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Mel and Floyd (maybe Floyd) are my only monoglot pups, I think.

Marguerite is French, and she lives in England, so I know she's at least bilingual. She may also speak a smattering of other European language. I think she thinks that everyone in Milliways is speaking English, except for the French pups (if she speaks to any) because she still speaks with a French accent.

Renee is true bilingual - she used to speak Spanish at home growing up in Gotham with Dominican parents. She doesn't read or write it very well, mind.

Dinah is canonically a polyglot; right now in her place in canon she speaks fluent Japanese, and I figure she also speaks very good Spanish, and maybe even Greek (thanks, Hercules). Her first language is English.

Death is - shall we say panlingual. He doesn't speak any language, and he speaks all languages. So the question is moot for him.
In the same way, Will, now, speaks all languages, but for him they just manifest as English.

(Other pups-in-the-wings: Sophie is another polyglot; on top of English she speaks multiple accentless dialects of all major European languages, and has fluent Mandarin and Japanese.
Mac speaks an old dialect of Italian (even though it sounds like he's speaking modern English with badly accented Italian words thrown in. He assumes everyone else is speaking the same.
Angua speaks fluent Morporkian, Uberwaldean and Quirmian. I have generally played those languages as being identical, in bar and out, with English, Russian and French.)

Remember way back when how Eska and Barry compared notes and discovered that English and Morporkian were essentially the same, or seemed to be? That was the first time I ever thought about how language in the Bar works.

I remember that! I was really into the mechanics of Disc-Earth comparisons back then. It just didn't make any sense to me that English puns would work in Morporkian unless they were the same language. Pratchett even made etymology jokes, so.

Nowadays I tend to fly by the seat of my pants more. But I think all Disc characters think they're speaking Morporkian?

That's how I play it with Moist unless I've said that he's actually speaking Uberwaldian, which he does sometimes.

Gordon speaks and reads German well enough to study advanced quantum physics in it, since canonically he spent a nice chunk of time at Innsbruck.

Adrian speaks enough Spanish not to disgrace himself too badly in Arizona, and can call people filthy names in English, Spanish, Dutch, and the language of the Satere-Mawe people of Brazil. I have to get him in contact with a French Canadian at some point to improve his vocabulary.

Ellen knows what a few languages other than English look like, but beyond that she only knows English.

Arcade is fluent in Latin as well as English.

Fawkes speaks and reads English and is very, very good at it, more so than most humans of the Capital Wasteland.

Ray's native language is English, but before Milliways he had also picked up enough German and Russian to understand engineering journals and parapsych studies. At one point he encountered a sorcerer in Milliways who, upon seeing that Ray was studying Sumerian, pulled a working knowledge of the Sumerian language out of the human collective unconscious and crammed it into Ray's head in exchange for allowing the sorcerer to learn it too. (No, really.) He's got a reading knowledge of Latin but would stumble over it if he had to speak it aloud, and thanks to Garion's amulet can understand the languages of non-human creatures (but only while he has the amulet on).

Medic speaks German, specifically the Swabian dialect, and English. He is deliberately speaking English when he's in Milliways and most of the time in his canon, and generally hears people in the Bar speaking in English.

Mordin's native language is not English, but he speaks the language, along with several asari, turian, and elcor dialects. He wears a translator module that can render other Galactic languages into something he understands, as even with his boundless study he only has so much time for linguistics.

Varric speaks Common or whatever the hell they call the language in Dragon Age. I don't know if the dwarves have a separate language in his canon, but he was born and raised on the surface and sounds like the humans around him, so.

Belar is a God. He can pretty much speak or read whatever the hell he wants to speak or read. Don't know what he hears people speaking in, though.

All my pups have English as a first language. Of them, the only one who's ever really thought about what language everyone else is speaking is Kirk. Kirk assumes that the Bar, being advanced tech, is using the same sort of translator that makes sure everyone in all versions of Trek speaks the same language unless the plot says otherwise.

Knox has a tiny smattering of Yiddish and Spanish, as befits a resident of not-quite-New York.

Charlie has some Spanish, and has learned useful phrases in about a dozen languages.

Kirk can offer greetings in a few UFP languages for diplomatic purposes but the translator makes much else unnecessary (until Star Trek VI).

