This is explained by referring back to The Science of Discworld and the creation event that brought Roundworld Earth into being: as a male human Discworld wizard created our universe and our planet, it therefore follows on that human life evolves on Earth and the languages it speaks are those of the human world that called us into being.
Far from their languages being mirrors of ours - our languages are copies of those of the discworld. In Keepers of the Elements , on all of the magical planets, everyone speaks English. J'onn J'onzz also plays this trope straight when he communicates with Shinji on the Moon.
Several Superman alien enemies show up like Brainiac and play the trope straight. When the four arrive on C'hou in With Strings Attached , they immediately meet people who speak accented English much to their relief. Everywhere else they go, everyone speaks English. However, early on, John and Ringo encounter several books in other languages, and Stal mentions that some names Idri'en Tagen and Raleka are "old language names. As the four have other things to think about and are not linguists, they never delve into this topic.
This is given a Hand Wave by Spectrem, who says that the Pyar gods put a field around the planet so everyone could understand everyone else. The enigmatic Sinner Blue Darks Misfortune : The enigmatic Celestial race can not only speak English fluently, but apparently all the languages known in the universe if need be. Every alien in Calvin and Hobbes: The Series does this. The Trans-Galactic Republic cannot initially understand asari, salarian, turian, etc.
Then, Translator Microbes show up for the subversion. Language barriers do not come up again after that. A soul stealing alien called Shauri not only speaks English, but is a Surfer Dude. This odd speech pattern is the result of the creature washing up on the shores of California.
English is canonically an important Common Tongue of the Federation, and a couple of Breen bit characters are specifically stated to be speaking "accented but intelligible Earth Standard English. The Next Frontier went to some trouble to justify the trope. The aliens who in this case are the viewpoint characters for most of the first two acts learn English from TV , but the process of deciphering the signal to make it useable on their equipment is briefly addressed note it's basically reverse Van Eck phreaking , if you were wondering and they're also specifically looking for TV programming aimed at preschoolers.
They also have a Subspace Ansible and the linguistics departments of every university in their home solar system working on the problem full-time. Momentarily played with in the Transformers fanfic Eugenesis , where mention is made of someone scrawling graffiti on a building in what to us would read like German, several million years before the German language even existed.
Apart from that, though, pretty much everyone speaks English. Averted in In the Shadow of Gods. Master Chief can't understand Tali or Garrus, since they don't speak English or any human language, for that matter. One Hundred Days Sgt. Frog : Justified with the insignias on the Keronains' hats which enable them to speak the language closest to their perimeter.
In Neither a Bird nor a Plane, it's Deku! Izuku is also one, but he was raised on Earth as a Japanese human in the first place. Later on, Izuku runs into some Kaiju spawn from another dimension. He runs away in terror when they attack him, but when he comes back to apologize for disturbing them, they seem to understand enough Japanese to reach something resembling a mutual understanding with him before slinking away harmlessly.
However, they only seem to be able to speak in snarls, screeches, and cackling sounds. Later on, he learns that they can read the books he brings for them and they enjoy video reels about the world outside of Korusan Island. Inverted in To Hell and Back Arrowverse. Kara has to be taught English when she arrives on Lian Yu, to the point that she still makes some grammatical errors when she initially joins the League of Assassins, although this is quickly solved.
Zigzagged in Teen Titans: Together for Tomorrow ; Brainiac speaks English, but as a living computer program, he simply downloaded Earth's languages onto his database. Conner and Kara converse perfectly inside the bottled city of Kandor but that seems to be due to Translator Microbes , because she speaks Kryptonian once outside of it. Fortunately, Kara quickly picks up on some basic English, and is really good at deciphering Conner's charades.
Inverted in The Dragon King's Temple. SG-1 is of course , literally speaking English, but sections from the POV of the Asyuntian characters have the English phonetically transliterated to reflect the fact that they don't speak it. Jean gains the ability to effectively download languages to Kryptonians as a result, and Kara starts speaking fluent English from that moment onwards. In the Play-By-Email roleplaying game Star Trek: Shadow Operations , Ryramorl Ra'yral and Reepchip Charatetet take pride in actually speaking English, though it's distorted by their non-humanoid facial structure and vocal chords, and they have to speak slowly.
In one episode, Reepchip is asked why he doesn't just rely on the Universal Translator. It turns out that while the Universal Translator can keep up to Reepchip's speech just fine, his people speak too rapidly for anyone else. Played with in Animorphs: The Reckoning. The Yeerks speak the languages of their hosts, and the Andalites can communicate ideas telepathically. Ax and Elfangor are also capable of understanding and communicating in English, thanks to a translator implant.
