History Main / JustAStupidAccent

** [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] in ''Film/HistoryOfTheWorldPartI'', the source of the above quote.

* Discussed in ''Website/{{Cracked}}'', which calls JustAStupidAccent [[http://www.cracked.com/article_18721_the-5-stupidest-ways-movies-deal-with-foreign-languages.html The 4th Stupidest Way Movies Deal with Foreign Languages]].

* In 2020, the Scots language Wikipedia discovered it had silently been undermined by a crisis that had been boiling away for seven years; a teenage brony from North Carolina had been working away at the site for all that time, starting when he was just 12 years old, and during that time he had written ''tens of thousands'' of articles in a malformed, mutilated amalgamation of Scots and English, [[UncertifiedExpert all while claiming he could speak the language perfectly]], which he may have somehow [[BelievingTheirOwnLies ended up duping even himself into believing]]. In reality, what he was actually doing amounted to writing articles in their butchered form by literally fingering through a dictionary, then picking the first words in Scots he could find, regardless of their grammatical context or presence in the language's modern vernacular, and when he couldn't find a word he was looking for, he'd instead resort to [[DeterioratesIntoGibberish completely making it up instead]]. In the end, over 10,000 articles were deleted, thousands more were updated with notices alerting users of the site that they had been written by someone who knew absolutely nothing about Scots, and at one point, the very future of the wiki was in doubt, as the damage was so severe and so thorough that some questioned whether it would be easier to just delete the whole thing and start over. As for the teenager, he was accused by numerous sources - including national and international newspapers - of committing [[https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/26/shock-an-aw-us-teenager-wrote-huge-slice-of-scots-wikipedia cultural vandalism]], became the laughing stock of the internet for quite some time, and eventually disappeared off the face of the Scots Wiki in disgrace after apologising for his actions.

* In ''Series/TheBrittasEmpire'': In "The Disappearing Act", Gordon claims to know French when answering a phone call before simply puts on a silly French accent.

* In one episode of ''Series/TheBrittasEmpire'', Gordon claims to know French when answering a phone call and simply puts on a silly French accent.

* In 2020, the Scots language Wikipedia discovered it had silently been undermined by a crisis that had been boiling away for seven years; a bored teenage Brony from North Carolina had been working away at the site for all that time, starting when he was just 12 years old, and during that time he had written ''tens of thousands'' of articles in a malformed, mutilated amalgamation of Scots and English, [[UncertifiedExpert all while claiming he could speak the language perfectly]]. In reality, what he was actually doing amounted to writing articles in their butchered form by literally fingering through a dictionary, then picking the first words in Scots he could find, regardless of their grammatical context or presence in the language's modern vernacular, and when he couldn't find a word he was looking for, he'd instead resort to [[DeterioratesIntoGibberish completely making it up instead]]. In the end, over 10,000 articles were deleted, thousands more were updated with notices alerting users of the site that they had been written by someone who knew absolutely nothing about Scots, and at one point, the very future of the wiki was in doubt, as the damage was so severe and so thorough that some questioned whether it would be easier to just delete the whole thing and start over. As for the teenager, he was accused by numerous sources - including national and international newspapers - of committing [[https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/26/shock-an-aw-us-teenager-wrote-huge-slice-of-scots-wikipedia cultural vandalism]], became the laughing stock of the internet for quite some time, and eventually disappeared off the face of the Scots Wiki in disgrace after apologising for his actions.

* There was a scandal in mid-2020 when it became widely noticed that the Scots language version of Wikipedia had almost half of its articles written in English with a cartoonish Scottish accent. More than 20,000 articles were written this way by one bored American teenager who didn't actually know Scots and it took six years for the site administration to notice.

** ''VideoGame/DragonQuestV'': Villagers of the small village called Hay speak with a very strong Cornish accent. Of course, even in the original, they had very thick rural accents.

Not to be confused with PoirotSpeak, where a foreign character speaking English will pepper their speech with words and phrases from their native language. Although the effect is much the same, Just a Stupid Accent can grate a little more, as the viewer is left to surmise that [[HerrDoktor Doktor Von Evil]] speaks flawless English but somehow never learned the word for "yes" (though this is somewhat justified in that a spontaneous response to something is likely to trigger your mother language, especially if it's something that can be said without the need for sentence building in your head - although that usually only works if you're somehow distracted or in distress and fail to immediately switch to even the most basic word in a non-native language).

Occasionally, their speech [[GratuitousForeignLanguage will be peppered with some words and phrases from the language they are attempting to emulate]], but these will be rare, and only the simplest ones that the audience is intended to know, such as "oui" or "hai" (and perhaps a ForeignCussWord or two, if only to [[GettingCrapPastTheRadar Get Crap Past The Radar]]).

* Creator/PeterSellers as [[Franchise/ThePinkPanther Inspector Clouseau]], Clouseau goes on to avert it by speaking in an accent which not only bears little or no resemblance to any French accent real or imagined ( "whit is zis minkey??" ) but never actually speaking a single word of actual French, although Sellers himself spoke the language fluently.

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*** French accent can be found in Baccarat, during the cut-scene in the Inn.

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* This was played around with in the ''WesternAnimation/VeggieTales'' episode "Dave and the Giant Pickle." The French peas, [[AnimatedActor playing the role of the Philistines]] spoke in their normal English with a French accent, but everything they said was subtitled as though they were actually speaking a foreign language.

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* In the dub of ''Webcomic/AxisPowersHetalia'', whenever we see non-English speaking characters talking to each other or to their nations, they simply speak English with a foreign accent.

* The English dub of ''Literature/NightWatch'' has almost all of the Russian characters speaking English with a Russian accent.

* Skwisgaar Skwigelf and Toki Wartooth of ''WesternAnimation/{{Metalocalypse}}'' always speak broken English rather than Swedish or Norwegian, respectively. This makes sense around the other (American) band members. Even though Scandinavian languages are closely related, they probably communicate better using a shared second language than trying to decipher each others' native languages. However, for some reason, Skwisgaar continues speaking English when he goes back to Sweden and moves in with his mother and stepfather.

* Speedy Gonzales and Pepe Le Pew shorts in ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'' are essentially always set in Spain and France, but everyone speaks English with bad [[{{Spexico}} Spexican]]/French accents.

Not to be confused with PoirotSpeak, where a foreign character speaking English will pepper their speech with words and phrases from their native language. Although the effect is much the same, Just a Stupid Accent can grate a little more, as the viewer is left to surmise that [[HerrDoktor Doktor Von Evil]] speaks flawless English but somehow never learned the word for "yes" (though this is somewhat justified in that a spontaneous response to something is likely to trigger your mother language, especially if it's something that can be said without the need for sentence building in your head).

* Creator/{{Disney}}'s ''Disney/{{Pocahontas}}''. Apart from a handful of words, all the native Americans speak English, and only the native American men have a sort of generic "Indian" accent. Pocahontas magically learns to speak English herself, but consistently speaks to her father in English, who maintains the accent even after addressing a crowd of English settlers ''in English''.

* Paul F. Tompkins' routine "Cherry Picking", where the joke quickly from [[RefugeInAudacity superstar migrant laborer Jesus Guerrero signing baskets at fruit-picking fantasy camp]], to how bad the voice Paul is using for him is ("it kinda just sounds like you're a vampire or something") -- and finally, to Jesus commiserating that he knows "this bit has outworn its welcome", but he can't stop as long as the audience keeps laughing.