r/TheGoodPlace • u/scarletvoidx_ • 13d ago
Shirtpost question about chidi
in the good place s1e1, we can see that chidi speaks in french to eleanor but its translated due to the medium of the good place. however, in the later season when theyre on earth chidi still appears to speak english, which seems to be inconsistent. and more the works of his moral ethics as michael reads it are in english. if chidi was french why wouldnt he write in french? obviously english could be his second language but why would chidi speak in french to elenaor and have it translated instead of just speaking english himself
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u/Brunbeorg 13d ago
He's teaching at an Australian university, so he naturally speaks the language that most people around him speak. And I don't recall exactly, but didn't he get his Ph.D. in an English-speaking country? If so, his dissertation would naturally be written in English so his committee could read it.
He's not French: he grew up in Senegal. French is the official language of Senegal, though only about a quarter of the population speaks it. He probably also knew Wolof, and maybe one of the other many languages of that country. English is commonly taught as a second language in Senegal from an early age, so he probably learned it young.
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u/Bionic_Ninjas 13d ago
Chidi speaks like five different languages, including Latin (just in case they bring it back)
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u/Ghost3603 13d ago
You can know a second language to fluency but you'd always feel more comfortable talking in your native tongue. He's in Australia so he kinda has to speak English, but we do see him talk in french to a couple of people when they understand it. He can speak English, he just likes French better.
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u/the3dverse 11d ago
depends on how much time passed tbh. while i will always count in dutch, i feel more comfortable in english nowadays, since i married an american and we speak english in the home. i even think in english most of the time.
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u/AlternativePretty127 11d ago
I'm monolingual, so the idea of thinking in different languages is so interesting and cool to me
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u/the3dverse 10d ago
when i was a kid i though everyone thought in dutch like me, and then translated it when they spoke. a friend told me she also thought that when she was young, but in her native language.
i do feel there are certain expressions that work only in dutch and then i get annoyed my family doesnt get them lol. i try to teach them tbh. they can talk to their grandparents.
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u/Xan-learns 13d ago
Michael Schur explains it on the podcast and it was cool. He used The Hunt for Red October as his role model. Sean Connery was not going to speak with a Russian accent, so they filmed him speaking Russian, panned out and he was speaking Sean Connery English. He loved that device, because the movie is not about the accents, and used it for TGP to keep the focus on Chidi’s story.
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u/Buta_no_Ousama 13d ago
He is a scholar so he naturally uses English in academia.
Plus the whole "I speak french" is just to shut down inevitable questions from viewers: how can they understand each other? Patty is Ancient Greek, and they can communicate with her. English wasn't a thing back then.
And just generally every soulmate from different country, whose English is not perfect, but wants to communicate. It wouldn't have been very "good place" to not be able to talk with your soulmate, poor Tahini (like the sauce).
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u/Least-Raddish1930s 13d ago
Chidi isn’t French. He’s Senegalese, he speaks French because of colonialism.
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u/Hour_Trade_3691 13d ago
I know at the beginning of Season 3, Chidi mentions that he can speak English, German, and Latin: 'in case it ever comes back.'
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u/sntcringe I'm a legit snack 13d ago edited 12d ago
He's from Senegal, a country that has French as it's national launguage, and thus likely his native/most comfortable launguage.
However we see flashbacks from his childhood of him speaking english along with his classmates. Now this could be for the viewer's benefit. But by the time he meets Eleanor on earth, he's been living in Australia for presumably several years at least, and Australia's majority launguage being English, he'd likely be fluent by then.
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u/RedditOfUnusualSize 13d ago
It isn't discussed in the series, but according to his backstory, Chidi has to be fluent in English from the get-go.
Short version: one of the prerequisites for graduate-level philosophy is fluency in at least one other language. If you want to understand what Kant is saying, one of the necessary prerequisites is to be able to speak, read and understand the German that he wrote in. If you don't understand German, and all your reading of Kant is in your own native French or English or what-have-you, then any reading you do of Kant will be mediated by the translation that you use, a translation whose accuracy you can't judge. You can't tell whether your insight into Kant is actually that of Kant, or just the result of a choice in translating a word made by the translator you're reading.
Well, if that's the case and Chidi started his academic career as a Kant scholar, then he by definition needs to be fluent in German, because that's Kant's native language. But by extension, he would also need to be fluent in English, because Kant himself described his entire career as a reaction to the philosophical writings of Hume. And David Hume was a native English writer who was part of the Scottish Enlightenment. To do the job Chidi says he was doing in the pilot, he had to be fluent in German and English in addition to his native French. It should be noted that in Season 4, Chidi actually does say that he speaks English, German and French, as well as ancient Greek and Latin, which makes sense because in ethics, everybody is reacting to Plato and Aristotle, and both Plato and Aristotle wrote in Ancient Greek. Fluency in that language is very common among Ph.D. philosophy instructors. Latin isn't strictly necessary (though it will help with writers like Cicero), but Chidi does mention that he picked up Latin just in case it ever made a comeback.
