handle logistics, Mr. Porter, you take care of the secretarial pool, and Mr. Yukimoto, you are in charge of supplies." Come the big visit, the exec, Jenkins and Porter are present. The exec hollers "Where's Yukimoto?" Yukimoto pops out of a closet door and shouts "Suplise!!"

Literature

• Subverted and deconstructed in John Steinbeck's East of Eden. The character of Lee seems to be this, but is actually faking it to go along with white people's expectations.
• Lampshaded in the Phryne Fisher stories, when Lin Chung plays 'stage Chinaman', usually to tease Phryne. She isn't amused.
• In Shanghai Girls, Pearl speaks English perfectly, but reverts to this trope because tourists tip better when she speaks stereotypically.
• In The Dark Tower, a group of Japanese Tourists in New York City speak Engrish while trying to get a character to take their picture.
• One of the many racially insensitive things edited out of Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys books during their rewrites in the 60s.
• Sing the cook in Edgar Rice Burroughs's The Monster Men. To be sure, he's from Southeast Asia and would have had little practice speaking English.
• Wu in Star Bridge initially talks like this ("No killee poor Chinee boy!"). Until Horn calls him on the act by noting that Wu's parrot speaks perfect English. From then on, Wu does as well.
• As a Heroes Tie-In Novel, Hiro's English is as poor as it is on the show in Saving Charlie. Part of the plot is that spending so much time in Texas teaches him better English, as he's forced to practice with everyone he speaks to except Charlie (whose Photographic Memory lets her pick up phrases in languages with ease).
• If you want to know what a Chinese person's imperfect English might really sound like, read the novels of Amy Tan. Characters based on her mother speak this way and, like the real Li Bingzi, are Eloquent in My Native Tongue.
• Much Ado About Grubstake: Wing Lee the Chinese baker is one of the smartest characters in the story, but he sometimes uses broken English. Sometimes he speaks full sentences, only to omit particles and articles in the next sentence.
  Wing Lee: He always hated working for Mr. Lockwood. Why now he change?
• The Night Mayor is set largely inside a virtual world based on 1940s movies. At one point, Tunney visits Chinatown, where he speaks with three people with varying accents: a fortune teller who has the full-on stereotypical accent, a young woman who speaks better English with occasional grammatical lapses, and a corrupt official who speaks perfect English (with a British accent). The fortune teller turns out to be a white man in disguise.
• Lick Jimmy in The Harp in the South is a perfect example of this being played straight. He also happens to be an Asian Store-Owner. Somewhat justified in that he's already elderly when he migrates to Australia, so it's understandable that he might have a language barrier. But it's still incredibly racist by modern standards.
• Professor Moriarty Series: Chinese hoodlum Lee Chow, one of Moriarty's Co-Dragons, has trouble pronouncing many English words and prefers to speak in shorter sentences in a stereotypical fashion.
  Lee Chow: I got good ear. I hear much, no speakee until asked.
• In A Tree Grows in Brooklyn there is a scene that describes a Chinese Launderer speaking this way, using stereotypical words like "tickee" and "shirtee" because he doesn't know much English beyond what he needs for the job. For the time the book is set (turn of the 20th century) it was Truth in Television that many laundries in big cities in America were run by Chinese immigrants, but it's nevertheless this trope.
• The Circus of Doctor Lao: As with his movie-adaptation counterpart listed above, Lao is perfectly capable of speaking correct English, but deliberately slips into this mode on occasion, mostly to deflect unwanted questions.
• In Snow Crash, the advertising for Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong invokes this trope, with phrases like "Whether seriously in business or on a fun-loving hijink." However, when Hiro actually meets Mr. Lee, it turns out he speaks perfect English with a mild British accent.

