When it comes to Germans speaking English, I actually enjoy the German accent. It is quite pleasant to my ears. Perhaps it's because I miss my old German (and Scandinavian) relatives that have long passed. I miss them all.
Yea, but many Germans in this generation (like Feli) are learning how to speak English with a US accent. I have noticed it not only in Feli but also some of my Goethe Institut instructors who hail from the German-speaking world.
@@TrashskillsRS Yes, that's the case! And I have to admit a strong German accent in English is kinda disturbing 😅 - actually southern German dialects are pretty close to American sound system 😉✌️
I had a Swiss colleague who got her doctoral degree from a German university, and she had to have someone go through her thesis to catch and correct any Schweizerdeutsch before she submitted it.
We too also have a word in Chinese that has a exactly same meaning as die Schadenfreude it’s 幸灾乐祸 xìng zāi lè huò literally mean Take joy from others misfortune it’s fascinating to see two different languages both has a word describing a same feeling
Well, besides from Language Differences, we are all from the same tribe. If you eat Rice Noodles, Potatoes, or French Fries from MacDonald, it all ends up in the same Belly, and our Shit don´t look so different at all... This is so obvious, that i kind of despair, telling it, over and over, and over again.... Our Planet is so wunderfull, a real gem in Space, and the only one we got.... Does Greed help, when its gone ? I don´t think so....
A lot of non-American English speakers have said that they benefited from the access to a wide variety of American shows and movies growing up which made it easier to emulate American accents. Unrelated to this, my goal in life is to find a woman who looks at me the way Jennifer Lawrence looks at Chris Pratt when he speaks German!
Yup, the widespread English proficiency of native Germans is a real barrier to our learning/improving our German skills via immersion as visitors, but I never took the switching as an insult. It's just the most efficient approach, and what's more German than that?
As an Austrian who also has some relatives in both Germany & Switzerland, I'd like to add that there's also a difference in Standard German in those three countries. E.g., in Austria or Switzerland, the vocabulary used in Standard Swiss/Austrian German partly differs from words common in Germany. Also, in Switzerland there are some grammatical structures they use in Standard Swiss German which aren't used in Austria or Germany. Sometimes, the spelling differs, e.g. in Switzerland they don't use the letter "ß", they spell "hot" not "heiß" but "heiss", for example. I just wanted to add this bc I find it important to consider that there are not only various dialects in German, but also differing kinds of Standard German (namely the one used in Germany, Swiss German & Austrian German).
My grandma moved to America from Berlin in 1961. She's absolutely fluent in English but she has an extremely thick accent still. I find it fascinating how some people maintain thick accents and others seem to fade and while I am sure sometime it's intentional, but other times it's completely subconscious.
What you say about Germans switching to English when they hear a foreign speaker, I experienced quite differently in Sweden. I was learning Swedish and went to Gothenburg with a friend. When we arrived, we went to the tourist information office and I tried to buy a ticket for public transportation. I was really struggling with my Swedish and translated it into German for my friend and then switched back to my bad Swedish, which took forever... the service person was very patient and talked to me in Swedish until we had everything for my bus ticket. When it was my friend's turn to pay for his bus ticket, the lady from the tourist information changed to a perfect German and spoke German with my friend...
Yeah some Swedes can definitely speak German, it's actually not that hard to learn at least conversational levels of either language if you already know one of them. I'm German myself and learning Swedish was surprisingly easy. I'm not fluent but I can at least get around and if Swedish fails I still have English or German. Doubt I would need to use Spanish in Sweden but I can also speak that.
It is my opinion, and I know I'm not alone, that *schadenfreude* is one of the greatest words in any of the world's languages. Perhaps *the* greatest of them all. Simply brilliant.
You identified my “problem” in my college German. I have a pretty good ear for accents, so I sounded like I knew what I was talking about. And I very much didn’t. When we were reading krimis, the German phrase I used most was „Darf ich etwas auf Englisch fragen?“
Honestly the one actor that really threw me for a loop when I found out they were from the UK was Christian Bale. I had no flipping idea he was from Wales until 2010. His American accent is excellent.
I was speaking to someone who had a similar reaction to Hugh Laurie. In the miniseries Night Manager, he spoke with his natural English accent. They were commenting on how good his English accent and I said he is from England. I guess so many young people assumed he was american from House.