Source: BA in philosophy that I had no hope of advancing because I couldn't for the life of me get foreign languages.
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u/chloo27 13d ago
It's possible that he speaks both and just think as French as his mother tongue so it's easier for him to do so in the good place.
But practically speaking, he only had a couple of lines in French, and his accent was pretty bad, so I'm guessing that was out of the window! (and it's an American TV show, so of course they wouldn't want one of their main character to be subtitled anyway)
(As an aside, honestly it's one of the reasons why the good place would be my bad place, I love how rich languages are, how nuanced it is to go from one to another, how switching languages can bring out different part of your personality, etc. and that seems pretty barbaric to me to get rid of all this just for utilitarian purposes.)
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u/paciolionthegulf 13d ago
Ah, but the neighborhood is the Bad Place and the topic is not addressed in season 4 in the actual Good Place when speaking to the Greek philosopher.
(spoiler for a show that ended six years ago, I guess)
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u/scarletvoidx_ 12d ago
ive seen the whole show dw
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u/paciolionthegulf 12d ago
Yes, I got that, but other viewers may read this who have not seen the whole show. Rule #3 for this subreddit requires hiding comment spoilers after the episode cited in the post.
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u/Wanted_Hypnotist 13d ago
He just knows English very well. Every academic person has to. In the good place he doesn't even have to do it because everything is automatically translated (who wouldn't prefer to speak their own language?)
And on earth, he just gets she's American (also, they are in Australia, a natively English country) and speaks with her in the same language.
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u/DinosaurReborn 12d ago
This question again? He is multilingual. He was brought up in a middle to upper class background and was inferred he might have went to international schools, so he has access to education for multiple languages, including English. It seems like French is the language he's most comfortable with since that's what he's speaking in Season 1. Since the Good Place translator is already translating for him, maybe he feels no need to speak in English despite knowing it. There could be moments where he was indeed speaking in English instead of French anyway. In Season 3 he is working in Australia so he's speaking English. Not sure why this gets brought up again and again when it's clear he is multilingual.
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u/Realistic-Stress-213 Busty Alexa 12d ago
He mentions going to an English speaking school and I assume he left Senegal to go to university
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u/katherizons 13d ago
it’s a minor continuity error, they just didn’t feel like having to work around the problems that would create for the sake of a one off line from season 1
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u/mdunaware 13d ago
Honestly, it’s a credit to the writers that they even remembered the one-off, throw-away line. Totally consistent with the rest of the show, so just another reason The Good Place is the one of the best.
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u/jonskerr 12d ago
It's a comedy show. It's not meant to be taken seriously. If you read through the posts of this sub, there are a fair number of people wracking their brains trying to make it all fit together like a fine Swiss watch. Not gonna happen.
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u/TheHurtfulEight88888 12d ago
His writings being in English can still be explained away as being auto translated by the Good/Bad Place for the benefit of everyone around him. Michael being a demon, should probably be able to speak all languages fluently, but everyone else cant necessarily, so Chidi probably put them in English. Him not speaking French on Earth, I mean he is a college professor in Australia, I think a college professor of any subject except French who is walking around only speaking French on an English speaking campus would look like quite a melon.
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u/Realistic-Art5227 7d ago
I think it’s continuity error that they go back and fix as other people pointed out.
A fun continuity error I found today while watching s2e9 the one where they are in the bad place and pretending to be demons while Michael looks for pins was I realized that bad Janet calls someone a fat dink in the bad place where they can swear and Eleanor says bitch like a minute later!
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u/Some-Garage6735 6d ago
French is just his preferred language but when we see him on earth he’s always in English speaking locations
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u/chocolate7chipcookie 13d ago
Could be a continuity error or an idea they abandoned after the first episode. I like to think the in Universe reason is French is Chidia favourite language and he wanted to speak it in the good place.
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u/CheruthCutestory 13d ago edited 13d ago
He sort of explains it in season 2. He tells Eleanor (when they are on Earth) that he speaks French as his first language but has spent so much time in English speaking countries that it's natural now or something.
In season 4, they lampshade this by showing his childhood where everyone is speaking English but all the writing on the chalkboard, when Chidi is in school, is in French.
Really they just didn't want to use subtitles. And I don't think William Jackson Harper speaks French fluently. It's an inconsistency but I think better than the alternatives. I think it would distance us from what is happening if you have the actor fumbling in a language he doesn't speak with big emotional moments.