Suddenly Fluent in Gibberish

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Kronk: Squeaky uh... squeak squeaker... squeaken.
Bucky: *squirrel noises* [1]
Kronk: Jaguars. No kidding. Brutal.

—The Emperor's New Groove

There are times when the heroes come across an alien or an animal whose help they need, but find themselves unable to communicate. Suddenly, The Ditz or the Cloudcuckoolander steps forward and starts talking with it. And the other party responds. Somehow.

Suddenly Fluent in Gibberish refers to a character displaying the unexpected ability to communicate with somebody or something that should be impossible to speak to. The conversation is always done in gibberish, whether that includes beaver talk, Martian talk or anything similar. The skill comes without any prior foreshadowing and is almost invariably Played for Laughs. When asked how they learned it, The Ditz will more often than not respond that they always knew that. The other characters will usually be left aghast and try not to think how it makes sense.

Sister Trope to Suddenly Bilingual, which involves sudden fluency in an actual language. When a character has speaking to animal as a Stock Superpower see Speaks Fluent Animal

Examples of Suddenly Fluent in Gibberish include:

Anime and Manga

Comic Books

Film

  • The Emperor's New Groove: Kronk is versed in the languages of little woodland creatures, thanks to his Boy Scout Junior Chipmunk training.
  • Finding Nemo: Dory claims to speak whale language. Marlin is less than impressed, until it actually gets them to Sydney. Dory also seems to know how to read English.
  • The Meteor Man: Speaking with animals turns out to be one of the meteor's powers, learned when casually asking the dog what he wanted to eat.

Live Action TV

  • In Zoey 101, Quinn, the Mad Scientist Cloudcuckoolander, is very concerned about her pet alpaca, Otis, whom she left back home. Zoey arranges for Otis to come to school. Quinn makes alpaca noises at Otis, and Otis makes the noises back. Nicole says, "Quinn speaks alpaca?" Zoey's response: "Are you surprised?" (We later see Quinn and the animal playing chess.)
  • In Happy Days, Richie has an unexpectedly rough first day at work and he is so tired coming home that he can't speak coherently. Fortunately, Fonzie is fluent in Tired and provides translations.
  • In Doctor Who, the Doctor can apparently speak baby... or at least enough to tell Craig that his son Alfie prefers the name Stormageddon, Dark Lord of All.

Video Games

  • A variant occurred in Fallout 2: In the first town you reach after leaving home, you encounter a mentally stunted man who with great difficulty tells you to help safeguard some livestock. If your character has a very low intelligence score, you will be able to converse with him in very erudite grunting (the translation is given in parentheses), conveying fairly complex information.
  • Guy in Final Fantasy II (the real one, not the one that was actually Final Fantasy IV in Japan) can speak beaver language—even though, at least in Dawn of Souls, he has a little trouble with English. It's a little jarring.
    • An actual example in Final Fantasy IV (DS version) is in the Feymarch, where you meet Whyt and his family face-to-face for the first time. Rydia acts as their interpreter.
  • Subverted in Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice when the not-quite-stable Princess Sapphire has a chat with the mentally regressed Mao:

Mao: Ba, babuu
Sapphire: Oh it's you, Sir Mao. What's wrong?
Mao: Babloo
Sapphire: Oh, is that so? We're allowed to kill these guys?
Almaz: Princess, you can understand what Mao's saying?
Sapphire: No, I just thought it'd be easier if that was the case.

Junpei: Wait, does that mean... this dog's a Persona-user!?
Aigis: He says, "This is a place of peace, so I protected it."
Junpei: Uh, Aigis? Don't tell me you can translate dog language too...
Aigis: Canines do not have their own language. However, speech is not the only means of communication.

Web Comics

Web Original

  • Naruto the Abridged Series: Naruto's group come face to face with Zabuza... except they initially can't understand a word he says because of his face mask. Cue Kakashi revealing he can speak muffle.

Western Animation

  • In The Powerpuff Girls, Bubbles has the ability to speak to squirrels, among other things, which comes in handy on occasion.
    • A throwaway joke in another episode mentions that she is also fluent in Spanish. Eventually it's revealed that she can speak everything.
  • In Codename: Kids Next Door, the kids are trying to save babies at a hospital. Numbuh Three, The Ditz, reveals that "I speak baby," and indeed she does.
  • The second season of Josie and the Pussy Cats has the team flying into outer space and encountering a dog-bird alien named Bleep, who communicates as follows: "Bleep bleep bleep." Melody, the Ditz, says, "Bleep bleep bleep, bleep bleep?" Bleep responds, "Bleep bleep bleep, bleep." Melody then gives an English translation.
  • In the episode of Tiny Toon Adventures where the main gang ends up in England, Babs reveals she's fluent in "royalese," which was necessary in order to talk to Prince Charles and Princess Diana.
  • In the "Underfist" special of The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, Irwin pleads with Hoss, Skarr, and Jeff that, among other things, Mindy was kidnapped by a marshmallow bunny. However, his hysterical Inelegant Blubbering couldn't be understood by anyone save Jeff, who speaks "crybaby."
  • Happens in an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants: (as Patrick is whistling) "Patrick, I didn't know you spoke bird!" "No, that's Italian, Spongebob."
  • At one point in Phineas and Ferb, while Phineas and Ferb are helping Buford search for his lost goldfish, Phineas mentions that Ferb can communicate with dolphins. Another episode also reveals that Ferb can also speak Martian.
  • One episode of Total Drama World Tour has Izzy, the queen Cloudcuckoolander, is able to talk to a camel. Its even been confirmed that camel is her favorite foreign language.

Izzy: *grunting sounds* I just introduced myself in camelese.

    • She then asks the camel where they can get some lemonade. It leads them to the finish line.
  • On the Monsters vs. Aliens Halloween Special, Mutant Pumpkins From Outer Space, B.O.B. tries to reason with the evil pumpkins because, since he's part tomato, he's fluent in produce.

Dr. Cockroach: Well, what did he say?
B.O.B.: Horrible things! About my mother, in a salad bar.

  • In the Kim Possible episode "Roachie", Ron befriends a giant cockroach and soon begins having full conversations with it, imitating its clicking-noise speech and understanding its replies.

Kim: You're like the Roach Whisperer.
Ron: Y'know, if you're trying to speak 'roach, you've got it all wrong, KP. You've gotta click with your mandible.

  • In one episode of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Pinkie Pie interprets a frog's ribbit for Twilight: "Nice catch." Though this hasn't proven particularly useful to anypony yet.
  • In The Simpsons, Homer's status as an Omniglot is clarified to include fluent comprehension of Penguin.
  • In the Strawberry Shortcake episode "The Legend of Sherry Bobbleberry", Sherry can speak to hummingbirds, something no fairy generally does.
  1. ↑ Not actual squirrel noises, though
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