My dad was stationed in Germany during the Korean War and I’m always astonished with these videos at how much I understand what’s being said guess my dad taught me more German than I thought
Hearing the Beatles sing in german reminded me of Phil Collins' absolutely iconic songs in the german version of Disney's Tarzan (oh, and he also sang german text again for Brother Bear a few years later). Hearing those german songs with Collins' obviously heavy accent and his beautiful voice always makes me so nostalgic. Would you maybe want to react to those songs in your next video of this kind? :) btw, i'm german as one can probably tell by reading all this, so, sorry for the mistakes i might have made, feel free to correct my mistakes ♡
Françoise Hardy is a French singer who has done albums in French, English, German and Italian! I can't comment on what her German sounds like but her English songs are sung with a strong French accent & thats part of the charm.
On the topic of accents vs. fluency: I worked with a woman who used to live in Cincinnati who had a German mother and American father. Her parents broke up when she was young and she lived with her father. Having spent her early years with a German speaker, she said when she talked to Germans, they assumed she was German, but very stupid, because she only had the vocabulary of a very young child.
I have the same fear when I speak Portuguese, I learned it working in a kindergarden. So when I speak with adults I can manage a pretty good pronunciation but my vocabulary is basically babytalk...
I could be wrong but I the American "comical German" accent comes from Dr. Strangelove. You have Peter Sellers to thank for that. He was kinder to the Germans than the French.
I love this dear. My father spent a little over a year in a little over a year and a half in Stuttgart when he was training to be a certified technician for Mercedes Benz in the late 60's dear and I love the way that Germams say some words as well as the German language.
hI dein Channel ist echt cool. Ich mag reactors aus den USA und auch Leute die dorthin ausgewandert sind und uns hier in Deutschland die Kultur usw etwas näher bringen. Deine Videos sind nice. Schon krass wie viele Top Promis aus den USA deutsch sprechen. Vor allem, wie gut sie das zum teil können. Sandra Bullock zb oder Sarah Chalke. Mach weiter so. Hast einen neuen Abonnenten 🙂 Gruß aus Unna nähe Dortmund
It’s kinda annoying when people say, a bit like Mark Wahlberg did, “I’m picking up the language,“ like they’ll be fluent given a small bit of time. The interviewers tend to agree, because they have to. Learning a few phrases and parroting them back is not speaking a language.
The Beatles played clubs in Hamburg in 1960 -62. They may have gone back and forth to England but they spent considerable time in Germany and sang in German as well.
9:37 - Totally correct. I have a Dutch friend in which when they say a Dutch word or name and I repeat it back, I pronounce it perfect and I'm the only that does. I speak a tonal language in Cantonese so that gives an advantage in pronunciation as it places emphasis on that vs non-tonal based languages. That said, I work with people from many cultures who speak English perfectly, but with an accent from where they are from. You have a mixed German/Midwest accent I've noticed. Some words you speak in English in a Midwest accent (e.g. the rhoticity of your 'R' sounds) while others have that classic back-of-the-throat 'sharp' German pronunciation e.g. when you say 'to be'. Your 'o' sounds switch between both depending on word too! e.g the open 'o' in 'or' is very open sounding like a Midwest accent, while the closed 'o' when you say 'lose' is quite German.
No way I'm close to being a linguist, but yeah, I noticed she has a little bit of that Midwest "twang" when speaking English and very little of a German accent. I'd probably mistake you for Canadian TBH!
@@poneal666 Don' worry that "classic back of the throat pronunciation" is one of those extremely unscientific stereotypes about German. And the single "o" in lose actually a completely different vowel to German "o", and one that a single o very rarely represents in English. Wannabe linguist at work in this comment.
Love these vids, Feli! Just for info, Trevor Noah did a full stand up sketch about his dad and learning German and he goes into more depth about his "Hitler-ish" accent. He then proceeds to do a longer bit with the inflection. Really funny!
Not letting practice your language knowledge is not only a German habit but I experienced the same when living as a German in Sweden. Whenever I tried to practice my Swedish anyone switched to English except in one case. I went to an old shoemaker in order to let him repair my shows. Since the task was beyond my language skills, I wanted to explain it in English but he didn’t know any English. However, when I tried to explain it in Sweden, he interrupted me and asked me with only a light Swedish accent „Sie sprechen Deutsch?“ It turned out that he learned German instead of Englishat school at school and never forgot it. I could everything explain him and he taught me the respective Swedish words I missed in my first attempt.