Cy took high school Spanish but isn't good with it. He has a Google translator wired to his system that works as well as Google translations usually do.

In my headcanon, Dix is multilingual, speaking a little Spanish, Dutch and French, with her primary form of language being English; it's actual!canon that she can speak Spanish.

Clem flunked out of Spanish in high school, so she speaks only two languages; English and the language d'amour.

Munch is fluent in French. He also knows enough Russian, Spanish, Hebrew, Greek and Hungarian to hold conversations (or question suspects).

Rennes at the very least knows enough French to be able to curse in it.

Klara's first language is Swiss German, but she is fluent in English as well.

Malu speaks whatever the native language of the World of Four Nations is, if it's not English.

Speed knows enough Spanish to interrogate suspects when necessary.

Oh dear.-

I speak German and English, with additional Finnish, some French and Japanese, I read Latin and might revive my long-disused Ancient Greek, I have a smattering of Italian, understand the bare bones of Spanish and Portuguese, and would like to know more Russian.

Teja speaks Gothic, plus Latin and Ancient Greek (koiné stage, or a bit later); in the bar, he hears people as speaking Gothic.

Urquhart speaks Gaelic and English, then Latin and French and Ancient Greek, Lingua Franca, Arabic and some Persian, the Greek and Italian of his time, German and perhaps even some Bohemian (Czech). He thinks he is speaking the English of his time in the bar.

Tower speaks every language necessary; Ma'at speaks every language ever spoken in Egypt since the old days (including a slightly posh colonial British English); Sirona speaks every language ever spoken in the places where she used to be worshipped, from some forgotten Celtic dialect to modern German plus quite a great number of programming languages; Margolotta speaks at least Überwaldean and Morporkian (and hears people as speaking Morporkian in the bar) and reads all the old languages books may come in on the Discworld, maybe even Djelibeybian; I never thought about what language Tamara might be speaking, actually, as everybody in her canon speaks some odd and vaguely accented nautical English; and only Donovan and Bridgette speak nothing but English -- Bridgette might actually be learning a bit of Spanish at her school, seeing that she does live in Phoenix, Arizone.

Seems what I have in common with my pups is dabbling in languages...

Ramon is, I think, the only one of mine who...wait no, there's Bruce. OK, Ramon speaks Spanish as a first language, but is entirely fluent in English and Portuguese. He tends to speak English in the bar.

Bruce, canonically IIRC, speaks Chinese as well as English. My brain is melted, so I can't be sure, but he strikes me as the type that wouldn't let a thing like a different language slow him down. He'd learn it and move on.

Harry, famously, speaks Parseltongue as well as English.

And Gene, and I quote, 'once hit a bloke for speaking French.' So...yeah. Just English for him. Though he is fluent in Copper.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure Bruce just learns languages as he needs them with his MAGIC BATMAN BRAIN. He certainly never needs a translator, that's for damn sure.

See, if we were talking about anyone else, I'd think you were being sarcastic. But as it's Bruce...

If Bruce had to tote a translator around with him - well, that would make for hilarious reading. Because the translator would have to incorporate Bruce's intimidating mannerisms. Imagine a small scholarly type standing next to Batman trying to intimidate the foreign criminal element.

Oh, Enzo speaks all the standards: C, C++, Java... (Plus Dot made him take an Ancient Languages class, so he's at least passingly fluent in COBOL and Fortran.)

Oddly, he does speak English when he's transformed into a human. This might relate in some way to the fact that the programming languages he speaks use English-based keywords, but mostly it's just convenient.

Alyx's first language is English. She's competent at Spanish, although her vocabulary leaves a lot to be desired, and knows a smattering of Japanese and ASL. She can read Russian pretty well but can't speak it worth a damn.

Artie's first language is Yiddish, but he's fluent in English, French, Spanish, German, Russian, Latin, Greek (modern and ancient), and Aramaic, and knows bits and pieces of dozens of other languages.

