Why use German?
If it's to be done so badly.
shareLikely for comedy effect due to shows over the course of time using German badly like Hogan's Heroes and most other UK or US shows that used local actors to be German (ie taking the piss out of that). Of course if you see the finale it will make even more sense why and kind of explains why the German's kept insisting on speaking English instead of German.
shareActually I've only seen the finale.
That's a good theory, but the incorrectness of the German they're using is not really apparent to non-German speakers. For example, German has a formal and an informal or familiar mode. The informal is much more common today, but back in the 30s they would have used the formal in nearly every situation. But the show constantly uses the informal. It feels like they just got their translations from Google Translate.
Okay you've seen the finale so I can expand it further, first bit was how I saw it until that finale.
What we are seeing is a scenario playing out while all the regular people of Archer are in stasis in a spaceship and it is all in their minds and not a reality. Much like when a person is in coma they can often live a fantasy life and that keeps them going, so that is happening in stasis.
The whole Danger Island Nazi thing is just a fiction in these peoples minds and they are basically making it up or it is a computer program playing out to them to keep their minds active while in stasis. So informal German of today is coming from them or the computer program not reality or the 1930's.
This is likely why the parts where they want to talk English happen as well, because say Archer for one would have no idea of how to speak German hence his mind wants English. It's also why they kept saying things like yeah right I forgot we're really in the 1930's and etc., because they aren't, for instance in that last episode:
Archer: So what? We just sit here and wait for a clue - from a goddamn thrush?
Noah: Thrushes. Uh, what are you talking about?
Pam: Like at the portal of Erebor.
Archer: Uh - Jesus, dummy, in The Hobbit.
Noah: The what? -
Archer: Seriously? Holy shit, that's right. He's been on this crummy island four years, - so he's never heard of The Hobbit.
Cheryl/Charlotte: Which, as we all know, was published just last year in 1937.
There are lot's of things like that through the series, and is why some speculated Archer was still in a coma. Like in Archer: Dreamland where it was set in 1947 but just all in his mind and not really in 1947, just like this isn't really 1937.
The whole thing is a lot like an 80's TV Show called Tales of the Gold Monkey, to which Archer creator Adam Reed is a big fan and is in itself a take on a 1939 movie called Only Angels Have Wings.
Ah, okay, thanks very much for this thorough disquisition.
Another thing that was was off was their supposedly German pronunciation of "Adolf".
That LotR thing was interesting in another way, foreshadowed what would happen at the end.
Yeah the LotR thing was another of the hints, and yeah the Adolf bit was what got me curious to what was really going on as it was pretty Americanised. The wanting to speak English was what made me think they were just taking the piss out of how American movies and TV shows portrayed Germans (Siegfried and co in Get Smart came to mind as well).
shareAha! Well spotted.
share