Live-Action TV

• Frasier:
  • An episode had obnoxious sports host Bulldog invoking this while attempting an ad for a Chinese restaurant.
    Roz: We're gonna get sued this time for sure.
  • He does it again in "Ham Radio". When KACL puts on an old-time radio murder mystery for the stations anniversary, Bulldog plays a Chinese man named Mr. Wing. When Frasier asks if Mr. Wing saw anything suspicious, he responds, "Oh, me no lookee, me go beddy-bye chop-chop." Roz responds with "Chinese Embassy on Line 1." Not that it mattered, because Bulldog got such a bad case of stage fright he completely clammed up forcing Frasier to turn the character into The Voiceless on the spot.
• MADtv (1995) had the character of Ms. Swan. Some of her catchphrases include "You no say dat before," "I tell you e'ery-ting," "He look-a like a man,, and mentioning her salon, "Gorgeous Pretty Beauty Nail Salon" - but calling it "Goja Pitty Booty Nay Sa-Lon".
• 2 Broke Girls has Han "Bryce" Lee own the diner at which the two main characters work. He sometimes talks like this.
• Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report occasionally trots out his character "Ching Chong Ding Dong," who speaks in an exaggerated Engrish accent, spouting stereotypical lines like, "Ooooh, me rikey tea!" Colbert admits that the character is incredibly racist, but also insists that he's not racist for performing the character, because, "The character is speaking through me."
• Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch "Erizabeth L." portrays a Japanese man, Yakomoto (sic) posing as Luchino Visconti. As well as his own speech, the entire dialog of his play is in R/L swapping.
  • "I bling a dispatch flom Prymouth."
  • "When you have a rine, ling your berr. Ling ling. Rike this."
  • "Me vely impoltant Itarian firm dilectol. 'Alliveldelchi Loma...'"
  • Also "The Cycling Tour" had a very Chinese-sounding "Blitish Ambassador" who had trouble pronouncing words like "Cornwall" ("Co-co-corrrrworrrrrrr")
• Some Korean characters in M*A*S*H, though others speak English normally or don't speak it at all.
• Dr. Park on Monday Mornings is Korean and speaks in extremely broken English, but other than that, he's nothing like this stereotype. He's an extremely self-assured and brilliant neurosurgeon with blunt-to-rude bedside manner. Rule of Funny comes into play, because "No do — dead" and its variations are quite hilarious.
• Hiro Nakamura from Heroes. Especially at the start of the series, he does not speak English very well and frequently needs his buddy Ando to translate for him. Ando, however, speaks normally, and Future Hiro does as well.
• Invoked in the Doctor Who serial "The Talons of Weng Chiang." The stage magician Li H'sen Chang has an accent, but he plays it up during his performances because his Victorian audience would otherwise doubt that he's actually Chinese.
• Hawaiian Detective Harry Hoo (a parody of Charlie Chan, played by a Caucasian) from an episode of Get Smart speaks like this. Smart unintentionally imitates him a couple of times. The same episode introduces a Yellow Peril KAOS agent named The Claw (again, a Caucasian guy). Thanks to this trope, Max can never get his name right.
  The Claw: Not "The Craw"! The Craw!
• Subverted in an early episode of Gunsmoke. A Chinese immigrant character speaks this way when dealing with most whites he meets. It then turns out that he can speak English flawlessly, but that hard experience has taught him that racists are more likely to bully him for speaking English properly than for just acting the way they expect him to. He only drops the pretense around people he trusts.
• Similarly subverted in a Sanford and Son in which Fred walks into a clothing store. When he spots a Chinese-American, he asks to see the manager and engages in some "Engrish" before the man (who happens to be the manager) responds; again in perfect English.
  Manager: You don't need me. You need a speech therapist.
• In Canada's Worst Driver, Jason Zhang from Season 2 would employ such speech and pretend he barely spoke English so he could get out of driving tickets.
  Jason (demonstrating): "Solly! English... no!"
• Comes up in the Canadian series about a Korean family, Kim's Convenience:
  • Purposely done for Mr. and Mrs Kim who immigrated from Korea to Canada as adults; their English is broken and accented, but done in a more realistic manner and not used for mockery. Mr. Kim's actor (who is a Canadian of Korean descent and so actually speaks English fluently without the accent) has clarified that their accents are a part of who Mr. and Mrs Kim are so people shouldn't have to worry.
  • Mr. and Mrs Kim's daughter Janet, who is Canadian-born and so speaks English as her first language, invokes this trope when a security guard catches her sneaking into a film festival and Janet pretends to not speak English well. This unfortunately haunts her when the security guard runs into her at the store a few times, and during the second time Jung and Kimchee (her brother and friend, also Korean-Canadian) also have to fake accented terrible English to go along with Janet's act. Mrs. Kim is unimpressed by her daughter and angrily asks her, "You pretend to talk like me to get a free movie ticket?"
• Bones: In "The Body In The Bag", Mama Liu, the owner of the Chinese restaurant that deals in counterfeit goods, speaks in a stereotypical Chinese accent. But it's shown to be an act to make her look less intimidating when she suddenly drops it when she learns her beloved Jenny was murdered.
• All of the commentary on Banzai was this.