The first and most important rule of learning another language is to know how to swear in this language😂 In Hellenic we also have a word for this situation when you are secretly happy when another has bad luck or something bad happened to him. Χαιρέκακος/herékakos is the person that feels joy when he sees other people suffer!😒
When I hear someone speaking English with a German or other foreign accent, I am always impressed. That person can do something I cannot. Speak another language. Anyone who looks down upon someone who speaks with an accent is a bad person, especially if they don’t speak a second language themselves. I’d block anyone who was critical of a German who speaks fluent English with an accent.
I would assume that those being more critical about someone speaking with an accent are Germans themselves. It is quite common for our teachers to pester us to speak with a proper accent and especially a proper "th" that we become quite critical of people who do have an accent. That's (an ugly) part of German culture, being hypercritical and always knowing better as well as the concept of "Fremdscham" (feeling ashamed for an error someone else committed).
@@daykibaran9668 You’d never know it from your comments. Your written English is excellent. I tend to be critical-in my head-about people who have lived in the US for 20+ years and can’t speak English. I can’t understand it.
@@daykibaran9668 I was referring to Germans judging other Germans for having a German accent in a foreign language (English in particular). I do catch myself doing this in my head a lot because I find a German accent awful yet it never happens to me if I hear an Italian, Russian or French accent in a foreign language.
Zwar ist das ein älteres Video, aber ich bin voll erwischt worden😂. Jedes Mal ( ich arbeite im Verkauf ) wenn ein Kunde eine Beratung möchte, und ich merke er hat Schwierigkeiten mit der deutschen Sprache, gehe ich zum englischen über. Im englischen bin ich ganz gut, bei weitem nicht perfekt, aber es reicht. Ich dachte immer es wäre ein Entgegenkommen, hab aber nie darüber nachgedacht ob es dem jeweiligen Recht ist. Deine Videos hatten also einen Lerneffekt 😂. Und sie sind super unterhaltsam, auch für eine Deutsche!
Hey ich bin vor ein paar Wochen auf deinen Kanal gestoßen und habe mir fast alle Videos reingezogen. Auch wenn ich Deutsche bin ist es so cool sich das anzugucken und deine Meinung zu hören. Meistens hab ich dieselbe bevor ich deine höre echt lustig^^ Du lebst meinen Traum ich würde auch so gerne irgendwann mal in den USA leben. Danke für deine coolen Videos ! :))
29:26 Swiss here... Swiss German is classified as a dialect of German, not its own proper language. But yes, it is very different from Standard German (Hochdeutsch), in terms of Grammar, Vocabulary, and of course Pronunciation. And since it's not a proper language, there is also no official spelling for it. Formal/important things, or when we write to somebody we don't know well, we write in Standard German. But with close friends and family, it's more comfortable to write/text the same way we would also speak to them. And then we literally just spell things however we want. This then can make it quite challenging to read and understand, if the other person speaks a different dialect. Official school language in the German part of the country is also Standard German, so that's always a bit of a shock to the system when kids start going to school, because suddenly they're expected to communicate in this language they maybe hear occasionally on TV, but never use themselves in their daily life.
I studied French for years but didn’t have anyone to practice with. I have fun hearing people talk to their kids. Whispering to my spouse, “That child is not going to get any candy if they don’t sit down.” Small joys.
I knew someone who was born in Brazil, moved to the USA at the age of 5, and later learned Spanish. His English sounds perfectly North American (to me whose own accent has a Romance twang), but his Spanish, though fluent (which is easy for a Portuguese speaker), has a strong Brazilian accent.
There's a series on Netflix called "The Defeated" which might be something for you to comment on. It's set in Berlin in 1946. Some American actors speaking German, German ones speaking English, and what sounds to me like some Berlin dialect.
Switzerdeutsch: I am from the "Ruhrgebiet" (Ruhrarea) - where "Krupp" is from - and the language has a lot of influence from immigrants, who came there to work in the steel- and coalindustrie, from all of europe. So the daylylanguage is very versatile. When someone talks to me in Switzerdeutsch i don´t even umderstand a s*** 🤣 It´s like a completely different language. LG D 🙂
"79%".. is the way to speak as a German (thought and number order), but you actually had 97%... - Which I believe you read correctly: You only "thought-converted-to-words" turned it around. AS a non native English or German speaker, your English (and accent) is really good. Very seldom, and only "here-and-there", there is the tiniest hint of a German accent. I hope to improve my German, to only 60% of our capability, and that would in itself, be a milestone to me. Thank you for your lessons. Viele dank.