Twilight Sparkle speaks Equestrian, which may or may not bear any resemblance to English. The ponies' written language looks like either English or Wingding-like glyphs, depending on which episode you're watching. As for their spoken language... well, I'm just gonna throw this out there without further comment. (http://youtu.be/Ars_I3kzOAw)

Felix speaks... the language of Weyard. (They have at least one extinct written form, possibly as many as three, but everyone speaks the same language.) I've toyed with the theory that Adepts - or Adepts in the company of a mind-reader, which most of the playable characters usually are - can understand any language, but that doesn't seem all that workable. He's picked up a few words of Old Lemurian and the Gondowanian ritual languages, but nothing much useful. I've kind of millicanoned that the Proxians, among whom he lived for a few years, have vaguely Russian accents, but they still speak the one language.

Kain speaks... the language of the Blue Planet. Again, it's a monoglottal video-game planet.

Karis speaks Weyardian, too.

And Fluttershy speaks Equestrian, which Leesha has amply covered.

X-23 speaks English, French, and Japanese, as per canon. I figure she probably also has a handful of other languages at her beck and call, probably those most broadly useful on the world stage.

Raven speaks many languages, he has lived a long time. His messed-up grammatical structure in-bar is the result of mixing up the grammatical structures of all the languages, broadly speaking. I am not sure whether the Bar translational field has trouble with him swapping between languages multiple times in a sentence, or whether his brain and his mouth have trouble aligning them.

Dean speaks English and reads Latin.

Flemeth speaks the equivalent of Common. I suspect she probably knows lots of other languages, though. Or maybe she thinks it's funny only to know the one. Who can be sure?

Wonder Woman speaks Greek, ancient Greek, English, Chinese, an alien language or two, and some others, though I cannot at this moment remember which ones. Lady's got skills!

Michael speaks all languages! Also fake!Elizabethan English. She is a pro at that one. *pats canon*

Galadan speaks English, Latin, Greek, the common language of Fionavar, Mandarin Chinese of the future! and a handful of others. Thousands of years to work with gives him lots of spare time!

Sam Tyler speaks English. I need to rewatch the series again to see if there is ever any mention of a second or third language. Something makes me suppose the answer is 'yes', but that could just be Friday talking. *suspicious*

Something about "Dean speaks English and reads Latin" sent me into giggles. You'd think with all that traveling, he'd have picked something up, but even Sam's college-brain wasn't too great with Spanish.

I distinctly remember being frustrated once when Dean had to read the Latin out of a book, and then he dropped it.

"WHY WOULD YOU NOT MEMORIZE THE EXORCISM RITUAL, DUDE. REALLY?"

So. *mocks him gently?*

WHAT YOU MEAN IT'S NOT EASY TO HOLD A BOOK, WRESTLE A DEMON, AND TRY NOT TO FALL OUT OF AN AIRPLANE AT THE SAME TIME?

That was the one time I understood it! But then several seasons later STILL WITH THE BOOK.

Like they don't get knocked down ALL THE TIME.

BOYS. LEARN SOMETHING.

*pats them, giggling again*

Doesn't Diana also speak to animals? I kind of think that as a diplomat she speaks as many languages as she can.

She communicates with them, yeah. Sometimes it's actual communication and sometimes it's a kind of animal empathy, depending on who is writing her.

And I know she's got at least a dozen languages under her belt, I just cannot remember which of them are specifically mentioned in canon versus ones I just happen to think she would know. I had a list once, I know I did. Somewhere.

I speak English and used to be pretty solid in French but I'm out of practice with it. I know enough modern Greek to get around and can read Latin and Ancient Greek.

Will only knows English and hears everyone in Bar speaking English.

Jane speaks English and French and can read and translate Latin and Greek, she hears everyone in English.

Moist speaks Morporkian, Uberwaldian and has a smattering of the other languages around the Disc. He hears everyone in Morkporkian unless he's talking with Lady Margolotta as they'll sometimes talk in Uberwaldian. He's worked quite hard to have accentless Morporkian. As Debi says above, Morporkian is the same as English. Though I've always thought of Uberwaldian as more like German crossed with Russian and some other Eastern European languages.

Demeter is a goddess so she speaks whatever she wants, but her first language is Greek. I figure that she hears everyone talking in their native language if they're from Earth and she has a slight accent that's European but harder to place in more detail.

