How To Play Bilingual Characters

[MonMarty]

We've seen a recent influx of Bilingual Characters, which is great. As a person who loves linguistics, I praise people trying to be experimental and expanding the immersion by having characters that never risk using anachronistic language, and making communication itself something that can be a fun interaction. That being said. It can cross from a fun experiment into something downright insulting very quickly. There are a set of "common writer's mistakes" when it concerns portraying characters of a bilingual nature that often escapes those who do not speak any other language than English, and making those mistakes can (unintentionally) come across as bigoted or ignorant, making the character look mentally deficient for being a foreigner, instead of just not fully understanding the language yet. Playing a character that does not speak English (Common) well should be applauded, but it is a bit of work for those who try, work that pays off in not offending those who aren't native English speakers, as well as aiding in immersion. I am writing this guide as a person who speaks 5 languages fluently and has sufficient skill to maintain conversation in another two, have visited 9 other language speaking countries, and lived for 5+ years in two of them, so there's some level of experience attached to it.

A common mistake when portraying foreign character is the concept of "yub-yub" Orc speech, by just randomly dropping grammatically crucial words in a sentence. For example: a character saying "Am going to Pub". This is the most basest of low-brow bilingual imitation, because one golden rule you can always remember for bilingual people: We don't just drop random words from a sentence, unless there is a grammatical reason to do so in our own language. "I am going to the pub" translates to "Ik ga naar de kroeg" in Dutch or "Ich gehe in die Kneipe" in German. In the Dutch translation, if you translate the words back one by one, it says "I go to the pub", whereas the German translation becomes "I go in the Pub". As you can see, some words are lost, some are changed, and in some cases, new words are added that don't seem to make much sense (this is why Google Translate sounds so odd when translating continental European languages to English, the grammar structure gets all messed up). Here follows a quick overview of grammar terms that might be lost or kept:

• Adjectives are never lost, since that breaks sentences.
• Adverbs can sometimes be messed up, mostly by just mixing them up.
• Antecedents are never messed up, however pronouns attached to them are. In the sentences "I wanted a Chocolate Cake for my birthday, but did not get one" can become "I wanted a Chocolate Cake for my birthday, but did not get that".
• Collective nouns and singular verbs can be mixed up. For example "Two Lions" can become "Two Lion"
• Bilingual people tend to avoid compound adjectives and compound nouns.
• Conjunctive adverbs are often also avoided.
• Elliptical clauses are also avoided
• Bilingual people rarely get genders wrong. Remember, English is the language with the least genders.
• Indefinite articles (a, an) are almost always done wrong. Bilingual people rarely understand the grammar rules if they aren't proficient, resulting in things like "An library" and "a apple".
• Intransitive verbs are frequently done wrong for example "The bell ring" (instead of rang) or "My computer crashes" (instead of crashed).
• Linking verbs are often done wrong for example "The soup smelling good" or "The dog running fast".
• Nouns aren't ever done wrong. Vocabulary is not the issue for bilinguals, it's grammar.
• Participle are almost always done wrong for example "eaten" might become "eated" or "reading" might become "readed"
• Pronouns by themselves are rarely done wrong, (but are when referred to by Antecedents)
• Verbs are rarely done wrong, aside from when they get pulled out of present tense.

Some easy hacks for language:

• Notable viral videos of Pakistani men shouting random words without any grammatical structure at each other is not indicative of what Pakistanis actually sound like when they aren't proficiency in English. Generally speaking, the more tense a person is (combat, conflict, argument), the more their grammar structure starts unraveling. Bilingual people, when put under pressure, lose cohesion of their non-dominant language because while interpreting, they have to dissolve a sentence and understand it, and pre-formulate a response. These extra layers of thought processing take time, and when you're in a situation where you don't have time to think about what is being said or your reply, grammar becomes more in-cohesive "You mother bitch shit" is not something a foreigner may say in common socialization, but if put under pressure, but when they need to throw something out quickly, might.
• A lot of Scandinavians get "is" and "are" mixed up. This is because these words are the same in their languages "är" and "er", which both sound very similar to are. For example: "He are in a jail in China" is a sentence that is easily heard from a Swedish person.
• Germans/English when speaking a different language get stop words wrong a lot. Germans have a habit of saying Also (meaning thus) in between sentences even though there wouldn't be a thus there (or "d'accord" for French in response to things passively meaning "Understood"). Germans don't actually say Thus in English, but they often produce an "ehhhhh" or actually just say "Also". As a person who is native Dutch myself, but operative English, when speaking Dutch to my father, I throw the word "Like" and "But" around a lot as a stop word. A Frenchman might still say "D'accord", and then start their sentence in English in reply just out of habit.
• Do not do Dora the Explorer fan fiction tier bilingualism where you systematically just replaces "Yes" with "Oui" or "House" with "Casa". "Si, welcome to my Casa" is not something foreigners say. Language mixing is possible, but chaotically and unplanned, not organized per word and systematic.
• Even when using English to my father or a Dutch friend I say something like "Ik wou naar Spanje gaan op... (god hoe heet dat word ookal weer) Oja! Vakantie". This translates roughly to "I wanted to go to Spain on... (god, how do you call that word again) Oh right! Vacation." You can randomly break into a different language while trying to remember a particular word. Good replacement are also body language gestures like rotating hands or saying a lot of uhhh or ahhh, or just saying "How do you say, that man who sells you vegetables" and then let the person you are roleplaying with come up with the answer.
• Words like "on" "in" "next to" "beneath" (all directional) are frequently done wrong. For example, the earlier statement, Germans say they are going "in" the pub instead of "to" the pub. Another example, in Dutch we say "I have money standing on the bank" instead of "I have money deposited in the bank".
• Verbs are never forgotten, but sometimes mixed up. For example, in Dutch we say "How late is it" instead of "What's the time", or we say "How long are you" instead of "How tall are you".
• Sometimes, words have more meanings than one, and can be mixed up. For example: Norwegian does not have a different word for roof and ceiling, they are both "tak", which could best translate to the Dutch word "dak", but in Dutch we do have a word for ceiling called "plafond", which is actually taken directly from French with the same meaning. Similarly, Norwegians don't differentiate between "Tree" and "Wood", both being "Tre" (closest to Tree). This can cause them to say "That roof is made of tree" when actually trying to say that the ceiling is made of wood.
• Playing with Idioms can be a lot of fun, and it doesn't even need to make any sense, like you don't need to cross reference idioms to make sure they are realistic, you can just make them up. I will show case by giving you a few Dutch idioms, directly translated:
  • Putting the dots on the i -> Finishing the details
  • The monkey is coming out of the sleeve -> The trick or ploy is revealed
  • It is laying on the point of my tongue -> It's on the tip of my tongue
  • So crazy as a door -> to be really insane
  • I found the dog in the jar -> to be too late to something
  • To stand on your back leg -> to be very angry
  • Got out of the fire -> To be out of harms way
  • Came home with a wet sail -> To have come home drunk
• Like it shows above, a lot of these just don't make any sense, and there are literally hundreds of them in other languages. You can play around with idioms a lot to cause dialogue confusion irp, just use is sparely because people don't use idioms a lot in regular communication.
• Most importantly, before committing to a sentence with butchered English, read it out loud or in your head. You want it to sound "off", like not quite right, but you don't want it to sound like it was written on a sound board by a mentally deficient chimpanzee.

It is not a crime to just talk to someone who is bilingual or from the relative nation you're trying to portray a character from. They can give you quirks, and correct any incorrect usage of language. There is some leeway here, of course, not all bilingual people speak with the same proficiency, some do sound really off, while others only drop just a few words. But for the love of god, don't depict bilingual people (like me) as mentally deficient when speaking a different language. Learning other languages is immensely difficult, and it takes a great deal of learning to strain yourself to switch between language constructs. Using bilingualism to depict a character as dim-witted is doubly-so offensive, and a quick way to get me to ignore your character in roleplay because it's so immersion breaking that it just kills my motivation to roleplay, and I'm sure other bilinguals think the same way about it. Being able to speak another language, even while butchering the grammar, is a sign of intellect. Because far too many native English speakers only speak English.

