The foreign language false coolness factor

The belief that anything said in a foreign language, even if it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, sounds cool because no one can understand it.

Corollary: Anything said in French sounds mocking. "Tu es un parapluie et tu douches avec un plat de fruit!"

I've gotten slapped by girls after making that sound like an insult, since they had no idea it meant, "You are an umbrella and you shower with a plate of fruit!" and just assumed I was being condescending.

So true, so true. Different languages have different effects.

German sounds evil, no matter what you say. Especially if you add snarls and stuff. Du Hast by Rammstein is a good example. That's why I like German and hate French. French sounds, well, annoying.

The various dialects of Chinese are all different.

• Cantonese - Everything sounds like an insult. Wave your hands around for a better effect.
• Shanghainese - People will think you're nuts.
• Beijingese - You sound like a dog.
• Taiwanese - Are you speaking Japanese?

And so on. Korean sounds cool at first, but descends into repetition because you keep hearing phrases like "Anya!", which I still don't understand. Apparently it's a mild curse. I'll never understand Koreans. Some call Japanese the "language of the devil". I think it is. It sounds like pure gibberish, and is near impossible to learn. I had no luck with it.

People always think I'm Japanese. "Cool! You know Japanese!" Apparently, Japanese is a "cool" language. I think Mandarin bores them. As soon as I try to explain the presence of dialects to these white devils, they run away. I don't know why.

Here's some wacky sounding Shanghainese for all you pale demons.

Chun na ni niang ge chou bi!

Here is the Cantonese counterpart:

Dil le loh moh chou fah hi!

Don't ask me what that means. It's beyond obscene.

This phenomenon apparently exists everywhere (though I disagree completely with DMan about languages having different "characters" - that's just well-pandered stereotypes). However, it varies strongly between countries. The worst case I know of is Germany's teenagers, who seem to consider English so cool that teen magazines use the words "boy" and "girl" instead of the German words when discussing love and sex issues, and that aspiring German pop singers have little chance of success unless they have an English band name and sing in English (The exception being Hip Hop, where there's a healthy German-language scene). And via general advertising, it's bleeding over to everyday life, especially since many technical terms (in IT, medicine, management, marketing, you name it) are taken over unchanged and unquestioning.

The situation is not much better in Japan; the main difference is that idoru are allowed to have Japanese names and sing in Japanese, provided that they sprinkle it liberally with English words and sentence fragments (which don't have to make sense).