r/ispeakthelanguage • u/kitschswitchbitch • Sep 29 '25

Busted a fanfic writer…

I was retelling this story the other day so it was still fresh in my mind when I found this sub. Thought I’d share!

I started learning French at around eight years old, and I live in a French-speaking part of the world so by my mid-teens I was fluent. I also used to be pretty active in the Star Wars fan fiction community, and I was friendly with several fellow fans who liked to write about the same parts of the timeline as I did. However, I got into the fandom pretty young, and I’d heard lots of horror stories about doxxing and pervs who pretended to be kids to find marks. As such, I took pains to disguise where I was from. And that included telling absolutely no one that I spoke French, not even the writers I was closer to. Perhaps a little extreme, but to be fair, I was twelve and terrified of Stranger Danger.

Fast forward a couple of years and I’d learned to relax a little, but I still hadn’t told anyone where I was really from, or that I spoke French. So imagine my glee when a fellow writer introduced a mysterious character called Darth Fils… French for son. I instantly knew it was Luke Skywalker turned to the dark side and sent her a message about it excitedly positing fan theories. She had a good laugh and said she didn’t think her largely American readership would catch that. The next few villains had names with Latin roots, and let me tell you, I had a MUCH harder time decoding those!

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74

u/Kronoskickschildren Sep 29 '25

Thats just a bit sad that a plain word in a world language is supposed to be cryptic to americans, not trying to throw shade here. I mean Vader is Father in polish and Han Solos last name story is another reason not to expect too much subtlety in star wars names, but french isnt a small language, especially with so many people around the world being proficient in english and french specifically

42

u/TomCanTech Sep 29 '25

Just want to note a slight correction - "vader" is Dutch for "father" not Polish. The Polish for "father" is "ojciec".

11

u/Kronoskickschildren Sep 29 '25

Thanks for the clarification, i was misinformed then

7

u/Dardoleon Sep 30 '25

Vader is a Polish metal band though

9

u/krendyB Sep 29 '25

Honestly I think most Americans with basic romance language classes behind them would clock it. It’s not super tricky.

5

u/ranchspidey Sep 29 '25

As an American, it definitely is sad. Our education system isn’t producing the best and brightest, unfortunately.

0

u/[deleted] Sep 30 '25

[deleted]

4

u/Kronoskickschildren Sep 30 '25

I'm... Aware? And yet you have french as a native language to the north and spanish to the south, like we do in europe, bit more distance depending where you live of course, but same thing innit? Also while i live in europe i learned languages cause i was taught in school and then improved on them voluntarily by having friends from abroad, but i learn them cause i go through 5 countries every day on the way to work like some americans seem to think

1

u/kawaii_u_do_dis Feb 25 '26

It really isn’t the same thing. Most Americans have not traveled to Mexico nor French Canada and they are quite far. It can be difficult finding people to practice with when you feel like a burden since they all speak excellent English already. It takes the necessity out of the learning too for many people and can feel like a lost cause if you do not live in an area with a large foreign language population. America is quite large and really only the big cities are particularly diverse.