Gratuitous Foreign Language

I was just looking at the Gratuitous Foreign Language page, and it seems to me its definition doesn't line up exactly with the definition of its subtropes. The definition for Gratuitous Foreign Language is when foreign words are randomly interspersed in another language. However, the definition for Gratuitous French, Gratuitous German, and Gratuitous Spanish are for when a non-native speaker tries to use words from these languages, often misusing them. Gratuitous Russian just means that Russian words are misused. Am I wrong for thinking this doesn't match up with the definition of the parent trope.

Going by these definitions if a native French speaker is speaking English but slips up and says a few French words, that would be considered Gratuitous Foreign Language, but not Gratuitous French. If a native Russian speaker misuses a Russian word, that's Gratuitous Russian.

"Gratuitous" mean "done without (good) reason"

So cases of "slipping off to mother tongue" isn't Gratuitous Language. (Incidentally, I recall there's a TLP draft for that)

So the valid case of this trope would be "inserting words/speeches of other, non-native language for no good reason". Though technically the reasoning is there, just shallow: it's usually "because the speaker likes it" or "because the author likes it".

Any description that doesn't match that would need to change.

I'm currently working on a sub-trope split from this page and have been having trouble with defining exactly how 'gratuitous' works, since I think the current pages have attracted some misuse.

One common one is "character who is of a certain ethnicity/nationality and occasionally/sometimes/etc. intersperses their speech with [language associated with ethnicity/nationality]". To what extent would this be considered gratuitous — e.g. if the character is, by all means, fluent in the language the work is based on... or on the other end of the scale, if they're not fluent at all?

Another one I think crops up is "a certain scene takes place in a location where [insert regional language here] is used locally". And then there's the matter of using language to denote a setting or for cultural reasons.

There were also some questions raised about this may apply in fantasy settings.

At this point, I swear making a super-trope for code-switching and code-mixing might be in order to cover some of these examples, but that feels very Chairsy to me as someone who code-mixes on a day-to-day basis in real life.

Edited by AquaEclipse on May 2nd 2024 at 2:12:31 AM

Basically it just means "using a foreign language to make something sound fancy or exotic", or at least that's how it's generally used on the wiki.

The supertrope is more or less defined as use of the language that's essentially random, unnecessary, and there for flavor more than purpose. Often it's misused, too (the language, not the trope)

Edited by WarJay77 on May 1st 2024 at 2:24:34 PM

I'd similarly question what exactly 'unnecessary' would mean in this case. I'll use a real-life example to illustrate this, since I wrote a paper on it for a course last semester: in Hong Kong, Cantonese-English code-mixing is extremely common, and while a person can technically get by only speaking pure Cantonese, people around them will think their speech is stilted and weirdly formal if they don't code-mix. In this case, is it Gratuitous English?

Probably not? It serves a purpose and people expect it. It's not at all like a creator just randomly using foreign words to be cool.

…in that case, we're probably going to have to launch a big cleanup campaign (possibly involving making/wicking more/different tropes related to multilingualism)… misuse is inbound.

There is Emotional Code Switching, currently in TLP, which may catch some of the misuse (when someone slips back to their mother tongue, which is not really gratuitous).

^ I'm aware of that TLP and yeah, it might help alleviate it. That's gonna have to be a long-term project or cleanup if it's ever gonna be one...