What she said about good pronounciation not always equaling fluency is so true when it comes to me speaking French. Because I'm pretty good at the pronounciation all my teachers assumed I was really good at speaking French when in reality I didn't know what I was saying half of the time.
When I started learning German when I was 14 I immersed myself in TV shows, CDs, etc, and one of the things my mother got me to help was the Vienna cast recording of the musical "Cats" which featured a multi-mational cast who either knew German or learned the show in German (when musical theatre boomed in the German-speaking countries it became easier for performers from all walks of talent to come over work there if they could learn their lines phonetically. I guess the best example would be either Pie Douwes from the Netherlands or Helen Schneider from New York)
18:40 My godmother is native German (from NRW) and also a school teacher of English language so she speaks perfectly English, however when I am (literally) struggling with my German to get myself understood by her, she continues speaking German with me, because she knows that I DO really want to speak German with her. (I am Hungarian btw.)
In Dutch 'Shadenfreude' is 'leedvermaak' ('leed' is suffering/sorrow, and 'vermaak' is entertainment), so basically getting a laugh through someone else's misfortune (like a skater landing on his family jewels trying to slide on a handrail and stuff like that).
I love German! My dad was stationed in Heidelberg when I was a kid, and I had to take a German class. That was a long time ago, so of course only a little bit stuck with me. I would love to be fluent though!
Jennifer Lawrence was endlessly amazed with Chris Pratt during the promo's during this tour. He did magic tricks and crazy english accents during other appearances.
Ich muss zugeben das ich kaum bis gar kein Englisch kann. Darum verstehe ich wirklich nicht viel von dem was du kommentierst, aber dennoch fesselst du mich mit deinen Erklärungen und finde deine Videos allgemein sehr interessant. Besonders wenn ich dann doch mal das ein oder andere verstanden habe....Da gucke ich mir gerne mehr an... Schöne Grüße aus dem Norden Deutschland´s
Thanks for the new word! But, saying "it's not often used" seems to be a bit of an understatement. Apparently it appeared in a dictionary for about 50 years in the 18th century, but there is not really any record of usage since then, other than appearing on lists of interesting words.
I completely agree with the point you make at 10 minutes in. I am English and speak Greek with a Cypriot accent. I'm far from fluent, but my pronunciation is often commented on favourably, but it causes me awkward moments from time to time: Like speaking to a Greek or Greek Cypriot I don't know - I might give them a fairly long and detailed question, but when they reply, I might only know half of the words they are using and have to stop to try and make sense of their answer. At that point, they are confused because they assumed I was fluent. 😞
German accent vs grasp of the language: My mother has a super strong accent still at 80 but has a firm grasp of the language and still learns. I could not be more proud of her. Coming to a country totally foreign and doing totally great! Let’s just say that her English is better than my German every will be and I grew up there farming with my family!
You should do a reverse video where German actors speak English or use an English/US accent in movies or shows. I'd love to hear some. Just a suggestion. Stay gold 💛
Funny to hear you mention people raising the pitch of their voice when speaking German - when we would watch movies dubbed into German in my German classes growing up, I noticed quite often the voices were significantly higher than the American whose speech they were portraying, so having never been to Germany, I actually wondered if Germans just did actually tend to have higher voices for some reason.
@@keti.rg.editzzz I don't see that. Some dialects sometimes have a higher intonation within a sentence or question. But this exist in some English dialects as well.
In modern movies, this happens mostly in comedies, because the creators of dubbing believe that high-pitched voices sound funnier. But this does not apply to all roles. In action movies, low-pitched voice actors are more likely to be chosen. And even Hugh Grant once said that part of his success in Germany was due to the fact that his voice sounded much more masculine in the German version. The imitation Feli addresses may refer to very old films or historical speeches and radio broadcasts. At that time, speakers had to speak higher and sharper because the microphones of the time were poor at transmitting low frequencies.
@@keti.rg.editzzz It is a quirk of the German language that different vowels in otherwise very similar words can greatly change the meaning. You have to speak much more clearly and precisely in the service of intelligibility. That's why German doesn't allow mumbling. There are also many hard consonants. It may therefore sound sharper and brighter, especially for Americans.
