MovieChat Forums > The Book Thief (2013) Discussion > For those who have German as their nativ...

For those who have German as their native language?

posted 10 years ago by Brommabo
4 replies | jump to latest

How did you feel the movie handled the speaking-English-but-pretending-it's-German?
I rather enjoyed it. I felt that having people speak entirely in German at some times and having German phrases and words spoken quiet a lot made me really feel that this movie was taking place in Germany.
However I remember when watching the American version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and cringing at the Swedish phrases (like greetings) being said by the American actors. It just sounded very weird and out of place. And I was happy no one tried to make a Swedish accent since most Swedes speaks very good English and having heavy Swedish accents (if they'd manage to do them) would make the characters sound stupid.

So for those who speak German would you rather have had everything taking place in English without accents or German mixed in?

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[–] Shalotka 10 years ago

I'm not German, but I understand German, and to be honest with you I usually don't like movies done in accent (supposedly foreign or old-fashioned), but this one worked. It created an illusion that it is in German, but we happen to understand most of it somehow.

Speaking of Sweden, there is a lot of claims such as "most Swedes speaks very good English" made by people who have never been to Sweden. Middle-aged Swedes know hardly any English and they are too shy to speak it to their foreign guests, people in their 30s are the most fluent (more than younger ones) because they learned it from games and TV-shows in the 1980s, but even the most fluent ones can't pronounce "j" in English. Honestly, "yust goh upstairs and enyoy yohr movie".

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[–] simon-tomte 9 years ago

In regards of what you said regarding English I agree. I've lost count of how many times i've heard that in Scandinavia everyone speaks perfect English!. I would assume this is a complement to the Scandinavian population than anything else, but it's not true. I'm Norwegian, and I got several members of my family which no absolutely no English, as they live quite "isolated" from anything English.

[–] ThatDoesntMatter 10 years ago

I found it horrible, mostly falsely pronounced - especially the names, they got the Ja Nein und right...^^

I don't mind the accents, but still think they are superfluous. Especially then you hear everything - why is the American actor playing a German Jew speaking with a British accent, the French-Canadian girl cannot say Mama and Papa without sounding French, 'Saumensch' is not a filler-word as used in the film (to be honest I had never heard it before in all my decades in Germany, but then I have not lived in Stuttgart, if it's supposed to be a regional thing, sounds to me like an anglicised German word....'Saupreiß' is a Bavarian slang word I have heard often (even though not having lived there either...).

All that (and the lacklustre direction) kept me out of the film.

The boy Rudi is bilingual, and the few German actors did a good job speaking their English I thought...;-)

[–] jorge-gutierrez 10 years ago

The action is set in Bayern, in a town near München, hence the Bavarian slang words, "Saukerl" and "Saumensch", they use profusely.

That said, I also found the fake accents distracting, to say the least.