 

[Scribbe]

is there a way to do this with elves

 

[indyfan98]

Likewise with Sihai. Allar, Orcs, etc?

 

[MrBlwe]

Likewise with Sihai. Allar, Orcs, etc?

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For allar at the very least you can give them a lisp by swapping out S with Z or adding Z to the end of messages.

 

[MonMarty]

is there a way to do this with elves

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Sound intentionally verbose if you really wanna go with someone who sticks to Empire Elven as a main. "Hand woven earth metal" instead of "Forged steel"

Likewise with Sihai. Allar, Orcs, etc?

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I don't know enough about eastern languages to give proper input. Generally however, avoid playing an Orc that doesn't speak perfect Common. There is a lenghty point on the fact that Orcs are able to speak Common faster than any other race, and not doing so perfectly causes the character to be seen as a yub yub which is bad when interacting with other Orcs.

 

[ZiggyStarDusted]

I'd hereby would like to denounce all the oui-ing I enabled as the patriarch of House Celyreos.

 

[OkaDoka]

@indyfan98

I will tell you that when it comes to Sihai, you should focus entirely on the deficiencies within a Chinese/Japanese grammatical understanding of English, not the tendencies with the sounds of letters and the placement of syllables. You should not attempt to replicate poor speech with 'herro's, because it is impossible to accurately represent these things without coming off as at least a moderate [extreme] dickweed. If you generally want to portray some small tics which describe common errors in English, here are [some of] my [many] personal faults over the years:

• Idioms. Idioms, idioms, idioms. I had to learn these all manually, one by one, when I encountered them.
• Usage of '-ed' and '-ing'. I mixed these up quite a bit, because in Japanese we do not consider them separate.
• Do not employ excess and superlatives. Keep commentary muted. Nothing is ever EXCELLENT, or GREAT, it is just 'good'.
• A/an/the. Forgetting articles is really common. Even at this point in my life, my texting shorthand still drops all articles.
• A lot of usage of 'more', and confusing it with 'much'. Lots of "that will be more cold", not "that will be colder".

 

[Gwyndo]

I wish I had the skill to do this well.
Baby steps.

On a side note, my favourite ever Idiom I hadn't heard before was this one -

Spoiler

So good.

 

[BeetrootSalad]

Likewise with Sihai. Allar, Orcs, etc?

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I don't know enough about eastern languages to give proper input. Generally however, avoid playing an Orc that doesn't speak perfect Common. There is a lenghty point on the fact that Orcs are able to speak Common faster than any other race, and not doing so perfectly causes the character to be seen as a yub yub which is bad when interacting with other Orcs.

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Hello! Native Cantonese speaker here, who lives with folks who don't have English as their first language.
- Things like Chinglish are common when speaking to someone who understands both Cantonese/Mandarin/Shanghainese and English, though never with anyone who only understands one of the said languages.
- For the sake of not starting OOC fights, do your best to refrain from 'r' and 'l' mixups.
- Sometimes, bilingual people forget words. Rather than substitute their homeland's words, we normally just... Ask for the word.
- Very fast reaction words/answers (such as 'yes/yeah', 'no', 'oh' and 'ow') during casual conversation can be mistakenly switched out. This is mostly if the roleplay involves shock, distraction or surprise. For example, if someone's writing a letter and someone else suddenly calls out from downstairs, a New Regalisch character may instinctively reply with 'ja?' rather than 'yes?', since both are similar and they're distracted. For Sihai characters, you may say 'aiyah' instead of 'oof/ow/tsk'.
- A weird counterintuitive thing about people speaking their second languages is that they may be more formal or eloquent than normal. For example, they may use more professional wording rather than slang or use 'essay language' rather than casual tongue. This does not apply to all bilingual people. Just a little observation I had from hanging out with non-native English speakers in my family.

 

[candlemouse]

French is a very annoying language, in regards to exceptions and rules and exceptions to the rules and rules for exceptions to the rules. As someone that's lived with native French speakers and began learning from primary school, here are some do's and don't's associated with speaking French / Ithanian.