Hey Feli. From a Brits perspective (ie possibly having more exposure to foreign languages than the majority of Americans) one of the other things I''ve noticed in Europe generally (rather than Germany specifically) is in many cases English is poken because it is the only common language many people have. As an example I rmeber many years ago going into a bar (at a youth hostel) in Stockholm where there was a group of people speaking English. On joining hem it turned out not one of them was English :) They were a mixture of Swedes, Germans, French, Italian etc
In Norwegian we have a translation of «die Schadenfreude» as «Skadefryd», and it means to have the joy/pleasure of seeing someone’s misfortune or faliures
There's a fun moment in the new Beatles' documentary "Get Back" where Paul counts in saying "Eins, Zwei, Viertel-nach-Drei" 😅 I loved that. And he still knows a bit of German to this day.
I'm in South Africa. My father was an immigrant from Germany, and we only spoke English at home. When I was a child my uncle and aunt from Germany visited. I couldn't speak a word of German. About 5 years later, in 1981 & 2, I was in Germany. They were surprised that I could speak such good German. They even had learning English books that they had recently obtained. They would also speak slowly to me, and use just simple German words. Now, the reason why I could, is because South Africa has the language Afrikaans, which I knew, and is quite similar to German. Some Afrikaans even comes from German. I never told them that. (Afrikaners are (originally and mostly) a mixture of Dutch, German and French descent.)
I have German heritage, but cannot get the accent. You almost have to grow up in Europe to get a European accent. I hear a subtle German accent when you talk. It's very subtle. Considering you have only been here a few years, that subtleness is very impressive.
What has your heritage to do with the way you speak? There is no connection. Also, what the hell is a european accent supposed to be? You do know, that there are not just a lot of different languages in europe, but also many different language families, do you?
20:00 - It's funny how he sounds like German with a very strong Dutch accent. Literally. I've worked with Dutch people before and they had this exact accent.
I dated a gal in high school whose grandparents were both Jewish Germans who had spent time in Auschwitz. Her grandfather had spent over 50 years in the states and had never really gotten rid of his accent at all, in fact it was quite thick, and wasn’t helped much by the fact that he had a couple of strokes before I met him, so his thick accent was also very slurred. Despite that I loved his accent, it could definitely at times be hard to understand his English because it was heavily influenced by German pronunciations, but it was a great experience to get to know some things about German culture and language from a native speaker. I did learn quite a few useful phrases from him, but I don’t remember most of them, unfortunately.
Paul McCartney speaks some German, he said he learned it at school, and during their time in Hamburg of course. They lived at Astrid Kirchherr's house, and there was their buddy Klaus Voormann, too, who often played with them (not on any album of the Beatles, but on some solo albums) and who did the cover art for Revolver.
for 6:20: watch All American, the main protagonist's actor (Daniel Ezra) is British and did the typical American blaccent so spot on and kept it going off camera for months so that some of his co-stars didn't even know he had a British accent until they were done filming season 1
I once taught myself the Cyrillic alphabet with russian pronunciation... My Polish neighbor even said my reading sounded very genuinely russian... Problem was just that I had no idea what it said... It was just making the right sounds according to the letters I saw, so probably the same level as a GPS. I'm quite good at German pronunciation because I grew up with it... But I really struggle if I am to put together a correct sentence myself.. but at least in that case I understand what I'm saying. Edit: back when I was in my late tweens (1992-1995), English wasn't very common to be understood in Germany.. or at least they were not very confident in their skills. Gott sein dank, ich versteht ein bischen. (Probably spelled something wrong, haven't had to use it for years). Anyway, it has improved so quickly, so kudos to the German education system for that. When we first got our satellite dish, it was a few British channels, and a lot of German ones, so I've watched almost all of the American block busters, from the 80s, with German voices. I couldn't understand why they couldn't just subtitle it, like on Danish TV, tho. Edit 2: schadenfreude is skadefro in Danish... I think that English is one of the few Germanic languages not having a direct translation of it... Just like you never combine words in English. But, schhh... Long words scares the English.