Music

• Rucka Rucka Ali's Song Parody "I'm A Korean", in addition to playing Interchangeable Asian Cultures for all its worth, is sung entirely in this style.
• Invoked in Hikaru Utada's song Dirty Desire where they sing "In my fantasies I love you long time". Presumably they have N-Word Privileges.
• Parodied at the end of Allan Sherman's song "Lotsa Luck", where he sings thus...
  When you buy a tape recorder of the automatic kind,
  Lotsa luck, pal, lotsa luck.
  If it's simplified for folks who aren't mechanically inclined,
  Lotsa luck, pal, lotsa luck.
  There's a small instruction booklet that's a hundred pages long,
  And on page one, you get stuck.
  It says, "If unsatisfactory,
  You must bring this to the factory,"
  But the factory's in Japan,
  So rotsa ruck!
• the music video for "Talk Dirty To Me" by Jason Derulo has an east Asian woman say, "Wha? I don' unnastan'"

Newspaper Comics

• U.S. Acres: In one strip, Orson sneezes and later receives a phone call from China. The caller says "Bress you".

Professional Wrestling

• Lin Bairon's gimmick in Yoshihiro Tajiri's promotions SMASH and Wrestling New Classic. She's immigrant from Hong Kong to Japan, so it makes sense she'd speak technically correct but overly simplistic English...if she had gone to an English language country. It was supposed to be comedic to begin with but reached bathos when Michael Kovac corrupted her into one of his Disciples Of Hell.

Radio

• Round the Horne: Recurring Yellow Peril villain Doctor Cou-En Ginsberg (M.A., failed), played by Kenneth Williams, often spoke in this fashion.

Theatre

• In They Knew What They Wanted, Chinese cook Ah Gee introduces himself as a "velly good cook."
• Brian's Japanese fiance/wife Christmas Eve from Avenue Q, particularly her use of Rs in place of Ls and the exclusion of certain articles in her sentences. In the song "Everyone's A Little Bit Racist," Princeton and Kate Monster laugh at her pronouncing the word "recyclables" as "recycuraburrs."
• In the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific, Bloody Mary talks like this, but her songs are excellent, sometimes complex English in construction. Here's her talking to Billis:
  Bloody Mary: [giving a Shrunken Head to Lt. Cable] You like, I give you free!
  Luther Billis: Free? You never gave me anything free!
  Bloody Mary: You no saxy like lieutellen.

Compare with her song, Bali Ha'i;

Bali Ha'i will whisper
On the wind of the sea:
"Here am I, your special island!
Come to me, come to me!"

However, it may be worth nothing that other characters sing "Bali Ha'i" at other points in the play as well, so she may just be parroting a popular song, not making it up herself. Bloody Mary's song "Happy Talk" is much more of a piece with her dialog.

