How Do You Say...?

Pretty much a Stock Phrase for any Funny Foreigner. Commonly used either to hang a lampshade on how he doesn't speak English too well or with swearing to create a Sophisticated As Hell effect.

Ironically, it is usually used to show that the character isn't very fluent in English, but after the "How you say..." line, the character often uses an overly sophisticated sentence.

Sometimes rendered as "how you say" instead of "how do you say". Can lead to Buffy-Speak. Another variant is to use it before an idiom, occasionally a... qu'est-ce qu'on dit... "Totally Radical" idiom. See Language Equals Thought if something along the lines of "my language, she has no word for this" comes up.

It is obviously... ¿cómo se dice..? "Truth in Television". No Real Life examples, please, I'm sure we've all met native French speakers before.

Examples of How Do You Say...? include:

Documentary

• Francesco's Italy: Top to Toe

Francesco: To travel through Sicily is to travel through time. I feel like your British Time Lord - how do you say? Doctor... what?

Film

• A Good Year

Ludivine Duflot: Almost all French aristocrat have, how you say... liaison with their cousins, yes?

• Blame It on Rio

Eduardo Marques: You are, how you say, the queer couple?

• Carry On Behind

Prof. Anna Vrooshka: You see, I am keeping a, how you say, a dirrrty caravan.

• Intolerable Cruelty

Heinz, the Baron Krauss von Espy: She spe-cif-i-cated a man with a wandering pee-pee. How you say? A philanderer whose affairs would be transparent to the world.

• Scooby Doo! and the Monster of Mexico

Doña Dolores: I don't trust him, never did. He is a... how you say in America?
Fred: Crook?
Daphne: Liar?
Velma: Con man?
Doña Dolores: [waits a beat] Jerk!

• The Likely Lads

Christina: I learn much this weekend Terry, it has been, how you say in English, an eyesore.

• Transporter 2

Gianni: Perhaps I can help you! What part are you a little... how you say, "thick" on?

• James and the Giant Peach

Spider: We are in the middle of the, how do you say, the big puddle.
Centipede: Biggest puddle of 'em all, angel fangs ? the Atlantic Ocean.

• The Book of Stars, talking about a hypothetical date:

Penny: What makes you wanna talk to her?
Kristjan: Oh, I would come to her because she's lovely and how do you say, um, mysterious.

• Parodied in Top Secret:

Ducoit: Well, Monsieur Rivers, it seems that you have become, how do you say, indispensable?
Nick: "Indispensable."
Ducoit: That's what I thought.

Literature

• Hercule Poirot is, of course, very fond of this phrase as part of his Funny Foreigner routine.

Live Action TV

• Captain Gallant of the Foreign Legion (1955) episode "Rodeo":

Payroll Sgt. Zach Zachariades: A legionnaire in love is, how you say, like a starving man looking in the window of a delicatessen store. He cannot touch what he's crazy to have.

• The A-Team episode "The A-Team Is Coming, the A-Team Is Coming":

Katrina Karpov: How you say? Take off all your clothing?

• The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles episode "Barcelona, May 1917":

Marcello: And the count is, how you say in Englese? Eh, a semi-psychotic paranoid introvert.

• Whoops Apocalypse:

Premier Dubienkin: We like, how you say, kick them in the balls.

• The "How Do You Say? Ah, Yes." Show with Antonio Banderas.
• Parodied on the US version of The Office where Michael thought it was necessary to say "How you say?" to a perfectly English-fluent and non-French Canadian woman under the basis of her being "foreign".
• In Get Smart, a staple of Hawaiian detective Harry Hou's dialogue. As Max is providing the desired word, it's of course never the correct one.

Theatre

• "Come Play Wiz Me" from Anyone Can Whistle:

You like my hair, yes? My lips, yes?
Ze sway of my, how you say, of my hips, yes?...
I like your, how you say, imperturbable perspicacity.
It isn't how you say, it's what you see!

Video Games

• Grand Theft Auto Vice City Stories:

Fernando: And you realize this is, how you say, a metaphor for the first sexual experience.

• In StarCraft, Fenix asserts that despite his age (and robotic body) he can still, "How do you Terrans say, 'throw down with the best of them'!" Which is goddamn hilarious coming from a Protoss.

Web Original

• Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series has the Borat Expy use the Sophisticated As Hell version to say that he is "How do you say, kind of a dick."
• Poked fun at with Amir in Hardly Working's Airplane:

Amir: Don't be a, how you say, hero!
Dan: YOU KNOW HOW TO SAY IT!

Western Animation

• The Simpsons episode "Burns Verkauft der Kraftwerk":

Horst: I must have phrased that bad. My English is, how you say, inelegant.

• • Of course, part of the hilarity is that he's actually speaking grammatically (if not phonetically) flawless English.
• Captain Planet and the Planeteers episode "Isle of Solar Energy":

Linka: See? We found the correct cave ? how do you say ? right off the bat?

• Used frequently in Godzilla: The Series with the native Frenchwoman of the team, Monique, even though her English is competent and avoids Blunt Metaphors Trauma. Memorably inverted once with (paraphrasing):

Monique: We will, how you say, throw a monkey wrench in the works?
Nick: In English, we call it 'sabotage'.

• Archer: At the beginning of the pilot episode, Archer is interrogated by a Russian with a bad accent (who's actually not even Russian, which is immediately lampshaded by Archer saying, "Would you pick an accent and stick to it?"), who tells Archer that capturing him "is for us, how you say... a good get."
  • Also used by the villian, Scorpio, in a later episode:

Lana: "You knew this whole time?"
Scorpio: "How you say... wahh wahh."

• Courage the Cowardly Dog uses this for Le Quack, a French criminal duck.

"Go... how do you say it... away."

• Antoine from Sonic Sat AM.

Antoine: Princess, I hate to be a, how you say, worryworm...