- French people are much more blunt in their way of speaking. They don't 'beat around the bush', and are to the point about what they're intending to say. Causes some hurt feelings sometimes, especially for native English speakers that are less direct. It isn't an intention to be rude, merely to be clear.

- French isn't just French, anymore. Many English words have been cannibalized, into something my classmates and I affectionately termed 'Franglais'. Words such as week-end, t-shirt, and stop are all the same in French.

- French isn't very formal, unless learned from textbooks. Just like English, there's slang, and shortcuts to sentences. A favourite type of slang of mine is 'Verlan', or the inverse - literally just a word becoming the inverse. L'inverse is the French term, which is cut into two - L'in, and ver - then flipped to create 'Verlan'. The French abbreviate words - D'accord becomes D'ac, Sympathique becomes Sympa, which are both informal and used a majority of the time with your peers.

- There's a difference between you, and you. In French, there's a respectful, unfamiliar usage of you, which is 'vous'. The familiar, informal usage is 'tu'. It's important to greet strangers and elders with the former, and your peers the latter. Rule of thumb - if you're not on a first name basis, use 'vous'.

- Some French words sound VERY similar to English words, which are dubbed as 'False Friends'. This means you might hear a French person say things such as "They assisted to a conference", "I'm working actually on the project", and introducing people by 'presenting' them.

- Most common missed word for the French is 'do'. Instead of saying "Do you live in London", one might say "You live in London?", or "What time you usually arrive at work", instead of "What time do you usually arrive at work". In French, you're able to make a question just by adding a question mark at the end - which isn't the same case in English. One might make the mistake of asking "You love football, isn't it?" or "They met at university, isn't it?" instead of 'don't you', or 'didn't they'. Another is the placement of words - common to say "My boss speaks very well English" instead of "My boss speaks English very well'. Based on the conjugation of verbs, the sentence structure changes. Adverbs also usually come between the verb and its object, which isn't possible in English - "I must to finish this project", or "We can't to go out tonight". Last, but not least, also has to do with conjugation - French might say "I'm thinking about to go on holiday", instead of "going on holiday". Or "they are interested in to learn about cinema" instead of "they are interested in learning about cinema".

- Bottom line : don't say 'Oui' instead of yes. 'Uhm' sounds more like 'euhm' for the French. Don't say 'Oui Oui'. That doesn't happen. French pet names are weird - I've made the mistake (or choice?) of calling my girlfriend 'my flea', or 'my cabbage'. Granted, it sounds much nicer in French

SORRY FOR THE WALL OF TEXT!!!

 

[Rinus]

• Nouns aren't ever done wrong. Vocabulary is not the issue for bilinguals, it's grammar.

• Do not do Dora the Explorer fan fiction tier bilingualism where you systematically just replaces "Yes" with "Oui" or "House" with "Casa". "Si, welcome to my Casa" is not something foreigners say. Language mixing is possible, but chaotically and unplanned, not organized per word and systematic.

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I think this could be expanded and explained a bit more for some specific scenarios. While someone who learns English as a second language is unlikely to include nouns from their language casually into English conversation, this can be more complicated in the case of a culture that has largely adopted a new language.

In Ireland, barely anyone speaks Irish as a first language anymore. However, in Hiberno-English, the dialect of English that is spoken here, there are many loanwords from Irish that are used in common conversation. These have become less frequent as Ireland has become rapidly more anglicised through British and American media, but it still occurs to some extant, for example the phrase "Any craic?" where Craic is a loanword meaning, like, "fun."

This is even more prevalent for previous generations. My grandfather often recounts how a neighbour of his, an elderly man, had someone say "Slán" to him instead of saying "Goodbye." When the neighbour was told that that person was learning Irish to reconnect with his heritage he remarked, without a shred of irony, "He's only doing that out of gaisce and bulamshkee." "Gaisce" is an Irish word meaning, loosely, "achievement," but in this context its used more ironically. Equally, "bulamshkee" comes from "Buailim mo sciath"-I hit my shield, once again loosely meaning that the person is seeking attention or valour.