• Billy, Reno, and Moonface's disguises at the climax of Anything Goes definitely falls into this category.
• Inverted in the flashback scenes of David Henry Hwang's Golden Child, where, due to the Translation Convention, it's Western missionary Rev. Baines whose speech sounds broken in his attempts to speak Chinese.
• Humorously and brilliantly inverted in Pacific Overtures, where it's the Westerners who speak like this, while the people of Japan speak in formal, proper English.

Video Games

• Command & Conquer:
  • Downplayed in Command & Conquer: Generals with the China faction: While there's a trace of L/R switch here and there, overall the units are still comprehensible.
  • Similarly, Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 has various traits from the list, but spread over different units (and set in a Japan that's culturally not very different from its pre-WW2 days). The most offensively obsequious one is the Engineer, and that's because he's a Salaryman stereotype.
• Hogs of War plays this to comedic effect with the Japanese squad members.
• The Interactive Fiction game Recluse sports a hulking Asian butler with a pronounced physical resemblance to Oddjob and utterances such as "Next time, have appointment!"
• Deus Ex has been criticized for the stereotypical accents all Chinese characters employ in the game's Hong Kong chapter.
• Bioshock's Dr. Suchong shows some of these habits: he doesn't use 'be' verbs, tense differentiation, or plurality, he refers to himself in the third person, etc. One example: "You can no reuse protector suit. Take a man, graft skin and organs straight into suit, otherwise suit not work. Ryan say Big Daddy too expensive. Ryan can go suck egg."
  • Although some of his audio diaries have near-perfect syntax, indicating he's exaggerating his affectations to some extent: "I can't seem to get the damn Big Daddies to imprint on the little brats. The protection bond is just not forming..."
• Played straight in Vietcong, where any Vietnamese character speaks this way, except the Hue Mayor, Captain Soat, and Major Thu, all of whom speak English fluently.
• In Police Quest 4: Open Season, the Korean 7-Eleven owner talks like this. "No steal from me, you pay!"
• The announcer of Kasumi Ninja speaks like this. Unfortunately, it's not even the most offensive stereotype in the game.
• Averted in The Matrix: Path of Neo, all the Asian characters speak perfect English except for the fact that they have accents.
• In Rallo Gump, the expository notes found in blocks are sometimes narrated by a person with a heavy East Asian accent.
• Guilty Gear's Jam Kuradoberi always spoke like this given the verbal tics and speech patterns of her Japanese; it isn't present in the English translations of X and XX, but Guilty Gear Xrd -REVELATOR- makes a point of emphasizing it in the English version of many of her win quotes.
  Jam: [win quote against Sin] "You have very good basics. I like...If you find good chef to prepare you perfectly, you will be even better man. I good chef! Very good chef!"
• Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines plays this trope like a ping-pong ball. Keiko, Tseng, Ji Wen Ja and Lu Feng are among the worst offenders since Yellowface went out of style^note Tseng and Lu Feng are both voiced by a native Cantonese speaker, so their accent has to be entirely by choice, Wong Ho, Tsao, The Mandarin and the Cheng brothers speak English with realistic accents of varying thickness, Kiki, Johnny and Ming Xiao speak perfect American English, and Mr. Ox... no-one in- or out-of-game knows exactly what the deal with Mr. Ox is.
• Saddam in Leisure Suit Larry 1: In the Land of the Lounge Lizards even writes Engrish.
  THIS NO RIBLALY — NO LEEDING
• Sniper: Path of Vengeance does this rather badly in one stage where your enemies are triad mobsters. They still speak English, but with badly stereotyped accents.
  "Thlow da weapon down!"
• Zig-zagged with Grand Cathay in Total War: Warhammer III, a Fantasy Counterpart Culture to Imperial China with multiple voice actors covering its variety of units and heroes. Some of them, like faction leader Miao Ying (voiced by Chinese-born, British-educated actress Rae Lim), sound like someone speaking Chinese-accented Received Prononciation. And then there are units like the Jade Lancer, whose L/R switch and wovel pronounciation makes them sound like a kung fu parody from the eighties.