In Hellsister Trilogy , all alien races in the thirtieth century speak English. Generally, Translation Convention must be assumed. Kara of Rokyn : Everyone in planet Rokyn seems to speak English. Rokynians knowing the language is justified in what their civilization had came in contact with Earth and their two most prominent heroes live in USA. Eiga Sentai Scanranger : Lampshaded in "Scanranger vs. Jetman", although it mainly serves to call attention to how neither story bothered until the characters had to interact with people from their own planet who speak a different language.
Fallout Transformers : Vortex has to download a human language after meeting Jazz and Thundercracker. Wildrider can also speak Russian, and speaks with a technically fake accent, due to having rather liked the Russian humans he stuck with for a while. Arcee can speak Chinese. In A Force of Four , neither of the four villains have born or lived in Earth, but all of them speak English, even among themselves. Mork from Happy Daze mainly speaks English, with a few nonsense words thrown in.
When Dib questions why he's understood every alien he's ever met, Zim says that all aliens speak English, and he definitely didn't put an auto-translator on Dib's skull when he wasn't looking.
Or at least eventually, anyway — they first try Croatian and Filipino, misunderstanding the hamster when he tries to speak what he believes to be outer-space language. Averted in Rocketship Voyager. Lacking a Universal Translator , the crew have no way of communicating with the aliens they encounter on the other side of the galaxy until they find one willing to perform the melding-of-minds.
When Voyager is approached by a large convoy of spacecraft, Captain Janeway orders her radio operator to just start transmitting in any language, so hopefully they'll realise that Voyager wanted to talk instead of shoot, even if they couldn't understand the words.
Thor and Loki speak any language thanks to the All-Speak, but they need to purchase translators for Natasha and Clint when they arrive on Sakaar since they can't understand any of the languages being spoken. In Man of Steel fanfiction Daughter of Fire and Steel , General Zod's crew appear to have no trouble understanding English when they approach Earth and tap into the global networking grid.
Sasha and the Frogs : Lampshade Hanging. Sasha notes that all the local text is in English. Justified in For the Glory of Irk , as Irken PAKs translate all languages both ways, so that they can understand anything being said to them, while anyone they talk to hears their own language.
A later chapter confirms this: 'Common' language is functionally English, and it isn't being 'auto-translated' as Luz's first language is Spanish, not English. Luz's friends are very confused about the idea of having a ton of languages. Becoming A True Invader : Inverted. 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. The most probable form of communication they will adopt will be The simplest way to transmit us information would be through pictures.
At least for the simple things. They probably won't be able to tell us how to build an interstellar spaceship using pictures, but it would be a good way to start a communication between us and them. For humans, speech is the most advanced form of communication. Yet it's far from being the only efficient one. We don't have to travel to alien worlds to find weird forms of communication, since here on Earth, there are animals possessing some truly remarkable ways of sending messages to each other or to potential enemies.
Some animals have ways of communicating beyond the limited senses of humans, and we've only begun studying these strange abilities, so we're still far away from truly understanding them or being able to replicate them.
For instance, elephants can communicate using infrasounds, sounds with a low frequency, below the threshold of human hearing. Dolphins, some of the most intelligent life forms on Earth, besides the humans, communicate with ultrasounds, with a high frequency, that humans can't detect either. Locusts can hear with their feet, fish can sense electrical discharges from the muscles of other fish, and squids seem to "speak" using bright colors and flashes of polarized light, through which they express basic "emotions".
No one says that extraterrestrial life forms will have the biological ability to produce sounds that can be modulated in the form of a language, so maybe they won't rely on sounds at all, but on entirely new senses, that we can't even imagine. Another interesting hypothesis for alien communication is telepathy, a term used to describe the transfer of information on thoughts or feelings between individuals by means other than the five classical senses.
Some people, occasionally referred to by themselves or others as "transhumanists", believe that technologically enabled telepathy, coined "techlepathy", will be the inevitable future of humanity. As for the cosmic characters, they speak English among themselves because the English-speaking audience is the largest market for the MCU, so it only makes sense to satisfy that criterium.
We hope you had fun reading this and that we helped solve this dilemma for you. Skip to content The Marvel Cinematic Universe MCU is a global brand and for a lot of modern viewers the most popular and most important cinematic franchise ever. Table of Contents show.
How do the aliens speak English in the MCU? Why does everyone speak English in the MCU? About The Author. Arthur S. Poe Arthur S. Poe has been fascinated by fiction ever since he saw Digimon and read Harry Potter as a child.
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