[tavilach]

I need to learn a German accent for a play I'm in, and I was wondering if anyone has any specific links to video or audio clips that I could use. Also, if you can do a German accent, would you mind saying the following and posting a recording?

"Well, it's the darndest thing. You see, while I was in San Francisco working my internship, I went out one night just to see the town, you know, with some work buddies. Well, anyway, I thought we were going to see Narnia..."

Thanks

[Mastrap]

Originally Posted by tavilach

"Well, it's the darndest thing. You see, while I was in San Francisco working my internship, I went out one night just to see the town, you know, with some work buddies. Well, anyway, I thought we were going to see Narnia..."

Phonetic translation:

"Schnell, schnell. Fuer Dich ist der Krieg vorbei, mein Freund."

[OreoCookie]

What are you playing? The villain?
Anyway, DON'T watch Die Hard 1, for instance. The only people whose mother tongue is German are a bunch of Austrians

[tavilach]

This is actually a good-two-shoes kinda dude. So no, I'm not the villain. No shouting and all that. And point taken about Die Hard , but that might actually be a good option. I don't have to do it all that well. It's just a student-written comedy.

[tavilach]

Wow. I'm trying out that Die Hard accent from memory, and strangely, it's helping. I'm using that Hans guy's accent.

[Monique]

One thing you can learn to do is rolled your r, make your speech sound harder.

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by tavilach

Wow. I'm trying out that Die Hard accent from memory, and strangely, it's helping. I'm using that Hans guy's accent.

His accent is horrible and he's not a native speaker either.

Originally Posted by Monique

One thing you can learn to do is rolled your r, make your speech sound harder.

Most Germans don't roll their r.

Maybe it's worthwhile to check out www.tagesschau.de. It's just news, so the intonation will be rather boring, but it's a start to get a feel for it. Plus, it's basically the best and most clearly understandable German there is

What age is the guy you're playing?

[tavilach]

I guess he's in his twenties. And it's a comedy so the accent should be funnier at the cost of accuracy IMO.

[OreoCookie]

Depending on the kind of humor you want, maybe this is something you want to check out. His humor is kinda harsh, so this might or might not be what you're looking for.

http://tvtotal.prosieben.de/downloads/sprueche/

Or you could check out "Erkan & Stefan" on the net

[villalobos]

Originally Posted by tavilach

I need to learn a German accent for a play I'm in, and I was wondering if anyone has any specific links to video or audio clips that I could use. Also, if you can do a German accent, would you mind saying the following and posting a recording?

"Well, it's the darndest thing. You see, while I was in San Francisco working my internship, I went out one night just to see the town, you know, with some work buddies. Well, anyway, I thought we were going to see Narnia..."

Thanks

You live in CA, listen to your governor.

[OreoCookie]

Eeeeh, nope. This guy is Austrian. Straaaange accent.

[Oisín]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie

Most Germans don't roll their r.

Well, they do, but uvularly rather than apically

(Yes, I know most German uvular r’s are approximants or affricatives rather than trills or flaps—I just ignore it ‘cause it ruins the joke)

Eeeeh, nope. This guy is Austrian. Straaaange accent.

His native language is still German, though, albeit the Austrian variant. Technically, he does have a ‘German’ accent, just as some Singaporeans have an ‘English’ accent in other languages, despite their accents being quite a bit different from the ones typically shared by most Americans.

[andreas_g4]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie

Or you could check out "Erkan & Stefan" on the net

No, please don't. It might lead to the bombing of Germany (with me in it…).

[Dakar]

Originally Posted by Oisín

Well, they do, but ulvularly rather than apically

[turtle777]

Watch this:

Click Here To Watch Smuggling

Too bad it will only teach you how NOT to speak English with a German accent

[cla]

I just made a crash course for you – "German for Dummies":

* Make the "r":s uvular. Like the french. (Even though there are other kinds of "r"s in German)

Exchange the following consonants UNLESS they start the word:
* "v" (use "f" instead)
* "b" (use "p" instead)
* "d" (use "t" instead)
* "th" (use a soft "d" instead, NOT "z". I've never met a German who says "ze zing", rather "de ding")
--
Also
* Notice the open "a":s – these are crucial.
* Finish every sentence with a slighly higher pitch.
* Skip the articles (a and an) every once in a while.