Webcomics

• Yuffie in Ansem Retort talks this way so that people will be under the impression that she knows martial arts.

Web Original

• The Japanese girlfriend from the aptly named "My Japanese Girlfriend" sketch by Brandon Rogers speaks this way. Though, to be fair, this might have more to do with the fact that she isn't actually Japanese at all.
  The Girlfriend: Sushee now, prease!
  The Girlfriend: If you cut sushee like you suck dick I'd have a three course meal by now.
  [the boyfriend angrily hands her a sushi plate that spells "cunt"]
  The Girlfriend: Joke's on yu, gay shit, I can't read the engrish.
  [he finally snaps and chokes her à la Homer Simpson]
• Liu Kang in the Mortal Kombat sprite cartoons speaks like this.
  "I am Ruu Kang!"
  • Though to be fair, he IS voiced by an in-character Peter Chao, who uses an overly exaggerated Chinese accent.
• Used among many Asian YouTubers, usually to imitate and satirize their parents/culture.
  • Occasionally used by Gunnarolla to parody and deflect racist comments he received. Similarly, a musical response to a racist rant that went viral does the same thing.
  • Averted by Asian-Australian YouTuber yourchonny, but played straight with Chonny's parents...or Chonny's portrayal of his parents.
• The Game Grumps Let's Play series has made frequent use of racial humour of this nature. They invented a character called Sad Hoshi, a depressed Japanese man who doesn't want to burden anyone else with his problems ("It's my responsibirrrrity!"), who they subsequently decide has a lolicon porn stash and is attracted to children. In a later episode they acted out a telephone call with Shigeru Miyamoto, who speaks in garbled English and basic Japanese ("Yessu! Watashi wa Mario Maker desu!") and calls the show 'Glame Glumps'. These examples and their animated adaptations attracted some controversy and accusations of racism in the comments section.
• ''Morny! Ruin sorbees!''....This joke was going around the web for a while. When Asian Speekee Engrish & room service collide. Stupidity ensues!
• Random Assault: The hosts are not above doing offensive Asian accents. Played straight with the title of episode 020: "Ret's Get Lacist!!"
• One of The Last Podcast on the Left, Henry Zebrowski, does this enough that it's considered an achievement when he manages to hold off on doing so for the first thirteen minutes of their four part series on the Japanese Apocalypse Cult Aum Shinrikyo. He really goes to town when impersonating Hong-Kong-orn Charles Ng in the "Leonard Lake and Charles Ng" episodes. The main reason the hosts do this so readily is that the people they do impressions of were serial killers and cult leaders that they're actively mocking. They are also quick to note that Charles Ng in particular really did speak that way.
• The Hobo Bros sometimes do "Asian voices" that use this accent. The brothers note that they have Chinese ancestry themselves, but still find the voices funny.
• Third Rate Gamer has a crudely drawn oriental man, aptly named Offensive Stereotype, who talks just like this ("Okay then! I go drive on rong side of road!"). This is a parody of The Irate Gamer and his character Ronnie the Skeleton.
• The Japanese hololive VTubers, apart from a couple that can speak fluent English (including Kiryu Coco who was apparently raised in the United States), are this. Justified since English isn't their first language but they want to learn it to better communicate with overseas viewers, which has led to a number of fun and/or cute moments.
  • In one "Learning Elite English" stream with Coco and Sakura Miko that involved asking an English speaker how to get to the Statue of Liberty and then for Miko to ask Coco (who is a humanoid dragon) to fly her to the top, Miko introduces herself by saying "Ecuscuse me, Freedomu", describes the statue as "Freedom Lady", then asks to go to the top with "Me! Me statue lebady, top, toppu go!" After Coco correctly translates that, out of nowhere Miko says "go butterfly patapatta, patta patta top, jump patapatta butterfly", which Coco translates as Miko wanting to jump off the top to kill herself. 10 minutes later Coco realises that she's confused the word "butterfly" with the basic form "fly". Pattapatta was an onomatopoeia for flapping wings.
• Website Engrish.com is dedicated to humorous examples of oriental (and other) malaproprisms in English. Its counterpart, Hanzi Smatter, is dedicated for the inversion of this trope (Western malaproprisms and mistakes in Oriental languages and script).
• SuperMarioLogan - Jackie Chu, being meant to embody multiple stereotypes of East Asian people, speaks in a heavily East Asian-influenced dialect. As such, he commonly has issues pronouncing words containing the letter "L" ("Alright, class!" becomes "Arright, crass!") and complex consonant clusters (“Screaming” becomes “Creaming”) and sometimes other sounds in peculiar situations (“Vagina” becomes “Varira”). This also affects his grammar to the point where he may reduce sentences a lot (“You are dumb!” becomes “You dumb!”). A well-known instance of him embodying multiple effects of these impediments is his egg roll song from “SML Movie: Groundhog Day!”. (“Me rikey egg roll! Me rikey egg roll! Get in my berry! Get in my berry!”)

