surfingnirvana Newbie United States Joined 6830 days ago 37 posts - 45 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Turkish, Japanese, Armenian
| Message 17 of 23 29 May 2006 at 10:51pm | IP Logged |
it was a made up language
based on bantu languages
how interesting ^_^
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sigiloso Heptaglot Groupie Portugal Joined 6785 days ago 87 posts - 103 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, PortugueseC1, Galician, French, Esperanto, Italian Studies: Russian, Greek
| Message 18 of 23 20 May 2009 at 8:32pm | IP Logged |
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Edited by sigiloso on 21 May 2009 at 3:50pm
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cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5844 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian
| Message 19 of 23 20 May 2009 at 11:38pm | IP Logged |
The handling of language is usually completely ridiculous in Hollywood films and it is very distracting to watch it if you actually have some familiarity with the languages used. I am sure many Europeans feel the same way.
Perhaps Mexican people are realistically portrayed though - I don't know, but they seem more genuine than the European characters.
Usually the characters don't even speak the language they are supposed to be speaking, but speak it in English with a PHONY accent from that country! Duh!!!
Sometimes the "native speaker" has a very strong American accent when he speaks his supposed native tongue... Sigh!
OR, the person who plays the role of the foreigner is indeed not American, but neither is he from the country that the film claims he's from!
I don't know how many times I've seen Swedish actors play the role of "evil Nazis" or "Soviet asassins/spies". (Maybe they had trouble recruiting people of the right nationality for these roles...Who can blame them for turning down such one-dimensional represenations of their nationality?!)
I've noticed that the same oriental actors are cast as Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese etc..
America is such a multi cultural / international country - I can't understand why they can't find people of the right nationalities to play the roles that are needed.
But anyway, this is distracting in the film and sometimes the multilingual/international aspect is handled so poorly that I lose interest in the film.
One EXCELLENT exception is LOST which used actors from the areas that they are supposed to be from (the brits are real brits and so on). It's nice that the Korean couple actually speak Korean where appropriate.
Edited by cordelia0507 on 21 May 2009 at 1:44am
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Pugaciov Diglot Newbie Italy Joined 5696 days ago 7 posts - 7 votes Speaks: Italian*, English Studies: Spanish
| Message 21 of 23 21 May 2009 at 2:06am | IP Logged |
cordelia0507 wrote:
America is such a multi cultural / international country - I can't understand why they can't find people of the right nationalities to play the roles that are needed.
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I have to agree; in Lost itself for example, I recall some Italian characters from the second season; you could definetely tell they were something like third-generation Italian Americans with a really bad accent.
I don't think any show or movie can be perfect on this aspect.
Anyway, if you're into action and multilinguism I'd definetely suggest The Unit.
The actors may be sloppy in any language, but throughout 4 seasons I've heard them speaking in Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Persian, Pashto, French, Italian, German and Russian.
Edited by Pugaciov on 21 May 2009 at 2:11am
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cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5844 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian
| Message 22 of 23 21 May 2009 at 2:05pm | IP Logged |
To answer the question about Bourne's accent:
He HAS a very noticeable accent, but if somebody had learnt Russian, French, German, Italian and Spanish to level he is portraying, then that would be an amazing feat, accent or not. His accent is not ultra-american, i.e. the actor has probably been coached to sound as native as possible (Matt Damon is soooo attractive!)
It would have been a lot more realistic if he had spoken only 2 foreign languages fluently. Then you might believe that he had time to fit in the training required to become a top CIA field operator. Oh well!
The scenes from around the continent are completely realistic. I recognised areas in Paris, Zürich and Madrid because I go to all three regularly. The Berlin scenes featured well known landmarks like the Ostbahnhof where he boarded the train to Moscow, and the TV tower.
It was funny to see the shooting scene at Waterloo station in London because commute from there almost every day. It was 100% realistic.
I hope it's not true that the CCTV cameras there can be controlled by the CIA!
Bourne really should have credit for consistently choosing train over flying when travelling in Europe! He used some classic and very nice train routes of Europe, for example Eurostar and the overnight train from Paris to Madrid.
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Ashiro Groupie United Kingdom learnxlanguage.com/ Joined 5808 days ago 89 posts - 101 votes Studies: Spanish
| Message 23 of 23 23 May 2009 at 12:43pm | IP Logged |
cordelia0507 wrote:
One EXCELLENT exception is LOST which used actors from the areas that they are supposed to be from (the brits are real brits and so on). It's nice that the Korean couple actually speak Korean where appropriate.
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The Iraqi character (Sayid) is played by a British actor (Naveen Andrews) of Indian parentage who speaks the Queens English better than me and I'm a native. The only thing Iraqi about him is that he's not white.
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