For examples, go to http://www.cocoaradio.com/ and listen to CocoaRadio @ Macworld w/ Ilja Iwas of GarageSale.


If you want to really exaggerate, rephraze every question to a statement and finish off with an occasional "yes" or "no": "You want to learn German, yes?"

Good luck :>

[SpaceMonkey]

If it's a funny, vaguely "European" accent you're after, then I would just watch a few episodes of Babylon 5 and take notes from Londo.

Originally Posted by OreoCookie

His accent is horrible and he's not a native speaker either.

Definitely not native - he's British. It was Alan Rickman, more recently seen as Professor Snape in the Harry Potter movies.

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by Oisín

His native language is still German, though, albeit the Austrian variant. Technically, he does have a ‘German’ accent, just as some Singaporeans have an ‘English’ accent in other languages, despite their accents being quite a bit different from the ones typically shared by most Americans.

He has an Austrian accent. Singaporeans speak Singlish. It's like saying Australians have an English accent. They obviously speak English with an Australian accent. People from London also don't have an English accent, they have a British accent

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by andreas_g4

No, please don't. It might lead to the bombing of Germany (with me in it…).

Ay, come on, that would have been funny.
tavilach on stage: Hey, Alter … ja voooooll ggrrasss!!

[ghporter]

Rickman was great in Die Hard-but you were supposed to figure out he wasn't German. So Rickman did a "bad German accent." I like the bit where he orders the goon to shoot the glass-and the guy just doesn't understand it in German so "Hans" has to say it in English!

I'd like to add to cla's "crash course" a bit. Depending on where the particular German is from, his "G's" are going to verge on being "ch's" so "German" sounds like "Cherman." It's more a blend of "j" and "ch," but if you try to move the "j" sound toward "ch" a bit, you'll see a noticable and distinctive difference.

You could also listen to Kenneth Mars in "The Producers" (the original movie; I don't know how well Will Ferrel does in the new version). He's not what you'd call a "normal" guy, and he's pretty upset and excited most of the time, but he lays the particularly notable German idiosyncracies on pretty thick. (Mars did quite a lot of German characters, particular for Mel Brooks; check out "Young Frankenstein," too.) Werner Klemper, Col Klink in "Hogan's Heros" was quite good-and he really was German or Austrian. His presentation was far more educated and upper class than Mars' Franz, though, and much milder.

And OreoCookie is right; saying that an Austrian has a "German accent" is likely to get someone upset. It's equivalent to saying someone from New York City has the same accent as someone from Dallas. That is certainly NOT true, though a listener from Vienna might not quite hear the distinctive differences.

[analogika]

^^^^ summary: listen to the videostreams and podcasts of www.tagesschau.de for what "standard" high German sounds like.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by cla

I just made a crash course for you – "German for Dummies":

* Make the "r":s uvular. Like the french. (Even though there are other kinds of "r"s in German)

Exchange the following consonants UNLESS they start the word:
* "v" (use "f" instead)
* "b" (use "p" instead)
* "d" (use "t" instead)
* "th" (use a soft "d" instead, NOT "z". I've never met a German who says "ze zing", rather "de ding")
--
Also
* Notice the open "a":s – these are crucial.
* Finish every sentence with a slighly higher pitch.
* Skip the articles (a and an) every once in a while.

For examples, go to http://www.cocoaradio.com/ and listen to CocoaRadio @ Macworld w/ Ilja Iwas of GarageSale.


If you want to really exaggerate, rephraze every question to a statement and finish off with an occasional "yes" or "no": "You want to learn German, yes?"

Good luck :>

Excellent.

Except I'd add that if the word starts with a "v", make it a "w".

as in "a spider's wenom".

Germans get really confused by the fact that the German "w" is pronounced like the English "v".

There are also countless incidences of "life" being confused with "live".

[TETENAL]

Also say "become" instead of "get".

[Person Man]

Originally Posted by TETENAL

Also say "become" instead of "get".

I have a patient who is an 83 year old woman from Germany. She moved to the United States about 40 years ago, and speaks English with a very heavy accent and is always mixing in German words. I've taken to calling it "Gerglish."

