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bruce

American speaking foreign language

NO KIDDING! An American! Speaking a language other than English!

I don't mean to be harsh, but I was really surprised to hear Sandra Bullock speaking German...with a decent accent, in my opinion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s10x38SMb-g

Does anybody know of any other Americans that speak another language relatively well? Do show the links!

It's definitely INSPIRING to see that fellow Americans can speak French, or German, or something like that. It gives me hope that I can reach the same, or even a more advanced level one day.
greg in noord-frankrijk

Hallo Bruce und sei willkommen bei Langcafé. Welche Sprachen lernst du gerade ?
Liz

Hallo Bruce, wilkommen bei Langcafé!!!!!!!!!!!

Sandra Bullock hat deutsche Vorfahren, beziehungsweise ist sie halb Deutsch, so viel ich weiss.

Do you speak German, too?
Tiorthan

Her mother was German.
Doesn't sound as if she uses German as a foreign language but rather like a German who has lived a long time in the US.
Yelina

Re: American speaking foreign language

bruce wrote:
Does anybody know of any other Americans that speak another language relatively well? Do show the links!


I know Jodie Foster speaks French very well. She studied in a French school (Le Collège Français) before entering Yale.
I unfortunately haven't found any videos where she's speaking French.
Tiorthan

And then there is Arnold Schwarzenegger who speaks neither English nor German
Elaine

Re: American speaking foreign language

Yelina wrote:
bruce wrote:
Does anybody know of any other Americans that speak another language relatively well? Do show the links!


I know Jodie Foster speaks French very well. She studied in a French school (Le Collège Français) before entering Yale.
I unfortunately haven't found any videos where she's speaking French.


I was going to mention her. If you do a search on YouTube you can find clips of a young Jodie Foster singing a song called "Je t'attends depuis la nuit des temps" and Serge Gainsbourg's "Comic Strip".

Oh, btw, welcome to langcafé, bruce!
Yelina

Quote:
I was going to mention her. If you do a search on YouTube you can find clips of a young Jodie Foster singing a song called "Je t'attends depuis la nuit des temps" and Serge Gainsbourg's "Comic Strip".

Yes, I found these videos, but I consider that singing, we can't really notice the real accent. For instance, when Canadian people sing in French, they don't have any accent, whereas when they speak, it appears immediately.
Well, at worst, I could show one of these videos.
Lazar

Her German is really impressive.
Walker

Lazar wrote:
Her German is really impressive.


Yeah, I had no idea! That was really cool to watch!

Somewhat off-topic, but it also came as a total surprise when I saw a trailer on TV where the youngest kid in Malcolm in the Middle (I admit to having watched a couple of episodes) was speaking Swedish. I later watched the program and it turned out that his mother is Swedish and that he was pretty fluent.
bruce

Thanks everybody for your warm welcome. Langcafe is such a hospitable place :)

greg in noord-frankrijk wrote:
Hallo Bruce und sei willkommen bei Langcafé. Welche Sprachen lernst du gerade ?


Ich studiere Deutsch und Spanisch aber ich kann nicht gut Deutsch sprechen. Schreiben Sie auf Deutsch...Ich kann ein bisschen Deutsch verstehen, but I'll be responding in English or Spanish.

Tiorthan wrote:
And then there is Arnold Schwarzenegger who speaks neither English nor German


Haha, what do you mean by that?! He's Austrian, so I'm sure he speaks German very well?

I think it's very cool that Jodi Foster speaks French! I never knew! I saw a movie where one of Jodi Foster's lines was inGerman--I thought that was impressive.

Walker wrote:
Lazar wrote:
Her German is really impressive.


Yeah, I had no idea! That was really cool to watch!

Somewhat off-topic, but it also came as a total surprise when I saw a trailer on TV where the youngest kid in Malcolm in the Middle (I admit to having watched a couple of episodes) was speaking Swedish. I later watched the program and it turned out that his mother is Swedish and that he was pretty fluent.


WOW! I had no idea that the little kid spoke Swedish. He's definitely annoying in the movie, but I like him a little bit more now, knowing that he speaks Swedish! =P
Tiorthan

bruce wrote:
snip
greg in noord-frankrijk wrote:
Hallo Bruce und sei willkommen bei Langcafé. Welche Sprachen lernst du gerade ?


Ich studiere Deutsch und Spanisch aber ich kann nicht gut Deutsch sprechen. Schreiben Sie auf Deutsch...Ich kann ein bisschen Deutsch verstehen, but I'll be responding in English or Spanish.

Tiorthan wrote:
And then there is Arnold Schwarzenegger who speaks neither English nor German


Haha, what do you mean by that?! He's Austrian, so I'm sure he speaks German very well? snip

Practice is the key to success ;) You can participate in the German language forum for example.

Yes he's Austrian ... that's the point ... I'm jesting but in fact quite a lot of people from central or north germany cannot understand Austian German very well.
bruce

Haha, yeah, I was thinking that that's what you meant.

I think it's rather interesting that you should say that Central and Northern Germans don't understand the Austrian dialect.

How different do you think the Swiss accent is from Hochdeutsch? My German teacher was Swiss and even though he was supposed to teach us Hochdeutsch, I could tell that his Swiss accent went through a lot, what with the rolled R's and profound rhoticism. I found it a bit hard to listen to =X
Walker

bruce wrote:
He's Austrian, so I'm sure he speaks German very well?


