Basic Trope: Aliens are capable of speaking English or another human language.
- Straight: Aliens arrive on Earth and meet Bob. The aliens speak to him in English.
- Exaggerated:
- Human Aliens arrive on Earth and meet Bob. The aliens' English is so good that they begin to correct Bob's own English.
- The aliens have English accents.
- The aliens not only speak English but also have actual English names, like Bill and Frank.
- The aliens speak in Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness and/or Purple Prose.
- The aliens can speak an Earth language, but an unexpectedly minor one such as Danish, Welsh, or that of a remote tribe in Papua New Guinea.
- After conversing with Bob, the aliens turn to Pablo and hold a conversation with him in fluent Spanish.
- Not only can the aliens speak English, they are also capable of speaking Portuguese, Spanish, French, Dutch, German, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Hindi, Malay, Dog, etc.
- Downplayed: The aliens speak simple, heavily accented English and frequently consult their equivalent of a phrase book, often having to just use their own words for things and hope Bob can tell by context.
- Justified:
- The aliens have been watching Earth for a long time, and learned its languages by monitoring communications.
- Some aliens have been secretly living on Earth for at least several years, giving them enough time to learn the local language(s).
- The aliens are telepathic and learned English by reading Bob's mind.
- The aliens use a universal translator device that can somehow decipher any language for ease of communication.
- By some kind of cosmic coincidence, the aliens' language just happens to sound exactly like English.
- In their universe, language barriers are imaginary or fictional and every alien race, regardless of species, can literally speak English or any other existing language perfectly.
- English is the universe's one true language. Eventually, all alien linguistics will convergently evolve into English or any language that's very similar to it with only minor deviations.
- Inverted:
- Aliens arrive on Earth and meet Bob. He starts speaking in their native language.
- Bob lands on the aliens' planet and starts speaking in their native language.
- Subverted:
- At first glance, the aliens seem to speak English, but when they try to talk to humans, all the humans hear is alien noises.
- Aliens arrive on Earth and meet Bob. They converse in Bilingual Dialogue.
- The aliens try to speak English, but their grasp of the language is so poor that the humans don't understand them.
- The aliens have put a lot of effort into learning the Earthlings' language, but it never occurred to them that there is more than one language on Earth. When they meet Bob it turns out Bob only speaks English and the aliens only speak Chinese.
- At first glance, the aliens seem to speak English, but it turns out that they are just repeating random sentences they have heard while watching Earth and which they don't even know the meanings.
- Double Subverted:
- The aliens find that both they and Bob are more fluent in Esperanto and speak in that.
- The aliens try to speak to Bob in a human language, but he doesn't understand it for whatever reason. So they decide to use telepathy instead.
- The aliens knows how to speak English, they are just repeating random sentences just to mock the humans and/or to see their reactions.
- Parodied:
- The aliens speak in hilariously broken English with their thick native accents.
- The aliens spent a lot of time studying and learning English, only to land their spacecraft on a farm in Kazakhstan where no one understands English. Everyone resorts to hand gestures.
- Zig Zagged: The aliens speak English perfectly well at first, only later they say they have trouble with certain phrases, even though they've been speaking fluently and said they have a total mastery of the language. Bob offers to converse in the aliens' language, but no one on Earth can learn it, so the aliens go back to speaking fluent English and the matter is never raised again.
- Averted:
- Starfish Aliens speak languages incomprehensible to human beings.
- There are no aliens in the work.
- Enforced:
- "We need the aliens to speak English. It'll show how intelligent they are."
- "We don't have time to create an entire new language for the aliens, let's make them speak English and later we create a justification for that."
- Lampshaded: "They have English classes on your planet?"
- Invoked:
- The aliens decide to study the English language before paying a visit to Earth, so that conversations don't end up like weird games of charades.
- Humans make First Contact with aliens and start teaching them English.
- Exploited: Bob overhears the aliens' conversation which wasn't meant for him, and has no trouble understanding it because it is in perfect English.
- Defied:
- The aliens do not bother to learn English or any other language before visiting Earth. When they arrive, they converse in Bilingual Dialogue, leaving the aliens and Bob flummoxed about what to do now.
- The aliens are confused as to the correct language to use when visiting Earth. They go through several different obscure languages to no avail.
- Discussed: "Just wait: once the aliens arrive, they'll speak English fluently."
- Conversed: "Are all aliens required to take English classes before visiting Earth? This show seems to think so."
- Implied: When Bob tells Alice and Charles about his encounter with the aliens, he tells them what they said to him — implying that he understood them.
- Deconstructed: Aliens arrive on Earth and meet Bob. They speak to him in English. Bob notices that all the alien races manage to speak English, and tries to find out why it is so.
- Reconstructed: Aliens arrive on Earth and meet Bob. They speak to him in English. Bob is so amazed by this that he accepts the aliens as members of a peaceful race and is made their spokesperson on Earth. Diplomatic relations are forged between the aliens and Earth, marking the First Contact in human history.
- Played For Laughs:
- The aliens have not been on Earth for centuries and talk in Medieval English. Bob has trouble understanding them.
- The aliens speak with a variety of perfect English, American, and Australian accents for no reason.
- Aliens arrive on Earth and meet Bob. Their leader instantly produces an English phrasebook, and speaks to Bob in tortuously butchered English.
- Played For Drama: Aliens arrive on Earth and meet Bob. They speak to him in English. This frightens Bob, who thinks they only learned English as a means of helping to conquer the planet. Earth attacks the aliens, who are confused that their sign of cultural understanding was taken as a threat. The aliens either leave or retaliate in defense, possibly instigating interplanetary war.
- The world works on Clap Your Hands If You Believe, and due to movies the idea of non-humans speaking human languages is widespread enough that humans hear aliens speaking their languages. Aliens speaking terran languages is an In-Universe mystery and the first clue that Clap Your Hands If You Believe is a rule of the universe.
Back to Aliens Speaking English