The German I took in high school definitely paid off... she says things like:

Her: "I'm going nach California to visit meine Tochter. She hat mich angerufen weil she is very sad."

Me: "Oh, are you going to fly to California?"

Her: "No. I'm going to ride mit mein Sohn in his semi truck."

Me: "In his semi truck? Don't you get cramped in that little space in the cab?"

Her: "Oh, nein. He hat ein bed in hinten von the cab. It is very bequem. Now, what do I do mit mein Blut thinner dose when I go there?"

It's kind of funny to watch the staff talk to her on the phone. They end up getting me to come out and talk to her because they don't understand half the words.

[Person Man]

Originally Posted by analogika

Except I'd add that if the word starts with a "v", make it a "w".

as in "a spider's wenom".

This made me think of Star Trek IV where Chekov is asking people on the street in San Fransisco where the "nuclear wessels" are.

[SimeyTheLimey]

Originally Posted by Mastrap

Phonetic translation:

"Schnell, schnell. Fuer Dich ist der Krieg vorbei, mein Freund."

Don't mention the War. I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it.

[Oisín]

Originally Posted by Dakar

Hahahaha! Oooops, I think I got an extra l in there somewhere! *goes to fix*

[Oisín]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie

He has an Austrian accent. Singaporeans speak Singlish. It's like saying Australians have an English accent. They obviously speak English with an Australian accent. People from London also don't have an English accent, they have a British accent

Some Singaporeans (okay, most Singaporeans) speak Singlish; others speak a form of English that corresponds more closely to ‘standard’ English, albeit still quite different from it.

Australians do have an English accent. Just as Austrians do have a German accent. The aspect of saying X has a Y accent is twofold, in most cases: it can refer either to an accent originating in X’s geographical place of origin, usually coupled with the specific language spoken in that area: an Austrian accent, an Australian accent; but also a Cambodian accent, a Taiwanese accent, a South African accent. It can also, however, refer to an accent that originates from the speaker’s native language, regardless of geography and ‘local’ differences between different forms of the language: an English accent (including both the English accents of North America, the UK, India, Ireland, Australia, Scotland, the Caribbean, etc.), a Portuguese accent (including the Portuguese accents of Portugal, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Brazil, etc.), a German accent (including the accents of Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, etc.), or a Chinese accent (including Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka, Wu, Gan, etc.).

Despite the often rather large differences between the different forms of a language (in many cases, such as the different regionalects known collectively as ‘Chinese’, large enough to make them mutually unintelligible), their phonological spectres do tend to be uniform enough, and share enough common characteristics, that they form a relatively homogenous accent pattern in foreign languages. A German speaker from Schleswig-Holstein will obviously have a different accent in English from a speaker from Switzerland; but the two will still be identifiable as similar accents, wholly dissimilar to the accent a French- or Spanish-speaker would have.

[Judge_Fire]

The 'Acting with an Accent' CDs are pretty good.

http://www.dialectaccentspecialists....tml#withaccent

J

[tooki]

Originally Posted by cla

* "b" (use "p" instead)
* "d" (use "t" instead)

I think what you were getting at (but didn't know what to call) is the "final stop devoicing" that occurs only at the very end of a word: b>p, g>k, d>t etc.

Final stop devoicing is a very good start for a German accent.

Another good one (but a very hard one for native English speakers to do) is to not use English diphthongs (or "off-glides") in some situations. For example, the word "Führer", which most English speakers pronounce "Fyurer" -- the extra Y sound would be absent in German.

A big thing to learn is intonation. German uses different stress patterns from English.

tooki

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by tooki

"Fyurer"

I have no idea how you would pronounce that in English. So I selected "Führer" in your post and used the Mac's Speak-Text-Service to hear how it would pronounce it, and it sounds more like "Fuсker". I found that amusing.

Anyway, I sometimes rely to the Speak-Text-Service to find the English pronunciation for a word I have not yet heard. So what you could do is download a German voice from Cepstral and let it speak your English theatre play. It would do so with German accent then I'd assume.

[Mastrap]

Originally Posted by TETENAL

It would do so with German accent then I'd assume.