Apparently he speaks German with an American accent these days.
Tiorthan

No the American accent is not very strong.
In fact Austrian is a lot better to understand than some of the Bavarian dialects. I personally cannot judge the difficulty level of any kind of German, I have never had problems with any (including the frisian variants). But having lived in central and northern germany most of the time I came to know a lot of people who have problems with southern dialects (i.e. Saxon, Bavarian, Austrian) or some of the western one (i.e Kölsch).

Swiss People are easy understandable, when they talk Hochdeutsch though they have a funny accent.
Benjamin [inactive]

bruce wrote:
I think it's rather interesting that you should say that Central and Northern Germans don't understand the Austrian dialect.

I can't say it really surprises me though — I find it difficult to understand the dialect spoken about 15km away from where I live.
Deborah

bruce wrote:
How different do you think the Swiss accent is from Hochdeutsch? My German teacher was Swiss and even though he was supposed to teach us Hochdeutsch, I could tell that his Swiss accent went through a lot, what with the rolled R's and profound rhoticism. I found it a bit hard to listen to =X

I studied German for one year in college, and after 7 years of not speaking or studying German, I was at an event in Switzerland where the person doing the welcoming speech was Swiss. He spoke in a Swiss dialect for bit, and I understood virtually nothing. Then he spoke a sentence in Hochdeutch, which was the first thing I understood -- he said that he was going to switch to Hochdeutsch, for all of the foreigners in the group.

I don't know how much trouble Germans might have understanding the Swiss, but apparently the Swiss expect that non-native German speakers will find it difficult.
Tiorthan

Real Swiss is not easy for most of the Germans, I myself have some swiss friends so I have a little experience with the language.
Llatai

Someone asked what famous people speak foreign languages - check this out:

http://www.pitt.edu/~dpbrowne/bilingual/page2.html#actors

Frankly I have my doubts about alot of these people, for example I'm sceptical about how well George Bush speaks Spanish since he struggles with English, and of course the site doesn't specify how fluently any of them speak another language, but ....for what its worth.
Deborah

Llatai wrote:
Frankly I have my doubts about alot of these people, for example I'm sceptical about how well George Bush speaks Spanish since he struggles with English, and of course the site doesn't specify how fluently any of them speak another language, but ....for what its worth.

I heard Juliana Margulies (Russian, German) speaking Russian on an episode of ER, and it didn't sound very good. Possibly her parents or grandparents spoke it and she can understand it and make herself understood, but her pronunciation was not very good.
Irrintzi

Who speak French?

Hugh Laurie speaking French with a good level!

Johnny Depp... C'est déjà bien d'avoir essayé!

De Niro on a French film:

Mitt Romney for Olympics

Christina Aguilera, NRJ music awards

Beyoncé


Other countries:
Stars:
German, Diane Kruger (Actress), good level!:

Italian, Monica Belluci (Actress), good too:

English-Lebanese, Mika (Singer), perfect! It looks like that French is his mother tongue!

English, Chris Martin:

Spanish, Prime miniter Zapatero speaking:


Have fun
Korean, TV clip

Turk triying to speak French


one example of Frenchman speaking english? (just for fun )
bickerstonehall

In my opinion most Americans can speak another language.

Most of them have very passable English.

Because American and English are similar Languages, but different. I do laugh when I hear an American asked what languages they speak and they reply 'Only English'.

Hey Man! How ya doin?

Trunk, Gas, Stick Shift, Fender.

Elephant, Cooking, Moving bits of wood and Guitar come to most English minda, but no in that other language American they all relate to a car or should it be auto?

Just having fun but we could have a little poll.

Are English and American the same language or have they become different languages?
KSa

English and American are different dialects of the same language.
More precisely, two groups of dialects because each language consists of dozens of variants.
bickerstonehall

Interesting conversation with fellow language workers here in Ukraine. Three from the United States and one from Canada.

With the exception of one of the Americans we all agree that English and American have become two different languages.

We agree the automobile is a perfect example of these similar but different languages,

Car, Auto.
Bumper, Fender. Most people in the UK believe a Fender is a guitar.
Petrol, Gas. In the UK and Ukraine we cook on gas.
Gear Stick, Stick Shift.
Wind Screen, Wind Shield.
Estate Car, Station Wagon. From the UK something to do with a train perhaps!

The list goes on. When a language becomes so divided that many of the words are as stange as Chinese to the originators of the language then they must be considered two different languages.

However we did all agree that one of our Ukrainian friends was wrong when he asked.

All languages have some slang, but what do you get when a whole language is 'Slang'?  American  
André in Zuid-Afrika

bickerstonehall wrote:
Interesting conversation with fellow language workers here in Ukraine. Three from the United States and one from Canada.

With the exception of one of the Americans we all agree that English and American have become two different languages.

We agree the automobile is a perfect example of these similar but different languages,

Car, Auto.
Bumper, Fender. Most people in the UK believe a Fender is a guitar.
Petrol, Gas. In the UK and Ukraine we cook on gas.
Gear Stick, Stick Shift.
Wind Screen, Wind Shield.
Estate Car, Station Wagon. From the UK something to do with a train perhaps!

The list goes on. When a language becomes so divided that many of the words are as stange as Chinese to the originators of the language then they must be considered two different languages.

However we did all agree that one of our Ukrainian friends was wrong when he asked.

All languages have some slang, but what do you get when a whole language is 'Slang'?  American  


Then of course there are also other versions of English, eg South African, New Zealand, Australian... And while I can't speak for other countries, SA English even has different variations.

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