The new aliens on Stargate Universe lack this problem. In general though, the Stargate franchise should be regarded as a single overarching story existing within a single fictional universe.
As such, all its shows must be embraced together or rejected together. None can exist apart from the others. That doesn't even really count as a rationalization because it's just an excuse for ignoring the problem. Sadly, it's the excuse the producers have used. According to them, "it's a sacrifice we make in order to tell a new story on a new planet every week, and actually have alien characters who someone can understand.
But it's a poor excuse because it's a false dichotomy. Other science fiction shows like Star Trek, Babylon 5, Farscape, Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, etc have all been of telling new and compelling stories each week without resorting to faulty plot logic baked into the very premise of the story. As a consequence of Stargate's lazy writing, I cannot responsibly review the Stargate franchise.
I would have to ignore the fundamental implausibility of the premise to review the story, which is a level of cognitive dissonance I won't engage in as a reviewer. Season 1 Season 2. Explore Wikis Community Central. Register Don't have an account? Talk: English Back to page. Add topic. Edit source History. So it's mainly not really a telepathy thing. I did read on one of the Stargate websites, I'm not sure which one quite a while ago, and one of the FAQs was "Why could everyone speak English" and the answer was something like that.
It's mainly a convenient understanding thing, I mean if the French had a sci-fi franchise where they go to other planets to meet aliens, and I suspect they might, then all the aliens would speak French. Same for German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish etc etc. We know that in history, the Asgard has been looking over other planets for research, learning about them etc. One of those planets was Earth, so the Asgard could theoretically learn English of all languages on their travels there.
Also, that could be the same story for the ascended Ancients. Iaselar , 12 August UTC I've briefly edited the page to give a more fully understanded background to the history of english language and a brief speculation to the asgard having their role in rooting it as stated on the Asgard page, although sources may be needed.
Nevertheless, i've had my own theories of why everyone speaks english unknowingly, see thats the thing. Once they saw the tau'ri exploring the galaxy FINALLY, an ancient broke the rules to control the minds of humans to an extent that they all spoke english without realising it. So logically, with humans seeded throughout the galaxy, English among other languages, although we don't see them as often is what their linguistic skills eventually evolved into, thus allowing them to speak modern English!
In most cases, they come across races whose English is slightly different, has accents, or uses different words for things, or even some Goa'uld words for things logically since they've been serving the Goa'uld for ages now , and that just shows that the evolution of the language does take different paths while ending up similar.
The earth stargate on the other hand has primarily been used by the USA military and its civilian contractors, and on the first time out none of them speak Jaffa, so it is configured to prime you with English. Non-native English speakers do not get any extra grasp of English from this because they have inevitably been through the outgoing stargate. Thus, anyone who comes to Earth through its stargate automatically speaks English. Even once the stargate program becomes more international, the overwhelming majority of people leaving through it speak English, so no single other language manages to unseat it.
The Abydonians do not speak Jaffa because Ra has kept them a deliberately isolated and subservient population and Abydos was not configured to Jaffa at the time they got there. Also note that if someone comes to Earth the long way, you can just round trip them through the Alpha Site which of course is also set to English and they get the English language pack.
So, there you have it. This is why everyone speaks English. Now we can all rest easy at night. How does your theory fit with the film , where they speak Ancient Egyptian and difficulty communicating is part of the plot? This is fine for when dealing with e. Epistemic status: Really silly headcanon.
Total retcon. Zim claims that the humans are actually speaking Irken rather than him speaking English, suggesting it's a result of Ancient Astronauts. Similarly, the Employer claims that the Spanish he speaks in is his native language, but denies it actually being Spanish. Films — Animation. As for the other aliens, not even handwaved. Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Candace Against the Universe : The aliens in this film do not need any sort of translation device to speak with the main characters.
Played with when Super Super Big Doctor gives her name, and later uses alien terms when speaking about her annoying little brothers. As a gag she also says the word roller coaster must be made up. Films — Live-Action. In Avatar it's explained Grace opened up a school for the Na'vi and taught them English several years before the film opened. The school was also shut down some time before the film started. The Beastmaster : In the second film, it turns out that the people of Dar's world including him all speak English rather than it being Translation Convention.
No one comments, and it's never explained. Justified in Buckaroo Banzai. The Red Lectroids originally came to the U. The Black Lectroids have apparently been studying the Earth for a long time while they were keeping an eye on the Red Lectroid refugees.
Jake, the alien cat from The Cat from Outer Space "speaks" English using a form of telepathy thanks to his translator collar.