Sameth speaks the language of the Old Kingdom and Ancelstierre which is a version of English. I figure that he's probably been taught a small bit of other languages but he's not that good at them. His skill is with the Charter, which isn't exactly another language but its complicated.

William knows English and since the part of Arizona they're in isn't too far from the Mexican border, he probably knows a tiny amount of Spanish. He hears everyone in English.

Tumnus speaks the main language of Narnia and has a working knowledge of a lot of various dialects such as whatever elves and dwarves speak there. The language in Narnia is basically English and that's what he hears.

The Pirate King speaks English but I think he knows how to also speak Spanish and French as that's helpful when being a pirate. He hears everything in English and brings his own music.

She-Hulk speaks English as her native tongue and understands a few other languages: French, Spanish, and Latin. She's not fluent in French or Spanish but reads Latin quite well (helps with the history of law).

Hawkgirl understands and speaks more languages than I can count, but she's extremely rusty with all of them except Spanish. Note: the other languages she speaks and understands are the versions spoken during her past lives, so, for example, she'll understand and speak 14th century Portuguese rather than modern day Portuguese.

Lockjaw speaks the universal language of devotion and love. Also begging for food.

Siryn speaks Gaelic fluently. Cousin Tom was adamant that she study it even though so many people in Ireland don't speak it. She speaks some French which was useful during her time with the X-Corporation in Paris.

Black Mamba speaks English (she's a native speaker), French, Spanish, German, Italian, Russian, and Swedish. She's completely self-taught in all foreign languages - they're useful to her work which is why she learned them.

All my pups except Lockjaw hear English when people speak at Milliways. Lockjaw hears in Lockjawese and English.

Edited 2011-08-05 20:00 (UTC)

English is my first language, but I can get along in Spanish. I definitely understand and read Spanish better than I speak it, though, oof. I can pick up a word or two in Portuguese thanks to Latin-based language similarity, and my accent generally comes out closer to Brazilian Portuguese when I'm trying to speak Spanish, but that last is mainly a product of too much international radio and a fondness for how Portuguese sounds. *blushes just a wee bit* Any Mandarin I know is thanks to Firefly via Milliways. Heh.

Sariel is a true bilingual; she grew up speaking both English and Kweyol, which is Saint Lucia's French patois dialect. She generally hears people in the bar in English unless they're speaking French or similar.

Oh, fun! I love the language game.

To clarify at the start, my general approach to the Milliways translation thing is that I figure my characters hear people speaking the language they're actually speaking if it's one they know. For instance, if you're speaking Mandarin to River, she'd hear it as Mandarin, because she speaks that. If you usually speak Russian or Klingon, and you speak to her that way, she'll hear you as English, because she doesn't speak those languages (and that's her default, both because of Milliways demographics and because that's what's spoken aloud most in her canon.) However, if you usually speak English/Spanish/etc, but you start talking to River in Klingon with the intent of speaking in a foreign language, she'll hear the Klingon words without translation. And be confused.

River canonically speaks both English and Mandarin Chinese fluently, like everyone else in her society. (We'll use a somewhat handwavy version of 'fluently,' since I understand the Chinese on the actual show is somewhat... flexible.) Millicanonically, she can speak the High Speech of Gilead ~~when it's plot-relevant or cool~~ at need, by virtue of being a born gunslinger. (Hanging out with Roland Deschain helped her consciously accessible vocabulary some.)

That's basically it for her languages. She knows occasional words of other things, and if she's right in front of someone she can do a sort of psychic piggy-backing thing where she can pick up words and phrases and background facts about them on the fly, but that's not full fluency, and it doesn't last into long-term ability.

She hears Milliways people in English, generally.

Regan is like River, but without the High Speech or the psychic cheating.

Trowa speaks several, thanks to a peripatetic childhood in a multilingual society. English is his first language, and his default. But he's pretty fluent in Japanese too; he's got decent German; he can get around in French. He speaks somewhat stilted or limited but adequate Spanish and Arabic. There are several others in which he can say things like "Hello" and "How much is that ammunition?" and "I work for the circus" and "Surrender now."

English is what he mostly hears at Milliways, but he's got more linguistic overlap with other Milliways-common(ish) languages than most of mine.

