So, I was watching a movie that had subtitles the other day and it got me thinking about accents.
For instance, in Spain, do they have a character is a TV show who is French but talks Spanish with a French accent ... so we know he's French? It's like the old war movies where the Germans speak English but with a "German" accent. "Ve have vays of making you tok ... " sort of thing. Sorry, I hope this isn't considered racist in any way, I'm just really curious as to how other country's accents sound in another country's language. It happens in English-speaking movies and TV, so I can only assume it happens in other countries. Presumably you can speak Chinese with a Japanese accent? Or Japanese with a Korean accent?
It reminds me of something my Dutch sister-in-law mentioned when they were visiting South Africa. She said she sometimes heard people say something in Afrikaans and then repeat it in English for her and my (English) brother. She found it a little confusing at first as she wondered why people kept saying everything twice. I gather that Afrikaans is based on the Dutch language.
There used to be a TV comedy show in the UK called 'Allo 'Allo about the French resistance during World War II. The owners of a cafe in France had the usual "French" accent, and the two British soldiers waiting to be rescued were over-the-top British (I say, chaps, what's for tea? Tally ho! ) There was another British guy who was undercover as a French policeman, but his French was pretty appalling. So how do you get that across to the audience when everyone is actually speaking English? Are you still with me on this? He sometimes used to say the wrong word ... "good moaning" for "good morning" or "wonk" for "work". That's how you do it.
With English being the language of business around the world, as well as aviation, I think we forget that what happens in English probably also happens in most other languages. Having moved from the UK to the US, I was surprised that the British seemed to have so many more slang words for every day things. Maybe it's a question of the size of the country?
Just to show my age here, there was another great TV series in Britain called "Call My Bluff" and it had two teams of three people who each had to give the definition of an unheard of and usually unpronounceable word, and the other team had to decide which of the three words was genuine. The words they described - both real and imagined - were just incredible, and the convoluted stories the contestants came up with were wonderful.
I love language. Words. Scrabble. Dictionaries. Crosswords.
And maps. But that's probably something for another day.
Image: Copyright: andreykuzmin / 123RF Stock Photo