Western Animation

• Courage the Cowardly Dog: Di Lung, complete with "watch where ya go in, yah foo".
• Family Guy:
  • Tricia Takanawa, Quahog 5 News' reporter who is Asian-American and speaks in a nasal, blatantly Japanese monotone. Her vocal qualities and placement in various situations are done to play up the "Asian enunciation of English" stereotype.
  • There's also Mr. Washee Washee, the local dry cleaner. In "Tiegs for Two," Peter gets into an argument with Washeee Washee over his missing shirt and begins to adopt Washee Washee's accent in the process.
  Mr. Washee Washee: I no have your shirt!
  Peter: You yes have my shirt!
• South Park has featured this trope a number of times:
  • South Park's resident Chinese-American is Tuong Lu Kim, who owns the City Wok restaurant and whose thick accent causes him to repeatedly call it "Shitty Wok." Many seasons after his introduction it's revealed that he's actually a white man with multiple personality disorder.
  • Subverted in "The China Probrem", where the Chinese people at the restaurant speak with an American accent, while Cartman and Butters adopt a stereotypical Chinese disguise and speak like this. Cartman is wearing a paddy hat, while Butters is wearing a fez. They're both squinting and wear large fake front teeth. The real Chinese man tells them they're not Chinese.
  • Taken to extremes in one episode where a Japanese man and Chinese man argue with each other with the nearly the exact same accent and can't understand each other.
• Surfaces occasionally (along with other Asian stereotypes) in "Fortune Cookie Caper," the Chinese master-villain episode of Mister T.
• The Simpsons:
  • A staple of Krusty The Clown's archaic, offensive comedy routine in "The Last Temptation of Krust" is a "Chinaman" impression, complete with fake buck teeth and catchphrase ("Me so solly!").
  • In "Yokel Chords", there's a one off gag with a Chinese restaurant owner who speaks English without an accent to his wife but then puts on an exaggerated Chinaman act, complete with a hat with a long braid to get Homer to come drink at his restaurant.
  "Mr.Simpson! You good man! We happy see you! You not come long time! Come sit, drinky-drinky!"
• Joe Jitsu from The Dick Tracy Show.
• In The Aristocats, Scat Cat's jazz ensemble is made of cats from all countries. While the American, English, Italian, and Russian cats are fairly mild stereotypes, the Chinese Cat not only talks like this, but has buck teeth, wears a cymbal like a coolie hat, and in the song about how great being a cat is, sings only about Chinese food, while playing the piano with chopsticks. Seriously.
• Danger Mouse: In "The Wild, Wild Goose Chase," DM and Penfold are in Hong Kong looking for Baron Greenback, when they happen upon a native who tells them "he pack glip and take tlip. He give you lunalound!" As DM and Penfold leaves, the guy says to himself, "Insclutible Blitish. Clazy, man...clazy!"
• In "The Brothers Matzoriley" segment of The Super 6, Wong (the middle head of three) was a chinese stereotype,particularly when he went "Confusion Say . . ."
• In the made-for-TV Mr. Magoo cartoons, Magoo had a Chinese houseboy named Charlie. He spoke in fractured English and a thick stereotypical accent, but when USA Network ran the cartoons in the 90s, Charlie's voice was redubbed with a clearer English accent.