Piotr speaks Russian as his first language, and it's what he speaks best. But he learned English via telepathic infodump and has been living in English-speaking countries for over a decade, so his English is also excellent! He's not always great with idioms, and he's still got an accent, but still. He's learned several other languages too via telepathic infodump -- Japanese, Shi'ar, I think German, probably others -- and I totally cannot keep track of which.

He too hears most people in English. It's his subconscious default for multicultural groups like this, especially ones ith other X-Men around.

Lan's entire continent seems to speak the same language, barring some dialect variation. He's also studied the Old Tongue a lot, which is your standard fantasy Ancient Ancestral Dead Language that educated people learn but nobody speaks in everyday life any more.

He hears Milliways in... whatever that language is called! I treat it pretty much like English, since Robert Jordan doesn't do any tricks that imply otherwise.

Hawkeye speaks Amestrian, which basically maps to English. (Canonically! All the writing is in English, in this Japanese tv show, and since Amestris is an AU mashup of 1930s/1940s London and Germany and other bits of Western Europe anyway, I go with it.) She studied some neighboring language in school, Aerugan or Cretan or something -- I forget if I millicanoned anything specific -- but she speaks it like a schoolgirl who hasn't had lessons in years. She hasn't been stationed anywhere where brushing up on a foreign language would be a useful career move.

Being basically monolingual, yeah, she hears everybody in Amestrian.

Karkat speaks Troll English, which is mostly the same as English, although it has its own formal alphabet in addition to standard English orthography, and in terms of dialect, to his ear the familiar Earth terms for most things are fancy high-blood vernacular. This is why he uses complicated jargony words like thermal hull and auricular sponge clots.

He hasn't learned any other languages because after basic schoolfeeding trolls are left to study what they want and it is kind of a cultural cul-de-sac, at this point. I imagine the Empire is pretty hegemonic about speaking T. English.

He doesn't speak any alien languages; only elite troll ambassassadors ever need to.

There is no attempt whatsoever made to explain this in canon (or the existence of Troll Italian and Troll Spanish) but since the trolls created the universe with Earth in it, it's not that surprising. Also there is a multiversal big bad called Lord English, for what that's worth.

He is also better than average at animal body language, having been raised by a giant crab without the power of speech. He is less good at human body language, because humans don't react emotionally in ways he considers sane.

As for computer languages, he is an absolute garbage programmer at ~ath and only slightly less terrible as Dis*. But in his defense these are programming languages capable of shaping reality. He would probably be able to gobble up "primitive" Earth programming languages if he was willing to soil his sight globes with studying them.

Me: I remember enough Spanish that I can still read it and... pretty much no Japanese. XD However, I can still recognise hiragana and katakana when I see them; kanji, far less so, by virtue of having learned far less.

Carl knows a bit of Spanish, tries to keep current on programming languages, and (less a foreign language than it is a new reading method) wants to learn to read Braille at some point.

Cosmo is at least bilingual in Russian, thanks to his parents; I think he also knows a fair bit of French. He's another programmer, so he knows a fair bit of that as well.

Moist has absorbed (haha) some Spanish by virtue of living in LA, but he's never made a conscious effort to learn it, so he's mainly a monoglot. Conflict Diamond is a native English speaker, and picked up a swear words in a few West African dialects before her family left Liberia.

Cata and Sam both speak (and hear, in the bar) Sixlandish, which is apparently close enough to English that Cata and Medic have no problem reading things when in each other's worlds. I suspect there are a few other languages in their world, both within the Six Lands and in the couple of places outside of that area, but I don't think either of them know more than a handful of words.

Claudia has no head for languages unless they're 'spoken' by a computer.

Apollo knows... pretty much every language ever - certainly every language that's fallen in the sphere of Western civilization, but given his fondness for haiku, I think he made an effort to know the other ones as well - by virtue of poetry being one of his domains. His first language is ancient Greek, but I think in the bar he mainly hears English.

Hoo boy. Stitch is canonically fluent in an alien dialect called Tantalog. He understands English perfectly, it's the speaking it that gives him trouble. And thanks to millicanon, he can cheerfully yell horrible things at you in Mandarin Chinese (his accent is atrocious)! Give him a brief window to focus on a conversation in something else and he'll pick up the basics of that too.