Feli, you just crack me up sometimes! Your English is quite fluent and idiomatic and unmistakably American. You have a light German accent that is appealing rather than appalling (like an ABBA song). I agree with you about accent not equating with competency or comprehension. My immigrant grandfather spoke English with a fairly heavy Serbo-Croatian accent, but he could read and write English very well. I have fond memories of him smoking his pipe and reading "another damned thick, square book" in English. 🤓💖
I agree with you that we don't have high-pitched voices, but then I heard the interviewer at 25:23 and he sounded EXACTLY like what Chris Pratt was mocking earlier :D:D:D
"Bei dir piept's" is derived from another idiom - "Du hast einen Vogel". In, like, mediaeval times, people used to fear a person who didn't seem quite right in the head might have birds nesting in their skull, which was making them silly and dumb (could be compared to calling someone 'cuckoo' in English). So, it wouldn't be 'something beeping' but rather 'tweeting'. :)
I always thought that "Schadenfreude" would translate more or less to "mischievousness" or "spitefulness" (wohl eher "Gehässigkeit" for the latter). Nice video again!
Prettiest German girl I know! And I know a lot of German gals from school! I love what your doing for the world and teaching a lot of people you’re native language. Much respect
Schadenfreude has entered the US lexicon, most often used when discussing sports rivals. As for your sponsor app, it will probably be like Siri and not understand my southern accent half of the time.
When I was in Berlin, I experience that situation. Of me trying to improve my german, and Germans immediately changing to english. It's kind or rude. I prefer always that someone tells me what was my mistake than changing to another language. I didn't invest so much time, effort and money to go to Germany and speak in english. I enjoy this videos. Hope you can make another one. Tschüss!!
Most people just try to make it easier for you and don't do it to be rude. I would just tell them to please speak German to you, most will switch back easily. I've done the same for my target languages before and 8/10 times people will just use their native language again if I ask.
I think the Beatles had a translator from Hamburg who wrote the German lyrics. I remember reading somewhere that Paul McCartney once told the translator that, as English people, they had trouble pronouncing the "ch" sound. So he proposed to change "Sie liebt dich" to "Sie liebt dir". The translator rejected this, arguing that only people from Berlin talk like this and nobody in the west would want to hear that
Dominic West (very English) playing a Baltimore detective in The Wire absolutely crushed the local "sound". I didn't know of him prior to The Wire and could've sworn he grew up in or near Baltimore (where I live).
Es gab mal die Schweizerdeutsche Rechtschreibung, meine Mutter hatte die noch in der Schule. Wurde jedoch verworfen und nur noch Hochdeutsch oder wie es bei uns heisst Schriftsprache unterrichtet. Ausserdem finde ich euer Deutsch viiiel härter, ihr habt einfach mühe mit dem ch. 😉 Grüsse aus der Schweiz
In the early 90's, I lived in the Saarland. My neighbors spoke French, not much English. I learned a lot. However, I have forgotten most. I struggle now.
In the movie Bad Boys (1st one) Will Smith says to Martin Lawrence. "You drive slow enough to be driving Miss Daisy!" I'm pretty sure that is what they were referring to.
32:24 I said before that this was like sadistic joy/pleasure, which I think some people would use that like that, but that doesn't really mean the same thing. I've been thinking about it and I think a better translation would be vindictive joy/pleasure. It's not quite the definition you get when you look it up, but I've definitely heard people use it to mean getting joy from someone else's misfortune, especially if they hurt you in the past.
Rühreier sounds like swiss chueheier what means cow eggs 😂 you explained the swiss in a lovely way 👍 i think for the reason that you are from munich you could understand swiss after a short time. greetings from switzerland 🇨🇭
I can usually tell when an English or Australian actor is doing an American accent. There are tells. You still have some German in your accent - it is very light but it is still there. You still talk with the back of your mouth a lot which we don't here. They still play "Sie Liebt Dich" on the radio here occasionally. I here it every once in a blue moon when Q95 does a Beatles marathon. Calling Trevor Noah a comedian is a very far stretch... The reason we put that high tone in a "fake" German accent is from the sitcom Hogan's Heroes. There were a notable German character that did that in the show. I KNOW NUSSINGT! Check out clips of the show.
Sargent Schultz and Hogans heroes put germans in a lot more human light at the time though bumbling. Most Germans were portrayed as cold molecule wearing serial killers smoking a cigarette .That black crown has been passed on thankfully.
I work for a German firm in their U.S. division and we have people come there from Germany and we also have people that decide to live in the area permanently and are from Germany and in the case of one East Germany, Overall they're very friendly and nice people to bump into, Some has a thick accent others don't.
