Discussion Main / JustAStupidAccent

Previous Trope Repair Shop thread: Misused, started by Zeta on Nov 7th 2013 at 12:23:44 AM

Removed addendum regarding the Sound of Music example:

"Ironically, had it been the reverse (Austrians with a German-accent), this could have been a fridge brilliantish representation of how the Germans would speak a more 'accent-less' Hochdeutsch, while the Austrians would be speaking the Austrian dialect."

Um… Nope, that doesn't make sense at all. The Germans don't all speak the same "Hochdeutsch", they have regional accents too (unless all the occupying soldiers were linguists). It's not like all Germans speak "pure" German and Austrians speak their own dialect: both countries have many specific regional dialects and their own form of "Hochdeutsch" (i.e. official, correct German). Granted, those two don't differ very much, but referring to Austrian German as a "dialect" of German German is a Berserk Button for most Austrians (not to mention incorrect).

I just "got known" to ask someone with edit rights to please add "Seven Years in Tibet" to this page. This trope has been bothering me (ok, at times driving me insane) for 14 years, ever since I first saw that film, where two characters, supposed to be Austrian, spend the entire movie talking to each other in accented English (they are played by Brad Pitt and David Thewlis).

If you are an experienced troper, I would be grateful if you could name and shame this movie for exactly this trope.

Thank you!

This trope needs to be cleanly separated from Poirot Speak. Peppering you language with simple words (e.g. "yes") in the speaker's foreign language needs to be part of that trope and not this one.

Even if it's common for a character to both speak with an accent to show national origin and to pepper their speech with foreign words, these are distinct concepts and need some delineation.

So, what would you call the inverse of this, where they speak a foreign language, but with horrible pronunciation?

Removed non-example:

• The Combat Flight Simulator series manages to avert this, with all of the comm chatter being in Japanese, German, or English with an American or British accent depending upon which faction you are playing as.

Likewise (that's Not Even Bothering with the Accent):

• Averted in the film Paths Of Glory; With one tiny exception in the final scene, all the characters are Frenchmen played by American actors who use their own accents.
  • Likewise with the Germans in All Quiet on the Western Front: in one version, there was even some Accent Adaption with Stanislaus Katczinsky getting a southern USA accent (Poles in the German Empire would have been stereotyped as religiously devout farmers)