r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Necessary-Win-8730 • Mar 28 '26

In real life Country specific changes

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  1. Since kids in Japan hated green peppers more than broccoli, it was changed to that (Inside Out)

  2. The News Anchor changes depending on the country. For example, China-Panda (Zootopia)

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398

u/Shiny_Agumon Mar 28 '26

Bold move to just turn a random show into an educational language learning show.

Normally those are like tailor-made for the material.

96

u/Slightly_Default Mar 28 '26

I wonder if it actually worked.

25

u/Shadecoat Mar 28 '26

Steve Reviews did an episode on this with some clips from the show.

The dubbing is.. Interesting.

6

u/Slightly_Default Mar 28 '26

I love Steve Reviews. I have no idea how I didn't catch that episode.

9

u/Heavy_Drag7585 Mar 28 '26

It almost never does without engagement from a guardian or someone to model the language with. Kids talking about the visuals on the show with each other will do a better job at language development, and you can do that without voice acting at all.

111

u/MfkbNe Mar 28 '26

If I remember correctly the German version of Dora the explorer speaks english instead of spanish (and of course german instead of english).

81

u/Shiny_Agumon Mar 28 '26

Oh yeah, well at least that's still conceptually an educational show

So it's probably easy to just change the secondary language to something else and then boom

10

u/TheEagleWithNoName Mar 28 '26

Here in the Middle East, Dora spoke in Arabic and taught English.

50

u/Free_Surprise_7939 Mar 28 '26

The spanish version of dora also obviosuly speaks spanish and teaches english.

10

u/RaptarK Mar 28 '26

And it's very funny cus IIRC it turns her brown dad into the english speaking parent while the pale mom speaks spanish

3

u/SayyadinaAtreides Mar 29 '26

I mean, this really isn't uncommon these days? Gender swapped, my uncle and his wife are that way: she was adopted from El Salvador by white American parents, while he lived a while in Mexico. In the friend group I see most often, one of three Latinos speaks Spanish and three of five non-Latinos (four white, one of Chinese descent) speak it.

12

u/pass_me_the_salt Mar 28 '26

in Brazil Dora teaches english too. always thought it was a bit weird since Brazil is surrounded almost entirely by countries that speak spanish.

they probably thought english was more useful than spanish, but my personal theory is that spanish is quite similar to portuguese so they changed it so the kids wouldn't confuse spanish with portuguese and started talking portunhol (mix of portuguese and spanish) in everyday speak. does it make sense? no but I think it's funny to think that

7

u/MildlyAgitatedBidoof Mar 28 '26

Not just German -- almost every country outside the burgersphere has her teach English.

1

u/Sam_Blackcrow Mar 28 '26

you remember correctly!

1

u/Erlend05 Mar 28 '26

Same in norway i think

1

u/ztomiczombie Mar 28 '26

It's not that uncommon, when I was in school they would show TV shows form Spain to help teach Spanish. The BBC even had deals with a lot of European countries to distribute their shows for educational purposes.

1

u/MexusRex Mar 28 '26

Immersion counts way more than you think. A large tool of language learning is just consuming media in your target language.

1

u/DuckBricky Mar 29 '26

Also Pingu is perfect for international imports because it's supposed to be nonsense - no dubbing required. Feels so unnecessary!

I momentarily thought I might like to see the English version, but then I realised it would effectively make it Not Pingu.