How Many Languages Does Brennan Speak On Bones?

On Fox’s long-running crime procedural “Bones,” there’s no question that the lead character — Emily Deschanel’s Temperance Brennan, who earns the nickname “Bones” from her FBI counterpart Seeley Booth — is a genius. Sure, she’s socially awkward and pretty aloof, but she’s also able to figure out complicated mysteries and solve cold cases thanks to her encyclopedic mind. Also, she speaks seven languages throughout the show with varying degrees of fluency.

In the very first season, we hear and see Temperance speak French in the “Bones” pilot and Spanish reasonably well in the episode “The Woman in the Garden” — and in the following season, she shows off some Mandarin in the season 2 episode “The Boneless Bride in the River.” Then, in season 4, she speaks Norwegian in the episode “Mayhem on a Cross,” and later on in season 8, the episode “The Survivor in the Soap” shows off that Temperance can, inexplicably, speak some Krio. (Krio is a language native to Sierra Leone that takes inspiration from English and Creole.) Finally, in season 10, Temperance speaks Farsi in the episode “The Murder in the Middle East.” Including English, which is her native tongue, that means Temperance speaks an astounding seven languages. How? I don’t really know!

Again, I get that Temperance Brennan is a genius, but her extra-curricular activities on “Bones” — that is, anything she does outside of her work at the Jeffersonian Institute as a forensic anthropologist — are sort of mind-boggling. We are to believe that Temperance spends her spare time learning and continuing to study languages — because in order to possess full recall of a foreign language, you have to practice and ideally speak the language often enough that you don’t get rusty — but also consider this: Temperance is a best-selling novelist.

That’s right. In addition to being multilingual, Temperance writes crime novels that sell pretty well; it’s mentioned that she’s actually a New York Times best-selling author. This is definitely an aspect of “Bones” that makes absolutely no sense. Sure, this detail is included entirely because the show uses real-life author Kathy Reich’s books about the character Temperance Brennan as its source material, so Temperance’s side hustle is an ode to her origins. Still, it really strains credulity that Temperance has enough hours in the day to go to work, flirt with Booth, study Farsi, and write crime novels.

“Bones” is streaming on Hulu now.