Foreign films and accents

Dear all,

I was hoping someone could answer a question i've had for a long time, it seems that as a native English speaker, one can more or less discern someone's nationality if English is not native tongue, ie they speak English with a French accent, and, unless subtitles are used, this is the way other nationalities are portrayed in film.

I was wondering if a similar thing went on in say, French films? I mean that is a German in a French film portrayed as speaking French with a German accent, and so forth?

It seems almost a given that it would be this way, but I wonder if our practice as English native speakers of 'putting on' other accents but in our own language is present in other languages? Do German people do 'impressions' of English people but in German etc...

I'm sure my question has betrayed some hideous level of ignorance but alas, that is where we must all start.

As a side note, does anyone know of any language courses (I am thinking for French, but maybe also for German or Russian) pertaining only to gaining fluency in reading comprehension? I would love to read my favourite authors (Proust, Genet, Dostoyevsky, Husserl, and especially Nabokov's Russian work) in their original language, and I thought that it might be, comparatively, much easier merely to learn reading comprehension to the desired level.

Much obliged to your expertise,
Jean Genie.

I remember watching a Japanese cartoon that had a couple of Chinese characters, and not only did they seem to have some sort of accent (mind you, it was in Japanese, which I don't speak, but they sounded a little different than the other characters), but the subtitles translated them as speaking a sort of simplified baby talk, as if they didn't speak Japanese very well.

Of course all people have accents speaking another language that is not their native one. It's not "putting it on", it's a natural phenomenon caused by the fact that the vocal cords are accustomed only to producing certain sounds. So unless there is a language out there with the exact same set of sounds (which there isn't) 99% of people will have an accent. And yes, I've seen my share of hilarious impersonations of English speakers.

<<I remember watching a Japanese cartoon that had a couple of Chinese characters, and not only did they seem to have some sort of accent (mind you, it was in Japanese, which I don't speak, but they sounded a little different than the other characters), but the subtitles translated them as speaking a sort of simplified baby talk, as if they didn't speak Japanese very well.>>

There was once a Japanese pidgin language called kyouwago that Chinese people in Manchuria spoke when it was ruled by Japan. Nowadays when a Chinese character appears in Japanese media, they use expressions similar to the ones in this pidgin language.

Jean Genie : « I was wondering if a similar thing went on in say, French films? I mean that is a German in a French film portrayed as speaking French with a German accent, and so forth? ».

Très bonne question. La réponse dépend du film.

S'il s'agit d'un film français retraçant une histoire située en Allemagne (ou en Autriche) avec des protagonistes allemands (ou autrichiens), ou bien s'il s'agit d'un film allemand (tournage : Allemagne — personnages : Allemands) doublé en français, j'imagine que le spectateur aura devant lui des acteurs s'exprimant dans un français dépourvu d'accent étranger (francophones jouant en français pour incarner des Allemands ou encore Allemands dans leur propre rôle doublés par des francophones).

Si maintenant le(s) personnage(s) germanophone(s) est(sont) inséré(s) dans une réalité française ou, plus simplement, intervienne(nt) dans un cadre non-exclusivement germanophone, il est possible de les affubler d'un accent allemand (le plus souvent très prononcé, comme dans les films ayant pour cadre la dernière guerre → accent caricatural) pour accuser le contraste avec les non-germanophones et ainsi faciliter/styliser l'identification.

I adore watching a French Language film, but if I am to follow the plot subtitles are a must. Dubbing would be a definite no-no as I wanrt to hear the delicious French Language at the same time. "Les Parapluies de Cherbourg" is one of the old French films my mate has on DVD and along with the music it's a delight to watch and listen to.

Even nicer is sitting in a French restaurant or cafe/bar next to a long table (or several tables placed side on to each other) around which all the locals are enjoying an enormous meal and having an extremely animated conversation at the same time, in French of course. C'est trop fantastique!

The last time I did this it was long past midnight when we left the restaurant in the Les Halles district of Paris and I said "Bonne Nuit" to the lovely Madame who had fussed round the two of us like a Mother Hen, and I wondered why she started to chuckle in that cute way French women do. My mate said I should have said "Bonsoir!" instead, as "bonne nuit" is usually said when you are in bed and just about to switch off the lights. I don't think that's strictly true, but how would I know?.....I've never (yet) been in a bed and lights off situation with any French person.

<<There was once a Japanese pidgin language called kyouwago that Chinese people in Manchuria spoke when it was ruled by Japan. Nowadays when a Chinese character appears in Japanese media, they use expressions similar to the ones in this pidgin language.>>

That's not surprising. Although Japanese has many Chinese loanwords, in terms of sound and structure it might as well be spoken on the other side of the world. So it's not surprising that Chinese speakers are stigmatized as speaking Japanese poorly. Chinese is grammatically simple and rather slowly spoken, whereas Japanese involves a highly complex set of verb conjugations, inflections, honorifics, and is delivered at a speed that makes the Romance languages seem leisurely by comparison.

Fujifilm is a foreign film.
Kodak is home-made (US).

"Fujifilm is a foreign film.
Kodak is home-made (US)."

Clever, I must say...

"whereas Japanese involves a highly complex set of verb conjugations, inflections, honorifics, and is delivered at a speed that makes the Romance languages seem leisurely by comparison."

I don't understand this and I speak Japanese. I don't think Japanese sounds fast at all. What you mean about the "Verb conjugations"?

Individual speakers (of most languages I know) may speak quickly, but once you get enough listening practice, you'll be able to understand ordinary speakers in most languages, I think.

never in Hungarian or dubbed to Hungarian films, and rarely in Germans. Sometimes somebody being a foreigner is simply left out of the plot.

Okay, I can only claim a semester of Mandarin in high school, but I lived in Japan for three years, and if I recall correctly, they are vastly, vastly different in sound and structure. Chinese has no verb conjugations at all; you have to tell past, future, etc. mainly from context. (Anyone with more knowledge than me, please feel free to correct me on that -- that's just what I seem to remember.) Japanese, on the other hand, uses a variety of suffixes to decline verbs, just like western languages. Chinese is a tonal language with very short one- or two-syllable words, while Japanese words are often multisyllabic and have no tones that change the meaning of a givien word.

The only major similarity (other than the use of kanji) that I noticed was that both languages use a word ending to indicate that a sentence is an interrogative rather than a declarative -- ma (no tone) in Chinese, and ka in Japanese, which I thought was very interesting. It makes sense in Chinese, where they cannot simply end on a rising tone as we do, because it might very well change the whole meaning of that last word, but it seemed superfluous in Japanese, where questions generally do end on a rising tone, just as they do for us. I might guess that this is a loaned pattern from Chinese?

"I might guess that this is a loaned pattern from Chinese?"

I doubt this because "ka" has an important grammatical function other than its use at the end of sentences. It is used in conjunction with question words to form a structure which acts similarly to a conjunction in English. For instance, if you want to say something like "I don't know why he went." in Japanese, "ka", along with the question word "naze" (why), is necessary to express the meaning of the conjunction "why" in that sentence.

"naze itta ka" ("itta" means "went") means "why did [he] go?" as a standalone sentence, but it can also function as a noun clause equivalent to "why he went" in the example sentence I gave. As a full translation you might say "naze itta ka ga wakaranai" (the English pronouns have been omitted).

So, you see, "ka" may not seem that important when it's used to make a whole sentence a question, but it is also used to make individual clauses of a sentence into questions.

The use of particles to make a question is found in many languages including Tamil, Korean and similar particles (though they aren't always at the end of a statement) are found in Uralic languages like Finnish.

Ah. And I believe Finnish is distantly related to Japanese.