Bucky Barnes - Languages
Request from @cami23593: I was wondering if you could do a headcanon about our boy bucky, and what are the languages he speak. Like he’s lowkey about it, but he can undestand people talking in differents languages…. Thank u in advance :)
English🇺🇸🇨🇦🇬🇧
Obviously, this is the language Bucky speaks the most. That’s home for him. It’s the first language he ever learned and it’s his native language. That’s what he thinks in his mind with. That’s the first language he reacts in. When he talks to you, it’s usually in English. Unless he’s trying to be cheeky and say something to you that he knows you won’t understand.
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Spanish 🇲🇽🇪🇸
Bucky speaks Spanish quite often while he’s in America. (40.5 Million people speak it in America FYI.) Bucky loves speaking Spanish. But he has to be careful because it’s the one you can understand the most. When Sam makes him watch soccer, Bucky makes him put on the Spanish broadcast instead. It’s way more fun to watch and the announcers are way more enthusiastic. Anytime Bucky sees someone struggling to speak English to someone in public, he always steps in and tries to help be a translator. He also can seamlessly switch from different types of accents and lingo within the Spanish language.
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Portuguese🇧🇷🇵🇹
You didn’t even know Bucky could speak Portuguese until the two of you were on vacation in Lagos and Bucky started speaking fluently to customs. You gave him a comical glare, “You couldn’t have mentioned that when you saw me stress-buying every Portuguese book and downloading 5 different apps?” Bucky just shrugged and chuckled something about finding it too cute to say anything. Also, Bucky honestly forgot how many languages he could speak sometimes. He would just hear them and his mind would just automatically translate. Needless to say, the vacation was even better since Bucky had won over locals and easily navigated them around.
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German🇩🇪🇨🇭🇦🇹
Bucky had to get over his distaste for German. It took a long time for it to stop immediately throwing him back in history to his time during WWII. But then he saw how Germany had changed. Plus, Natasha reminded him of all the other places that spoke German. He stopped speaking German with reluctance and started enjoying it. He fell in love with Berlin after visiting it a few times and was grateful he hadn’t hated German so much that he lost the ability to speak it.
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Russian 🇷🇺
Bucky hates Russian. He absolutely despises it. That’s the language that his Winter Soldier activation words were in. That’s what his handlers used to give him commands. When he was told to hurt and murder innocent people, it was almost always in Russian. Bucky never speaks it freely. He only speaks Russian if it’s required on a mission and/or it’s life or death. Even after all this time, even with his brainwashing eradicated, a chill still shoots up his spine every time he hears Russian.
(A/N: Honestly, I’ve read fics where authors have Bucky speaking Russian casually and using it lovingly with reader, giving them pet-names in Russian and even using it as foreplay and in bed. And I just think that is so inaccurate.)
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Latin ✝️
Obviously he’s not using this in conversation much. But it helps him understand and use a vocabulary that is quite impressive. Sadly, there aren’t many people he can have a conversation with in Latin. Every so often, he’ll come across a professor or church scholar that can speak it fluently.
However, he tends to speak it when you’re restless and suffer from insomnia. The words come out like a lullaby, lulling you to sleep. You can feel the breaths of Latin against your ear or hair or cheek.
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Japanese 🇯🇵
This comes in handy quite a lot when the team is traveling for missions. When he’s home at the compound or at his apartment in Brooklyn, he doesn’t get to use it too much. Pepper actually asks him to translate things a lot, since Stark Industries does a lot of business in Japan. Bucky also loves Japanese cuisine, eating sushi in the summer and ramen in the winter constantly.
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French 🇫🇷
Of all the languages Bucky can speak, he talks to you the most in French. You love Parisian culture and you’re constantly watching French New Wave films. He loves how much you blush every time he speaks to you French, even though you almost never know what he’s saying. Unless he’s calling you doll or kid or punk, almost all of his terms of endearment for you are said in French. Chéri, Ma Belle, Mon amour.
Bucky knows he can get you hot in 30 seconds if he whispers French into your ear. He teases you at parties with it, or when the two of you are running errands and you do something simple that reminds him of how beautiful you are. It’s a common theme in the bedroom ;)
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(A/N: I know many of the readers on here are not American and a lot of you are multilingual and English is not your first language. So I’m sorry if the reader aspects of this were frustrating since they weren’t accurate to you personally. I just tried to have fun with this and obviously my own personal abilities with language are all I know.)