When it comes to Germans speaking English, I actually enjoy the German accent. It is quite pleasant to my ears. Perhaps it's because I miss my old German (and Scandinavian) relatives that have long passed. I miss them all.
Yea, but many Germans in this generation (like Feli) are learning how to speak English with a US accent. I have noticed it not only in Feli but also some of my Goethe Institut instructors who hail from the German-speaking world.
Very touching, thank you!
Sure, I like the German accent from Thomas from Autogefühl.
@@wasao3448 It is like that in most of Europe. People learn British English but most media is American English so you adopt it.
@@TrashskillsRS Yes, that's the case! And I have to admit a strong German accent in English is kinda disturbing 😅 - actually southern German dialects are pretty close to American sound system 😉✌️
I had a Swiss colleague who got her doctoral degree from a German university, and she had to have someone go through her thesis to catch and correct any Schweizerdeutsch before she submitted it.
We too also have a word in Chinese that has a exactly same meaning as die Schadenfreude it’s 幸灾乐祸 xìng zāi lè huò literally mean Take joy from others misfortune it’s fascinating to see two different languages both has a word describing a same feeling
Well, besides from Language Differences, we are all from the same tribe.
If you eat Rice Noodles, Potatoes, or French Fries from MacDonald, it all ends up in the same Belly, and our Shit don´t look so different at all...
This is so obvious, that i kind of despair, telling it, over and over, and over again....
Our Planet is so wunderfull, a real gem in Space, and the only one we got....
Does Greed help, when its gone ?
I don´t think so....
that’s not a word though it’s a chinese idiom. we have many chinese idioms but an idiom is made up of many words
A lot of non-American English speakers have said that they benefited from the access to a wide variety of American shows and movies growing up which made it easier to emulate American accents. Unrelated to this, my goal in life is to find a woman who looks at me the way Jennifer Lawrence looks at Chris Pratt when he speaks German!
Over here in Germany, all Shows from America are translated, so you don´t hear the Original anymore...
I think that is what every human being wishes from his*her partner. I'd wish so badly as well.😢
"Wie heißt du? -- Ich liebe dich! -- Du stinkst so wie scheiße!" That escalated quickly!!! XD
Yes hahahah
Eine Beziehung in drei Akten
Hello, how are you??
Wie heisst du? Ich sehr heiss. A little dad joke in german
Yup, the widespread English proficiency of native Germans is a real barrier to our learning/improving our German skills via immersion as visitors, but I never took the switching as an insult. It's just the most efficient approach, and what's more German than that?
Nice choice of Name....
I´m a SciFi-Fan....
Still hunting my Worm ;-)
As an Austrian who also has some relatives in both Germany & Switzerland, I'd like to add that there's also a difference in Standard German in those three countries. E.g., in Austria or Switzerland, the vocabulary used in Standard Swiss/Austrian German partly differs from words common in Germany. Also, in Switzerland there are some grammatical structures they use in Standard Swiss German which aren't used in Austria or Germany. Sometimes, the spelling differs, e.g. in Switzerland they don't use the letter "ß", they spell "hot" not "heiß" but "heiss", for example.
I just wanted to add this bc I find it important to consider that there are not only various dialects in German, but also differing kinds of Standard German (namely the one used in Germany, Swiss German & Austrian German).
Yes, in Switzerland is a debate if it is calling "das Bleistift" or "der Bleistift".
Of course is it "der Bleistift"
@@radio_marco Jo, mir händ au immer es Problem mit Genera... Nöd war?
In Österreich haben wir das Sprichwort: Österreich und Deutschland werden durch die gemeinsame Sprache getrennt.
That’s why they’re Swiss and not Swiß
@@radio_marco für mich wird es immer der bleistift bleiben :) schöne grüße aus deutschland 😀
My grandma moved to America from Berlin in 1961. She's absolutely fluent in English but she has an extremely thick accent still. I find it fascinating how some people maintain thick accents and others seem to fade and while I am sure sometime it's intentional, but other times it's completely subconscious.
What you say about Germans switching to English when they hear a foreign speaker, I experienced quite differently in Sweden. I was learning Swedish and went to Gothenburg with a friend. When we arrived, we went to the tourist information office and I tried to buy a ticket for public transportation. I was really struggling with my Swedish and translated it into German for my friend and then switched back to my bad Swedish, which took forever... the service person was very patient and talked to me in Swedish until we had everything for my bus ticket. When it was my friend's turn to pay for his bus ticket, the lady from the tourist information changed to a perfect German and spoke German with my friend...