Coneheads pepper their speech with both English and Remulakian. However, the English has no slang and sounds like it was read straight from a book. The Day the Earth Stood Still The remake one-ups this by having Klaatu speak Mandarin Chinese. In the DC Extended Universe , In Man of Steel , the scenes on Krypton could have been Translation Convention , and of course Clark has spent nearly his whole life on Earth, but it gets a little weird when the other Kryptonians have little trouble speaking perfect English as soon as they land.
The landing message demanding Clark's surrender was broadcast all over the world, shown in whatever the native language of the area is. We can assume that they've figured out how to communicate in whatever languages are necessary. While they're not aliens , in Aquaman , are never shown a spoken language dedicated to the underwater worlds besides those written.
All underwater beings capable of speech speak in English. Nyah: Of course! Man: What about other languages? Nyah: No; why should I? Rocket : You speak Groot? Thor : Yes, they taught it on Asgard. It was an elective. Brunette Venusian : into communicator We have found the intruders. Cruze : Yeah, the way those shooting irons of theirs work , I'm with you, Doc. Blonde Venusian : Remonstrating with a Gun Bacchino.
Two aliens are sitting in a pub. Lampshaded in a The Adventures of Samurai Cat tale. The duo are on an alien ship trying to decipher the controls, and find that they're actually labelled in Japanese. Then they realise that, despite being from 17th century Japan, they were speaking English. Zig-zagged in the Alice, Girl from the Future series. There are clear cases of Translation Convention of aliens using an interstellar Common Tongue the Cosmolingua or the native language of some planet or other, but sometimes like in One Hundred Years Ahead there are aliens speaking perfect Russian.
It is mentioned that languages can get mastered extremely quickly several minutes with a hypnopedia if you want it to stick in your head for a short while only, several days if you want to learn it for good , but this explanation isn't provided every time. Fairytale creatures from different countries in The Time of Myths also speak excellent Russian, and this time no explanation is given at all.
Animorphs : The Yeerks are apparently teaching various hosts Hork-Bajir especially English so they can talk to each other.
Their alternatives were Taxxon good luck pronouncing it without a several-foot tongue , the Hork-Bajir or Gedd languages too simple , or some other Earth language pointless as most of their human hosts knew English already. On the whole though this isn't too improbable. Human-Controllers' Yeerks would know English from their hosts' memories, and Hork-Bajir speak a strange mix of Galard and English " Stop that gafrash shooting , logafach.
Taxxon-speak is said to be almost impossible to decipher, even for Controllers. The free Hork-Bajir likewise speak mostly crude English mixed with their native language, but their Seer who has genius-level intelligence by human standards, even speaks flawless English — leading a National Guard commander to remark about the "aliens speaking more perfect English than [his] troops.
One Seer is apparently born per generation to the Hork-Bajir, so maybe this one was the Seer for his generation. It is also revealed in "Visser" that Hork-Bajir brains actually mangle the different languages together naturally.
Which means even when controlled by a Yeerk, the Yeerk will find themselves mixing the languages as well. The Andalites are a telepathic species so when they "speak" an English speaking listener hears English and translator chips so they can understand languages spoken to them. The Nesk learned English by spying on humans for a very short period of time. A character even comments on how weird it is that random aliens speak English. Isaac Asimov : The Gods Themselves works around averting this trope too, built around two parallel universes.
A human-built energy pump is sucking energy from the other dimension in order to provide Earth with an supply of apparently free energy.
The first third of the book revolves around the receipt of an alien message by a journalist, Lamont; he recruits Bronowski, a professor of archaeo-linguistics, to decipher the symbols. In the second part, we see the aliens' side of the exchange. This work also has aliens mastering English through empathy. They admit to having watched our society and learning our language before approaching us.
It learned English and about our sexual lives from capturing public broadcasts. They don't normally use sound to communicate, so English is difficult to mimic, but it is reasonably close. Meek apparently thought this was too absurd a trope to use in his story Awlo of Ulm.
Instead, his miniature Serkis Folk spoke very bad Hawaiian. For no apparent reason and without so much as being lampshaded. If you think that's bad, but keep reading anyways, you're in for a time Demon talk is spelled with Arabic font but it's unintelligible. In one story in the Callahan's Crosstime Saloon series, one of the humans compliments an alien on how good his English is — only for the alien to respond drily that the language was invented by his direct ancestors.
Codex Alera : All the various alien races speak Aleran the language of the human protagonists, presumably some derivative of Latin. The Marut use it as a trade language between their various tribes, the Canim generally don't speak Aleran but their ambassadors learn it because they wish to be able to speak to Alerans, the Icemen are telepathic and therefore don't really need spoken languages, and the Vord use it because the Vord queen was awakened by the blood of an Aleran and absorbed knowledge from him.
