This Troper met a Dutch man on a festival. He asked where she is from and by hearing "Poland" he smiled and said a short phrase, adding proudly that he learned a traditional Polish greeting from his friend. What he really said was 'put a pencil in your ass'. Well, Poles are pretty fond of teaching swearwords to innocent foreigners.

This troper's girlfriend is a Romaniafile. That is, she is enthralled with and loves everything from or about Romania (the reason is a kind of {{BiTheWay}} version of an Oedipus Complex involving some woman from her work). Cue her using Gratuitous Romanian with her friend, me, and anyone else Romanian whom she can find.

This Romanian troper is shocked to discover there is such a thing as a Romaniaphile. It's ironic how much this Romaniaphilia is inverted by the Romanians themselves as the use of GratuitousForeignLanguage, especially GratuitousEnglish is almost universal.

This troper can speak a bit of Chinese, and constantly swears, announces the date, and shoits at people in it.

This troper's cousin is American, but has taken French and Spanish, has lived in Egypt and Serbia, and has a German best friend. She's only fluent in English but peppers her sentences with fragments from all of these languages.

Somewhat broken-down or inverted. A few people at my school started saying some crazy phrase to my face (constantly). I ask them what it means. One says, "Oh, it's motherfucker. IN SERBIAN." After a few minutes of thought, I realized I'd just need to shut up for that day and consult my friend Vanja, who lives in Serbia. He basically broke down the fact that, in Serbia, there is no phrase such as "motherfucker", there is no phrase that would roughly be the equivalent of "motherfucker" and that "fucker" was a joke between friends. I went back to the people and said, "There is no such thing as 'motherfucker' in the Serbian language." They started chanting their phrase again. Cue knowledge of Serbian culture to completely stop them mid-chant.

This Troper is lucky to A)Be friends with a buttload of Colombian/Chilean people and B) Know a shitload of spanish. So when he and them encounter real jerks, he insults them in Spanish.

This Dutch troper has always liked learning foreign languages. Probably as a result, I'm ''extremely'' prone to this trope. One- or two-word sentences are often in a foreign language, just because it's the first thing that pops into my head. "Hello" and "thanks" are hardly ever said in Dutch.

Same here, except with a lingua natura of English. I had to turn it down when working as a cashier, but the fact that I knew enough of several languages to get by apparently got me the job in the first place.

I'm English born 'n' bred with a Cockney/Midlands accent, but that doesn't stop me spouting French, Japanese and Italian. The worst offenders are "konnichiwa", "(domo) arigatou", "sayounara", "bonjour", "merci", "baka", and "si".

Likewise. I don't remember the last time I thanked anyone with anything thing "merci" well..maybe the corruption of merci beacoup "Murky Buckets"

This troper reguarly speaks to others in French, Russian and German at random intervals. Arguably subverted, though, in that this troper is actually reasonably fluent in French and Russian.

Gratuitous Latin is a lot of fun.

YES. "Here's the pencil you dropped." "Tibi gratias ago!" "What."

This troper lives in South Korea within a sub-culture of English teachers. We often throw in Korean words such as "bali" (hurry) in our conversations without thinking about it. Because of this, this troper finds himself slipping when he visits friends and family back in the US.

This troper once in an A-level English exam, when referring to the concept of catharsis, ''spelled it in the Greek alphabet''. Partially justified because that emphasised the use of the original Aristotelean concept rather than the more general sense the word has today, but still, looking back on it now, it seems unnecessarily show-offy. Still got a very good mark (for the essay, not for that single word!)

This troper is very close with her cousins, who were recently adopted from Russia, and will speak with them in a kind of garbled Russian/English. Therefore, she has a habit of slipping up and using gratuitous Russian while speaking with her friends, who often have no idea what she said.

This troper loves foreign languages, but is fluent in few. As a result, she'll be spouting phrases in Finnish, French, Spanish, German, and Norwegian constantly. She will almost never say "Thank you", "Hello", "Goodbye", or the like. Since Latin is the language she's closest to being fluent in, she'll also often think of her sentences in Latin, then say them in English. Oh, and because of how much she's said them, she now ALWAYS say "Ja" and "Non", unless she consciously wills herself to say the English words.

This troper's biggest hobby is studying foreign language, and I love to use foreign words-ESPECIALLY German and any Nordic language.

This Welsh troper has a lot of friends who like to slip random Welsh words into English conversation. This can be quite fun, and it's resulted in this troper always referring to a microwave as a "popty-ping".

