MovieChat Forums > Battle of the Bulge (1966) Discussion > 'Undercover Krauts' would NEVER speak th...

'Undercover Krauts' would NEVER speak that good English

posted 7 years ago by cultfilmfreaksdotcom
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If that were possible, Arnold S, who detested his homeland of Austria and loved America, would have sounded like Morgan Freeman by the early eighties.

I was in an acting class and this really nice german kid was heartbroken that the teacher said he would never lose the accent.

It's one thing if these undercover guys had a way of talking where they seemed a tad German or something, but they spoke like professional American Radio DeeJays or low-voiced narrators from documentaries. Hate to nitpick but that was bothersome.

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[–] MadTom 7 years ago

In the scene when the German infiltrators first appear, Major Diepel (the infantry commander) explains to Hessler, "Schumaker here lived in Texas for twelve years before returning to the Fatherland."

I'm the youngest of a large family that immigrated from the Philippines to the US. I was 13 when we settled in South Jersey, and I speak with a South Jersey accent. Most of my siblings, who came over after graduating from college, never lost their Filipino accents. I had a friend in college who had immigrated from Germany at 14 and spoke with a North Jersey accent, and I never would've known he was born in Germany if he hadn't mentioned it. Between all the other immigrants I've encountered over my lifetime and having studied child language development as a school psychologist, my rule of thumb has been, wherever you were living when you were 15 years old, that's the accent you're stuck with. That is, the accent you speak with unless you're working hard at masking it in a role-playing situation. (BTW, Lawrence Welk, the swing musician, was born and raised in North Dakota, but in a very insulated ethnic German community where everyone spoke German as a first language.)