In Timothy Zahn 's own-universe Conqueror's Pride , the alien species interact normally with humans, although the Yycromae speak in what appears to be a telepathic connection rather than conventional speech. The Zhirrzh, which capture Pheylan Cavanagh, have a struggle developing a medium through which to interrogate him and Pheylan sometimes wonders how to convey complicated human concepts, such as his physical need for sunlight, through their limited comprehension of English.
Zahn has obviously thought about this trope and tried hard to avert it. In Galaxy of Fear , all intelligent aliens save Chewbacca are rendered as if speaking Basic. Odd considering the verse's fondness for Bilingual Dialogue.
Even Jabba the Hutt speaks Basic — Shadows of the Empire shows that he can , but normally he doesn't. In the Goosebumps Series book Brain Juice, the alien villains, who love talking about how much smarter they are than humans , mock the question of how they speak English — they learned it in an hour before landing on Earth.
Their language has four hundred words just to say "hello! Every alien race the heroes come across has "listened to your radio broadcasts" and learned fluent English for one reason or another. But the radio version is played straight in Invasion: Earth. The aliens in question speak fluent English and Russian, having picked up on the most common broadcasts having come during the Cold War. Later on, when they need to talk without being overheard, the two protagonists an American soldier and a Russian linguist switch to Spanish, which the aliens didn't bother to learn.
In His Dark Materials , it is discussed between Lyra and Will, who are both from Oxford, just in different parallel universes. There are slight differences in certain words, though. In Cittigazze, which is supposed to be a Mediterranean land on another parallel Earth, the residents still speak English. Averted on the Mulefa's parallel Earth. Mary spends some time trying to learn their language.
Being elephant-like creatures, part of their language involves movements of the trunk along with words, so she has to use her arms to speak as well. They also learn a little English from her. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy : Handwaved by the Babelfish, a very small organism that went into your ear and read brainwaves to act as a universal translator.
Additionally within The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, some words and phrases have almost universal phonetic equivalents in every other language, even though the meanings often vary considerably. Examples include: There is, in any society advanced enough to make mixed drinks, a drink that sounds like 'gin and tonic', for instance, and throughout the known universe, our planet is the only one which uses 'Belgium' to mean something other than the most extreme profanity.
We're shunned for using the word 'cricket' to refer to a ball game, as the rest of the galaxy still remembers the Krikkit Wars. The equipment used to play cricket on Earth strongly resembles the Earth-Shattering Kaboom -scale weaponry used in the wars, which is considered by other races to be extremely tactless of us. In the book of the original radio series scripts, author Douglas Adams explains this as the reason every alien in fiction can speak perfect English.
Everyone has a Babel Fish in their ear. The souls from The Host can speak English, but only the ones who've got human hosts, and only because their host would have known it first assuming that the host did speak English, of course.
The story's set in America, though, so for our purposes it's a moot point. Justified given that not only have they lived on Earth for ten years, but the Loric race has had much contact with humankind over the last few millenia , to the point of procreating with humans and producing exceptionally gifted hybrids , including the Greek gods, Buddha, Leonardo da Vinci, etc.
In Justice Squad , one gathering of aliens is revealed to have adopted an Earth language due to it being so primitive that every advanced alien species is able to translate to and from it English is still known, but used more for backroom deals, and only known by the less rule-abiding species. The Marvellous Land of Snergs : Justified in the case of the Snergs and the Dutch seamen who could have learned English to communicate with the colony.
Though, it is not explained how the inhabitants of King Keul's realm, who have apparently spent a long time in isolation, can speak modern English fluidly. Maureen is confused by this, but no one has any explanation.
The Neverending Story : Or, in this case, German. Of course they'd also speak our language there. In the short story "On a Clear Day You Can See All the Way to Conspiracy" by Desmond Warzel, the aliens speak perfect English; for at least two of them, however, this is justified, as they've been hiding out in suburban Cleveland and would need to speak English to blend in.
Lewis averts the trope at the end of Out of the Silent Planet : the academic main character, who has lived with the alien planet's natives and learned some of their language, is recruited by a human Corrupt Corporate Executive to translate a speech full of flowery white-man's-burden rhetoric about why they should let him colonize their planet and take their resources.
The main character does his best to render it within the grasp of his basic Alienese and ends up completely exposing the antagonist's agenda without twisting a single word. The main character is a Philologist, and it took him several weeks to come up with a basic understanding of the language.
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