This German troper has the habit of using not only English and Japanese, but also Russian, Icelandic, Polish and Hungarian words. Especially curses. And while speaking English, she loves using random German words just because.

This troper plans on doing the Coldplay and write and name a song in a foriegn language and have the rest in english. Sounds like fun.

This troper was born in the Philippines and knows four different dialects, plus English and Spanish, and so does my family. Having moved to the US, he finds it utterly amusing at the confused looks on friends' faces when they come over to his house and hear him speak to his family. Speech at home fluctuates between any of those languages multiple times mid-sentence. It also leaves guests highly confused.

This Troper, after beginning to learn Norwegian, began writing "Hei", "Nei," "Ja," and "Takk" when [=IMing=] her best friend (who uses gratuitous German herself) and now can't seem to stop, even when texting and [=IMing=] other people.

This troper's family has this in spades. My parents have it the worst - they'll start a sentence in English, pepper it with French and switch to Vietnamese half-way through.

Dwi'n siarad Wenglish all the amser. :)

My English language teacher at Charles University was a native English speaker, but occasionally used Gratuitous Czech in the class.

This Troper uses "shut up" in 15 different languages. All the languages mentioned in the index plus Chinese, Dutch, Finnish, Korean, Arabic, and Portugese. Aside from that, it's a mix of Japanese, German, French, and Spanish. Mainly Japanese.

For some reason this troper finds Gratuitous Foreign Language to be very irritating. Now don't think I'm one of those hyper-patriotic nut-jobs from {{Eagleland}} who constantly shout "YOU'RE IN AMERICA, SPEAK [[strike:ENGLISH]] AMERICAN, DAMMIT!". I don't care if you can speak other languages. If you can, that's great. But if you can fluently speak more than two languages, please don't be a show-off and randomly mix foreign words into a conversation. Also, if you're using Gratuitous Foreign Language in order to increase your fluency with that language, please keep in mind it only works if you're speaking to someone who is fluent in the language you are trying to learn (or at least is studying the same language you are trying to learn.) Otherwise, the person you're speaking to will give you weird looks. If you've read this far, I'm very sorry you had to read this rant. I guess sometimes ItJustBugsMe.

This troper like to use gratuitous italian, expecially using it to cuss out teachers.

This Anglophone troper loves languages and is taking French II and teaching himself German and Russian; this troper can barely think or speak in English anymore. He thinks he got his love of languages from his mother who can speak French, Spanish, Italian, and Latin.

This Austrian troper is an Anglophile and VERY prone to speaking English in unfitting moments(with something that sounds like a posh British accent from the fifties). She also has a knack for British profanity. (To my defense, at least I´m somewhat good in English)The sad thing is, around here almost everyone understands English. Guess I have to learn Polish now...

This troper, studying French and Spanish at a University where those two languages, plus German, Italian and Russian are also studied, can often find himself in a group where around 25% of the words spoken are not English. Myself, I often say 'va bene' instead of 'cool' (in an acknowledgement/affirmation sense), or fantastische, or substitutions of various foreign words in place of the English, either because they're easier/more fun to say, or because I've spent all day using foreign languages and English doesn't come naturally

This Russia-obsessed troper tends to lapse into Russian in certain situations, such as when looking for something that he knows the name of in Russian. "Гм... где учебник?... Не там... А! Вот он!" He also tends to speak Russian to the cats he lives with. Hm... If everything's backwards there, does that mean that in Soviet Russia, you own cat?

This troper, studying Catalan at university, often finds himself starting sentences in Catalan (specifically Mallorcan Catalan) because he spends so much time thinking about the grammar (it's kinda tricky, and 'til you've got it it bears thinking about). Cue confused looks from people in shops, on the bus and pretty much everywhere else. And one massively failed attempt at chatting someone up.

This troper tries to talk to her pet bird in German and a bit of Spanish. Filipino, also, every now and then, hoping that it would learn those phrases one day. Then again, it's not a parrot or any species that mimics human language, so all those tries are in vain and plain stupid. Nice to know it understands a bit of English, though.

This troper speaks Mandarin and Japanese, and will speak in both randomly throughout the day. Occasionally when frusturated at work, I will (quietly and subtley) swear in one of said languages.

This Troper has a friend who uses Gratuitous Latin in many inappropriate places throughout the day. Like when we're working on an English project. Or chatting at the mall. It gets annoying after a while.

Tropers/AdelePotter tends to cuss people out in Italian (not fluent, but know quite a bit) or Spanish (barely know anything but the cuss words).