And assumption is the mother of all....
Good idea, but unfortunately it doesn't work.

[Nivag]

At the bottom of this page is a couple of video clips of German accents, it's from a BBC 'comedy'* program called Allo, Allo which was set in German occupied France during the war.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/guide/ar..._7770250.shtml

*when i say comedy, i really mean a piss poor a wasted of TV licence payers money.

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by Mastrap

Good idea, but unfortunately it doesn't work.

You would have to try to tell.

[Mastrap]

Originally Posted by TETENAL

You would have to try to tell.

I did. Read the site, you can test the voices for free. I tried your suggestion, it didn't work.

[Oisín]

Originally Posted by tooki

I think what you were getting at (but didn't know what to call) is the "final stop devoicing" that occurs only at the very end of a word: b>p, g>k, d>t etc.

Final stop devoicing is a very good start for a German accent.

B, d, and g aren’t voiced in other places in German either, which is another good thing to do when doing a German accent (and could also be what cla was getting at): unvoicing all voiced plosives. What happens to plosives at the end of words is aspiration, not devoicing; they’re already unvoiced. (And, in the case of d>t, a second change automatically happens, since d is laminal and t is apical in German).

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by Person Man

I have a patient who is an 83 year old woman from Germany. ...

Here's the funny part of reading your post: it was not hard to follow either the lady's English or German (though I really don't speak German-it's fairly easy to figure out if you have time...), but the MIXING was tough to follow! Very tough!

[forkies]

maybe it's not quite the accent you're looking for, but i know germany & molvania share a border so it just might work
http://www.molvania.com/video_medium_2.html

[Nai no Kami]

Rent Dr. Strangelove. You can here a german accent in a key of comedy by Peter Sellers. And it is actually a very enjoyable movie.

[SpaceMonkey]

Originally Posted by forkies

maybe it's not quite the accent you're looking for, but i know germany & molvania share a border so it just might work
http://www.molvania.com/video_medium_2.html

I forgot about that one.

"I is more stronger than Darth Vapor/ Obey me, I is your new dictator!"

[MaxPower2k3]

Originally Posted by Nai no Kami

Rent Dr. Strangelove. You can here a german accent in a key of comedy by Peter Sellers. And it is actually a very enjoyable movie.

actually an enjoyable movie? it's only one of the greatest comedies ever made


And yes, Dr. Strangelove is german, but i'm not sure he's the best character to learn from, since he's got a few other issues going on. His voice is pretty distinguishable/unique.

[DoctorGonzo]

I'm still trying to find the right woman for me...who also happens to have a German accent.

They are just so beautiful to my ears.

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by ghporter

Rickman was great in Die Hard-but you were supposed to figure out he wasn't German. So Rickman did a "bad German accent." I like the bit where he orders the goon to shoot the glass-and the guy just doesn't understand it in German so "Hans" has to say it in English!

Yeah, that one was greeeatt

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by Oisín

Despite the often rather large differences between the different forms of a language (in many cases, such as the different regionalects known collectively as ‘Chinese’, large enough to make them mutually unintelligible), their phonological spectres do tend to be uniform enough, and share enough common characteristics, that they form a relatively homogenous accent pattern in foreign languages.

I think you miss the point. You have the wrong notion of German in your mind as there is no `German German'. The same word is used for both, the language and the accent. That's a bit different with English. It's `British English': the adjective refers to the region, the noun to the language. Since the `German' in German accent is an adjective as well, it quite clearly refers to the region and not to the language. In particular it is not the same as an `English accent' as there is none. It's a British accent, an American accent, etc. I hope that has cleared things up.

Originally Posted by Oisín

A German speaker from Schleswig-Holstein will obviously have a different accent in English from a speaker from Switzerland; but the two will still be identifiable as similar accents, wholly dissimilar to the accent a French- or Spanish-speaker would have.

Well, Swiss German is so different from (Austrian and Germany's) German, the pronunciation in particular, that you almost always have subtitles on German TV whenever a Swiss is talking. They also use a whole bunch of words that are used exclusively in Switzerland.

