Giovanni really speak Italian?
Does anyone know if Giovanni Ribsi really speaks Italian? I don't speak it, but it sounded pretty good.
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But he's not Italian.
I read somewhere that his parents liked Italian names. Tey named him purley on that. Not because he's italian. He was born in NY I believe. So I don't know if he really speaks italian.
Franka Potente Yahoo! Group:share
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Yeah, he was born in California. He might be of Italian descent, but that doesn't mean he speaks Italian. I have a buddy named Victorio Piva and he's a whitey from Idaho.
shareSee the trivia section for the film listing on iMDB
Trivia for Heaven (2002)
Both Giovanni Ribisi and Cate Blanchett speak fluent Italian throughout most of the film.
Yes, it does say that, but that does not mean that the people are necessarily native speakers, are able to speak the language fluently, or even know the language.
For instance, I'm fluent French, but I have a German accent, and it's not my native language.
In other films, people speak bits of foreign languages just going by sound (Nicole Kidman did all her own Russian in Birthday Girl, just learning it by sound, she doesn't speak Russian as far as I know)
I think both of the actors did their own Italian voice parts in the movie, but it would be interesting to know if Ribisi can speak Italian, either because he learnt it at some point, or because it is his mother tongue.
This is a pretty common practice. I know, for instance, that when Desperado was filmed, Antonio Banderas did not yet speak enough English for the part, so simply learned the lines phonetically. Obviously, he has become fluent in the years since then...
shareThere are these things called schools. More than a few of them teach foreign languages. Even Italian.
Whether Ribisi learned to speak Italian from birth or not, he apparently learned enough somewhere to pass a Native Italian in this movie.
Vic Mackey: "God creates all men equal. Out of the womb, he starts playing favorites."
nataliejensen just in case ur dumbass didnt already know this italy is in europe and europeans are traditionally white/caucasian. there are people with nordic- blonde blueeyed fair skin in italy just like there are people with black hair and brown eyes and more of a tan in countries like sweden and norway, thought its not all that common.
for example: arnold schwarzenneger(?) is extremely tanned, does that automatically make him a mexican? no obviously coz hes austrian and austria is in europe. nothin pisses me off like stupid people not knowing stuff about their own heritage, and as a white person you should know all europes history not just your homelands. blacks, browns asians muslims they all act that way so please, grow a brain
Actually I've read that he's part Italian, part German, and part Irish... Just saying...
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It seems that all the posts in this thread assume that there is a standard Italian, ignoring the fact that in ordinary situations most Italians speak in regional accents. The spelling and pronunciation of words can differ in the space of a few kilometers. I would assume that the producers might have provided an instructor to coach the non-Italians of the cast in the accent spoken in Torino where the film is set.
There is a saying that the ideal Italian is “Lingua toscana in boca romana”—literally, a Tuscan tongue in a Roman mouth, or the dialect of Tuscany as spoken by Romans, but I heard a Genoese man say, “I hate Rome. Down there they pronounce it with three R’s.” Romans can also be heard substituting R for L. I’m just satisfied that Ribisi’s Italian was convincing enough for cinematic purposes. I’m more interested in the significance of the silver filigree on his Carabiniere uniform collar.
Just to throw my two cents in here, I'm a German who LOVES LOVES LOVES Italian and I used to speak it rather fluently (and with a good accent, according to some), and I thought both of their accents were pretty impressive, especially considering that it is very very rare for a native English speaker to produce a good Italian accent (or any other, for that matter, native English speaker do not seem to be very gifted for foreign languages!!)
So kudos to them.