Hold on before anyone jumps on me they have some of the same elements. A spy infiltrates an enemy country but suddenly starts taking a liking to it so they are split between the loyalties to their homeland and their new home.
shareI have only watched two episodes, and my question is about the accent. Wouldn't there be a regional difference? Not that I'm a fan of "Inglorious Basterds", but I know it came up there, and, as we have quite a few here in the States, I was just wondering about it.
BOHICA America!
"I have only watched two episodes, and my question is about the accent. Wouldn't there be a regional difference?"
No. Not everyone who is born in Berlin speaks with a regional accent. I guess only a third or less of them. The younger they are the less likely they speak with regional accents. But the spy is supposed to be from Braunschweig (or Brunswick, in Lower Saxon) - that is a region (as Hannover too) where people are supposed to speak the cleanest German not influenced by regional accents. So it's fitting very well his back story.
In the 30s a lot of people spoke with regional dialects, which changed with TV , radio and schools more and more promoting "Hochdeutsch" high standard German. Lower Saxony is the closest to this neutral German, but people from Berlin, Munich speak "Hochdeutsch:too. Since the 60s, beside Bavaria, strong regional accents are considered lower class. An army officer would have wanted to be taken serious and would speak proper German.
The trap for an EastGerman would have been more the use of unusual words, like Zwei-Raum-Wohnung instead of Zwei-Zimmer-Wohnung (one-bedroom-apartment). Or, what they show in the pilot: "Broetchen" instead of "Schrippe" (Breadroll)
The Inglotious Bastereds scene was for a German speaker not really that smart.
First of all Fassbender, despite being HalfGerman has the strong obvious accent of an English speaker, he wouldn't pass as anyrhing else. Funny enough, Diane Kruger sounds somehow weird too.
Until the 50's the common people in Germany spoke the regional dialects. Standard German was learned in school for writing. Because it was first the language of literature it's called Hochdeutsch (High German - better than the spoken base German of ordinary people) or Schriftdeutsch (Written German). It derives mostly from the chancellery language of Meissen (Middle Elbe Area) based on East Central New High German. Luther used this for translating the Bible and because of that it rapidly expanded for writing. Of course "German" also means the dialect/language continuum from the Sea to the Alpes. Out of Western Germanic the "High German Consonant Shift" or "Second Germanic Consonant Shift" (completed in the 8th century) led to the Middle and Upper High German Dialects in Central and South Germany. The North remained unaffected (Low German being in a dialect continuum with Netherlandish / Dutch, originally also called Neder Duits/Low German) together with English and the North Germanic Languages. In West Germany the change is gradual (Rhenish Fan), the most northern Uerdingen line separates ick/ich ("I"), the most southern Speyer line appel/apfel ("apple"). The German in the north is called "Low" because it's at home on the lower courses of the rivers flowing north to the Sea (like the Rhine), in the south "High" because it's at home on the upper courses of these rivers. Low German Dialects are relatively mutually intelligible, but Low German not with High German Dialects and Central High German Dialects not really with Upper High German Dialects. Inside the Upper German Area Bavarian speakers and Swiss German (Alemannic) speakers don't understand each other well. Today communication is no problem because everyone can speak Standart German. Actually north of the river Main only few people use dialects anymore because these have the stigma of being associated with working class and rural people. The Upper High German Dialects (Bavarian/Austrian, Swiss German) fared better. If a North German or a Standard German only speaker is confronted with dialect speakers in South Germany, Switzerland or Austria he is helpless until they change to Standard German. The German slangs contain elements of the regional dialects (except the "German" of foreigners).
shareI'm not trying to sound like an a**. Honest. I'm just saying this because it's interesting and I'm sure others may find the discussion interesting too, but will never find it buried in this thread.
I am a non-German speaking German descendant. Though I am only 1/4 German, I am trying to learn German because it is a part of my heritage. I find linguistics very interesting and in particular, dialects. For this reason, the regional dialect thing is interesting to me. Granted, I can't pick them out (as a new low level German speaker) but I hope to someday. :)
I'm sure I'm not alone.
