You'll never find out who I am
Is the trope just "language barriers exist"? Because that's not a trope. But if we limit it to examples where the Translation Convention is in effect, I could see that being a trope. I remember watching Tarzan as a child and wondering why Tarzan couldn't understand Jane while it's already been established that Tarzan and the animals hear ape noises and elephant noises as English. I also remember watching Homeward Bound as a child and wondering why the animals couldn't understand what humans are saying while being able to speak to each other in English.
But the Titanic example, that's just reality happening. Same for any example that doesn't use the Translation Convention.
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You'll never find out who I am
Should we limit this to examples where the Translation Convention is in effect? Examples where the Translation Convention isn't in effect don't seem like a trope.
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You'll never find out who I am
The page quote is from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, but Aqua Teen Hunger Force isn't mentioned in the examples. I checked the wicks and it isn't there, either.
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[=NaNo=] 4328 / 50,000
- Stand Still Stay Silent: All
the time, and for good reasons: the group is formed by people from all the Nordic countries, resulting in five different native languages being spoken. Granted, Norwegian and Swedish (and Danish to a lesser extent) don't pose such a big problem as they are quite similar, but Finnish and Icelandic are unintelligible to the ones who didn't study it as a second language. The creator Minna Sundberg considerately adds tiny flag to the word bubble whenever this happens. To summarize:
- Tuuri is the omniglot of the group, speaking Finnish, Icelandic and Swedish. She can muddle through with Norwegian, but has difficulties understanding spoken Danish (written, however, is fine).
- Lalli only speaks Finnish (when he speaks at all, that is).
- Emil only speaks Swedish and has a tin ear for other languages that deviate over-much, like Danish.
- Sigrun speaks Norwegian and understands Danish and Swedish.
- Mikkel speaks Danish and Icelandic, and he understands Norwegian and Swedish.
- And finally, Reynir only speaks Icelandic.
This is obviously bad Example Indentation because of the line "to summarize". It clearly means this is all one example and the rule is each example only gets one bullet.
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
This has been discussed on Ask The Tropers and the consensus there seems to be to make separate examples of each sub-bullet.
On re-reading the example, I think that this can be done with very small changes. Of course, the "To summarize" line has to go.
The initial paragraph is correct in describing the language barriers between the Nordic peoples, by the way: Danish, Swedish and Norwegian are very similar but Danish pronunciation has evolved away quite a bit from the other two languages. Icelandic is closely related to these languages but not close enough to be mutually understandable. Finnish is completely unrelated to all of the others.
Edited by GnomeTitan
I disagree that it can be copied without much alteration. What is missing is context to each person, e.g. one line only has Lalli only speaks Finnish and s/he's the quuiet one. Now we need more stuff, for instance He/she has problems communicating with other people in the group and people they meet as well. Things like this.
Edited by XFllo
Why is nobody responding? Should I take this to Trope Talk?
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