• When MTV and the Disney Channel ran The Beatles cartoons in the late 80s, the opening of the first season was left out because of a scene where Ringo eludes a gaggle of fangirls by impersonating a Chinaman with a garbage can lid as a hat. Similarly, many first season episodes were not aired because of their presentation of Oriental stereotypes. (e.g.: In "It Won't Be Long," a botanist has a sign reading "Dr. Ah So—Honolable Ploplietor.")
• World War II propaganda cartoons like Tokio Jokio, Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips, and The Ducktators tended to depict Japanese people talking in this manner.
  • In Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips, a Japanese soldier is presented trying to attack Bugs and rambling in incoherent Japanese. When Bugs impersonates a Japanese general, the soldier tries to commit seppuku when he almost kills him, but then Bugs gives himself away by eating a carrot:
  Soldier: (to us) Ooh, honolable ah-ha! That no Japanese general. That Bugs Bunny. I see him in Walner Blothers-Reon Schresinger-Mellie Merodies cartoon picture. Oh, he no fool me!
• In American Dad! Francine's (adoptive) parents are very much the first generation stereotype of Asian Americans, speaking in short, curt, sentences and dropping articles.
• King of the Hill has the Souphanousinphones, who are Laotian, and the man of the family, Khan, frequently slips into the curt-rudeness as well as having an accent and dropping the occasional articles. Played with in that most of his curtness is him deliberately being rude because he is just a massive jerk and he's playing it up just to mess with Hank Hill's head.
• Played straight and subverted in the same sentence on an episode of Archer
  Archer: With who? 'Cause that bucktoothed little shit doesn't even speak English.
  Bucky: I do a rittre ^note little bit.
  Archer: No you don't!
  Bucky: And correct syntax is 'with whom!'
• The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan completely averts this. Chan himself speaks good English with just a hint of Oriental flavor. His ten kids speak perfectly clear English (Henry, the eldest has a noticeable Oriental twang in his voice but otherwise perfectly understandable).
• The Daffy Duck vehicle "China Jones" goes to town with this. Porky is Charlie Chun, whom Daffy thinks is a detective who he thinks wants in on the possible reward for capturing the deadly criminal Limey Louie. At the end, it turns out Chun is Jones' laundryman, come to collect on a big laundry bill. The cartoon has Jones' encounter with the Dragon Lady.
  Jones: And why might they be calling you the Dragon Lady?
  Dragon Lady: (breathes fire on Jones) Is answer question?
  Jones: (wearily and defeatedly) Yes...is answer question!
• The Josie and the Pussycats episode "All Wong In Hong Kong" invokes this trope from the title alone, but also later when the team is at a Hong Kong hotel and Melody is paged for a phone call.
  P.A. speaker: Phone call for Missy Mewody. Phone call for Missy Mewody.
• In Pacific Heat, nearly every Asian character speaks in a heavy stereotypically Chinese accent.
• Terrytoons' Hashimoto San (a segment of The Hector Heathcote Show) effects this. However, as creator Bob Kuwahara was a native of Japan, the stories are steeped in Japanese traditions and folklore, which makes the dialect more palatable.
• One of the many, many race-related tropes parodied in Minoriteam, specifically with team leader Dr. Wang.

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