Random Thoughts: http://goo.gl/eXk3O
There were (and still are) some distinctly East German dialects, the most prominent being Saxon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_Saxon_German), spoken in southern parts of East Germany (which are more populous than the north). Anyone who speaks like that immediately identifies him/herself as having grown up in that area, even today. And the dialect was loathed a little because many East German communist party officials, including (I think) all party leaders and heads of state since 1949, also spoke it. So it was no option for Moritz to speak in that dialect, but he doesn't. He speaks pretty clean high German with no accent, not even a Berlin accent (which sounds quite different from Saxon, and was very similar, albeit not identical, in East and West Berlin). And he was supposed to have grown up in Braunschweig, which is pretty much the most dialect-free region of the country. So he would've fit right in.
shareSadly, tgis series isn't remotely close to The Americans. It's slow as molasses, the actors have literally two expressions, but the nostalgic music is nice.
shareI liked it a lot better than "The Americans. Mainly I think this was because The Americans sort of puts 2010s attitudes into the 1980s (good ol' American family values etc.). That plus a small woman who could beat the surfing out of everyone. I got tired of it pretty quickly. Deutschland 83 wasn't as forced. I didn't like they way they got rid of Linda either but I did like the rest of the series. As a non-European, it's harder for me to tell how authentic it really is but at least the events are largely real and allows me to put it in context.
shareThere are definitely some similarities. That much is exactly true. I'm pretty sure one is kind of based on the other, or at least the idea came up because one was airing like it. I'm not saying Deutschland is plagiarizing, but I'm pretty sure its show runners saw The Americans and it sparked an idea.
I see a lot of comments either saying Deutschland isn't as good as The Americans or vice versa. I'll say to that what a normally unwise person said once that was actually wise: neither is better, they're just different (Leo Getz, Lethal Weapon 4 (1998)).
They are the same, but they're also quite different. The focus isn't the same, but the overall idea is identical.
Personally, I love both shows. I tend to lean toward TA as a better one then D, but there's probably more money in it. American shows typically have bigger budgets. With what D has resource wise, it's absolutely amazing!
It's really hard to say. I love them both nearly equally.
Random Thoughts: http://goo.gl/eXk3O
ETA: I obviously was not responding to the original poster in this thread! I've no idea who I was talking to. LOL! Sorry for the confusion that you'll only get to see a few more days.
CindyH - first of all, kudos to you! German is NOT an easy language to learn and many have failed LOL. it's also not being well taught in the US - my hubby, for example, took German in high school for several years (4, I think!) and lived in Germany for almost five years for work as an adult - and is married to a German national (me) and STILL manages to speak almost none!!!
As for your question - there are HUGE regional differences, much more so than in the US, in my opinion. Here in the US, you can pick up if someone is from a different part of the country, but you can still always understand each other; in Germany, this can be tricky sometimes! It is true, though, what someone said on here before me - the younger generations tend to speak a more uniform version of German; I wouldn't say dialects are dying out altogether but they are probably less pronounced. But you will still here a HUGE difference between, e.g., someone in Bavaria and someone in Berlin!!
Good luck with your studies - if you're serious about it, try to watch German television and listen to German radio, that helps A LOT!!
Thank you so much! I am working on it and chipping away. I'm not good at all but I have found when I hear German I'm picking some of it up.
Wow about your husband! So you're a German national? I would love to keep in touch with you for German help. Would you be willing? You speak English perfectly. Are you by chance military? Or your husband?
I live in a town that doesn't have any German radio. In fact, I live probably at least 500 miles from any city that might. My German listening will have to be Netflix movies.
Well, if you'd like to be epals my user name is magnoliasouth and I use gmail. I'm sure you can fill in the blanks there. My name is Cindy, though it hasn't been CindyH in eons. They just wouldn't let me update that. I'm Cindy Lloyd now.
Even if you decide not to, there is no pressure whatsoever, I promise, I think you for your encouragement. I'm determined to do this if it takes me 10 years!
Random Thoughts: http://goo.gl/eXk3O
Ha!
I just posted on the Americans board, asking if it was any good..
it begins here on foreign SBS channel this week...
I didn't like The Americans. I also don't really see the similarities between the two shows - one is clearly American and the other German.
But give it a try, you might like it! if I didn't have a million other things to watch, I might give it another try but there's tons of stuff out there that is more attractive to me right now (I have FIOS, Amazon Prime, Acorn and Netflix so way more than I can ever watch!!)