Just to add a little note here: I was in Austria today, and I wish I had subtitles at one point

[analogika]

Originally Posted by ghporter

Here's the funny part of reading your post: it was not hard to follow either the lady's English or German (though I really don't speak German-it's fairly easy to figure out if you have time...), but the MIXING was tough to follow! Very tough!

Heh, I went to an international school, and that type of construction was absolutely normal when people of the same nationality spoke to one another there.

Doing that with German and English was completely second-nature to us, and it would drive any non-German-speakers completely insane.

(oddly, they were never bothered by the japanese/English mix that dominated the hallways...)

[spatterson]

This may help a bit! http://www.wimp.com/improve/

[Y3a]

watch some Hogans heros and listen to Sgt Schultz, and Col. Burkholder.

[Oisín]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie

I think you miss the point. You have the wrong notion of German in your mind as there is no `German German'. The same word is used for both, the language and the accent. That's a bit different with English. It's `British English': the adjective refers to the region, the noun to the language. Since the `German' in German accent is an adjective as well, it quite clearly refers to the region and not to the language. In particular it is not the same as an `English accent' as there is none. It's a British accent, an American accent, etc. I hope that has cleared things up.

No, no, I get your point just fine—I’m just more or less splitting hairs. My point is that there is as much an ‘English accent’ as there is a ‘German accent’:

1. They can both (in specific situations within the field of linguistics, and usually specifically noted as such then) be taken to mean “an accent [in a language non-native to the speaker] which is the result of difficulties in assimilating to the morphophonetic landscape of the language spoken, substituting instead, to some degree, certain characteristics prevalent in their own native tongue”. In this instance, an American accent and an Australian accent are the same: English accents. They share a number of characteristics, such as difficulties in rolling their r’s; tendencies to diphthongise vowels; difficulties in separating (and even more so in eradicating the differences between) long and short vowels; difficulties in producing rounded front vowels; etc.—enough characteristics that they are identifiable as a single ‘accent’.

2. They can also both be used (more commonly so) to describe a more geographically specific provenance of an accent, such as a German accent, an Austrian accent, etc. But in this case, there is little difference between the terms ‘German accent’ and ‘English accent’ as well, since neither of them really exist there, either. As you said, there is no real ‘English accent’, since English speakers with different dialects or regionalects will have different (though not fundamentally different) accents in foreign languages as well. The same goes for German—since there is no standard language in German (as there is, for example, in Denmark, where dialects are all but gone these days, especially among young speakers), even the term ‘German accent’ is rather useless, since a Schleswiger and a Bavarian will have notabl differences in their accents. Bavarians from certain places might even have accents closer to those of Austrians from certain places than to those of people from Schleswig-Holstein.

So basically, while I do get your point that a ‘German accent’ in English will mostly (especially by native speakers of German, both from Germany and other German-speaking countries) be taken to mean the accent of a German person, my point was just to point out the fact that it’s not technically incorrect to say that an Austrian person (who also has a form of German as his native tongue) has a ‘German accent’ in English.

Well, Swiss German is so different from (Austrian and Germany's) German, the pronunciation in particular, that you almost always have subtitles on German TV whenever a Swiss is talking. They also use a whole bunch of words that are used exclusively in Switzerland.

Oh yes, I know this—but they still have enough of their basic phonetic spectres in common that they form a readily identifiable accent in other languages—examples: difficulties in voicing plosives (b, d, and g); difficulties varying correctly between v and w; difficulties in producing unrounded back vowels (except [a]); etc. The only basic phonetic component that is, as far as I know, really fundamentally different in different forms of German is the way the letter r is produced; and this goes for many other (Indo-)European languages as well, and then the Swiss (and Austrian?) tendency to create a lot of extra uvular fricatives ([χ]) (and pronounce them very fiercely) in places that don’t usually have any. Apart from that, most of the phonetic inventory is more or less the same.

[Person Man]

Originally Posted by analogika

Heh, I went to an international school, and that type of construction was absolutely normal when people of the same nationality spoke to one another there.

Doing that with German and English was completely second-nature to us, and it would drive any non-German-speakers completely insane.

Yes, well, I have no problem understanding it.

LOL, as I was reading this, my nurse came in, "Hey Doc. Mrs. Roehl is on the phone again. I can't figure out what she's saying!"