So, I guess the point of this ramble is that loanwords do happen, but they rarely come from a lack of vocabulary (though I do have the unfortunate habit of putting a french accent on an english word if im stuck and hoping for the best.) Instead, in a culture that has a diaspora in a country that does not speak their language, loanwords from their native language trickle into the dialect spoken by that diaspora. The speakers of this dialect also rarely think of these words as being from a separate language to the one they speak. When my grandfather calls kittens "puisíns" or piglets "banbhs" he doesn't do that because he's consciously switching to Irish or forgets the English word, he just simply grew up with those Irish words being mixed into English naturally, causing confusion to all foreigners who meet him.

 

[diCardinale]

• Nouns aren't ever done wrong. Vocabulary is not the issue for bilinguals, it's grammar.
• Verbs are rarely done wrong, aside from when they get pulled out of present tense.

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Instead, in a culture that has a diaspora in a country that does not speak their language, loanwords from their native language trickle into the dialect spoken by that diaspora. The speakers of this dialect also rarely think of these words as being from a separate language to the one they speak. When my grandfather calls kittens "puisíns" or piglets "banbhs" he doesn't do that because he's consciously switching to Irish or forgets the English word, he just simply grew up with those Irish words being mixed into English naturally, causing confusion to all foreigners who meet him.

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This is exactly the case in my experience with Italian American and Hispanic American communities here in the US. Marty's guide is pretty great, but its more reflective of bilingualism within Europe, and less so of the Americas. Frequently in the Italian American accent, nouns, verbs, and entire phrases are replaced with the various languages within Italy. For example, instead of saying, "What's up?" or "Hey, how's it going?", I might say "Che fa, whats up?" or if I'm with family or another Italian American, I'll typically just say "Che fa?"

tl;dr dont use google translate, research the type of language and accent you want to do, dont just copy/paste yes and no and basic words.

 

[Cyliah]

Finally somebody's speaking about this!
I don't know if I'm going to be of much help here, but as a fellow Italian player I want to try to be of help to all of you guys who're playing Dressolini characters! I'm gonna be addressing the few things that came to my mind right now, hope they can be of help!

Let's talk about Mamma Mia for a second.
It is totally okay to have your character say "mamma mia", it's not just a super mario/stereotype thing, it's actually super accurate. Mamma mia is one of those words that we italians use all the time (even in english) very similar to how you would say "Oh, god".

Boh and Bah.
Now, these two seem very similar, but they have totally different meanings.
Boh is when you genuinely don't know something or when you're confused about a situation "What's Patty's phone number? Boh."
Bah is used when you're annoyed by something or someone and, in a very passive-aggressive way you just say "Bah."

Also, as a general rule for bilingual characters.
Forget words.

I know this sounds clichè, but it's the truth! I always forget words that I don't use that often. What I usually do is describe the meaning of the world, try to make an impression of the sound, just try to find a way around the word.

Oh, also.

Naming Customs
Not all Italian surnames include "dei/di" as a prefix. Actually, I don't know anybody's surname in Italy that does. That can work sometimes for Noble Houses (and even then, rarely), but for commoners, we don't use that. Some fire quick surnames that you can use: Montecchi, Lazzaro, Privitera, Giusti, Giudice, Santi, Licciardello, Simione, Catania, Monti, Verdi, Diolosà etc.

For any clarification, I'm here! <3

 

[Serpent__]

Do not do Dora the Explorer fan fiction tier bilingualism where you systematically just replaces "Yes" with "Oui" or "House" with "Casa". "Si, welcome to my Casa" is not something foreigners say. Language mixing is possible, but chaotically and unplanned, not organized per word and systematic.

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Also if the character is fluent in 2 or more languages you could have them constantly mix words of other languages together. But probably only when speaking to another person who is also fluent in those languages. For example, I speak Russian and English and my family and I switch languages mid sentence all the time. It all depends on what word I remember first in a language, or maybe it just makes more sense or sounds better using a word in Russian than in English.

So yeah, 100% agree with this point.