Stitch mostly hears patrons speaking English. And replies to them in Tantalog. It's a rare day that he remembers that not everyone is fluent in both.

Edited 2011-08-05 23:21 (UTC)

Rachel is fluent in English and knows a scattering of Spanish. She's not very good at it and hasn't seen much practice, I'd assume - upper-middle-class white girl in Santa Barbara taking Spanish in high school. Also, she really does not care and I can't see anyone being able to successfully convince her to try and learn another language. It's too cerebral for her and she'd see it as a wasted effort.

Which is a shame because I personally love languages and would thrill at the excuse to look into one. Alas, she denies me.

In addition to English, Voodoo is fluent in Pashto, Chechen, Farsi, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, and Korean. He's pretty good at reading those last four (not so much the first three, but written Farsi is fairly similar to written Arabic). To him, everyone in Milliways is speaking English.

Aside from English, John only speaks very fragmented Spanish ("YOU'RE ALL MUERTO!"). Like Voodoo, he thinks everyone in Milliways speaks English.

Oh language. Both Evil Chicken and Amascut come from the same MMO, and I think that the only MMO that even tries to handle different languages is EVE Online. I mean, how are you going to keep players from understanding eachother? So, both Evil Chicken and Amascut speak Common or whatever the language is called.

Well, Evil Chicken and speaking? I don't know if it is actually physically possible, so I have explained that away by using the mindspeak excuse. He probably hears everyone speaking chicken.

And with Amascut's confusing status as a goddess but not, I think she can understand plenty of languages that have existed on her world, but that is mainly because of her age. In addition to Common, she can probably speak Kharidian (or whatever Arabic is supposed to represent) and whatever language Latin represents in the English version of the game. The developers can't decide whether it is Old Gnomic, Zarosian, Demonic, or just Common's predecessor. Could be all four. Amascut can also ironically understand cat without a catspeak amulet. She probably hears everyone talking in Common.

As for myself, I have more experience with English than with Spanish, but I know both due to growing up in a bilingual household. I know a smattering of German and thanks to my recent habit of using Brazilian Runescape servers to get away from the crowds I am beginning to understand written Portuguese.

Most of my pups have English as their default language — the one they're speaking unless otherwise specified, the one they hear coming through the babel field. The exceptions are Obi-Wan (good ol' Galactic Basic Standard), Rukia (Japanese), The Cheat (speaks The Cheat, hears English) and maybe Ryûk (whatever language they speak in Shinigami-kai).

Strong Bad knows just enough foreign-type words to pepper his dialogue, and he can mostly understand The Cheat.

Hiro speaks flawless Japanese ("Nipponese" as it's known in his universe) and may have started learning Sumerian. He can also code like a boss.

According to WotC's Saga Edition, Obi-Wan's other language besides Basic is Shyriiwook (which, like most humans who have it listed as a language, he presumably understands without being able to pronounce it properly).

Divis Mal can speak any language he likes and usually does.

Jennifer's language skills, like her stats in general, will forever remain a matter for fans to figure out, fuck you very much White Wolf. She was one of the founder members of T2M Americas when it moved to Mexico City, so we can at a minimum assume she speaks Spanish in addition to English.

* * *

For my part, I have a smattering of German, French and Spanish words, and can extrapolate words in closely related languages; also, I can read katakana, hiragana and some of the more frequently encountered kanji. This, however, is reading comprehension; I can best follow the spoken language if it's being spoken slowly and carefully.

Edited 2011-08-07 02:12 (UTC)

Annabelle Newfield speaks English as her native language, although I've ruled that she speaks other languages well enough to 'get by' pretty much anywhere in western Europe or the Americas. If you expand that definition to "knows how to curse in", she is a veritable tower of Babel.

I'm not sure about Kreyu. Probably Atlantean, since they're the major human power at the current time in canon. Canon isn't clear whether dragon's even HAVE a language of their own, so..... *shrugs*

Mr. Saturday can understand any language and manage well enough with regard to speaking it, thanks to his psychic gifts. His native language, however, is English.

Alice Liddell probably speaks all of them now, on account of being made the Daeva of Wrath. (Thanks, Milliways!) Before that, she only knew English.

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