Yeah some Swedes can definitely speak German, it's actually not that hard to learn at least conversational levels of either language if you already know one of them. I'm German myself and learning Swedish was surprisingly easy. I'm not fluent but I can at least get around and if Swedish fails I still have English or German. Doubt I would need to use Spanish in Sweden but I can also speak that.
😂😂😂
Feli, you are a great representative for Germany. You have a very pleasant personality.
It is my opinion, and I know I'm not alone, that *schadenfreude* is one of the greatest words in any of the world's languages. Perhaps *the* greatest of them all. Simply brilliant.
You've convinced me that knowing German is very useful! Your videos always bring smiles and sunshine. Awesome personality!
You identified my “problem” in my college German. I have a pretty good ear for accents, so I sounded like I knew what I was talking about. And I very much didn’t. When we were reading krimis, the German phrase I used most was „Darf ich etwas auf Englisch fragen?“
Honestly the one actor that really threw me for a loop when I found out they were from the UK was Christian Bale. I had no flipping idea he was from Wales until 2010. His American accent is excellent.
I was speaking to someone who had a similar reaction to Hugh Laurie. In the miniseries Night Manager, he spoke with his natural English accent. They were commenting on how good his English accent and I said he is from England. I guess so many young people assumed he was american from House.
@@bccabernet And that despite the fact that he so often speaks in House with an obvious English accent.
My dad was stationed in Germany during the Korean War and I’m always astonished with these videos at how much I understand what’s being said guess my dad taught me more German than I thought
Hearing the Beatles sing in german reminded me of Phil Collins' absolutely iconic songs in the german version of Disney's Tarzan (oh, and he also sang german text again for Brother Bear a few years later).
Hearing those german songs with Collins' obviously heavy accent and his beautiful voice always makes me so nostalgic.
Would you maybe want to react to those songs in your next video of this kind? :)
btw, i'm german as one can probably tell by reading all this, so, sorry for the mistakes i might have made, feel free to correct my mistakes ♡
The Beatles also sometimes sung using a fake American Southern accent, or rather a blend between that and an English accent.
Françoise Hardy is a French singer who has done albums in French, English, German and Italian! I can't comment on what her German sounds like but her English songs are sung with a strong French accent & thats part of the charm.
On the topic of accents vs. fluency: I worked with a woman who used to live in Cincinnati who had a German mother and American father. Her parents broke up when she was young and she lived with her father. Having spent her early years with a German speaker, she said when she talked to Germans, they assumed she was German, but very stupid, because she only had the vocabulary of a very young child.
I have the same fear when I speak Portuguese, I learned it working in a kindergarden. So when I speak with adults I can manage a pretty good pronunciation but my vocabulary is basically babytalk...
@Richard Todd. She should have then broken into English, and tell them where they could stick it!
I absolutely love your voice so soft and kind
I could be wrong but I the American "comical German" accent comes from Dr. Strangelove. You have Peter Sellers to thank for that. He was kinder to the Germans than the French.
I dunno, I think you can pin some of it on "Hogan's Heroes."
That actually makes sense. It also reminded me of Peter Lorre, for some reason.
I think it comes from the stereotypical Augustus Gloop / Uter Zorker-like characters in shows that speak with high pitched voices as well
He sounds like he's channeling the Swedish chef in German to me.
@@TheJFGB93 Which is funny, because Lorre was Hungarian. Spoke German tho.
I love this dear. My father spent a little over a year in a little over a year and a half in Stuttgart when he was training to be a certified technician for Mercedes Benz in the late 60's dear and I love the way that Germams say some words as well as the German language.
As an austrian Beatles Fan I didn't even know that they recorded two of their songs in german, I'm obsessed.
Trevor Noah's dad is Swiss. If I remember correctly from Trevor's book, his dad moved to SA when he was like 20ish
yep, looked for this comment. And I think he went back to Switzerland again?
@@huawafabe maybe after Trevor grew up. But there was a 10 or 15 year period where Trevor lost contact with his dad iirc
hI
dein Channel ist echt cool. Ich mag reactors aus den USA und auch Leute die dorthin ausgewandert sind und uns hier in Deutschland die Kultur usw etwas näher bringen. Deine Videos sind nice. Schon krass wie viele Top Promis aus den USA deutsch sprechen. Vor allem, wie gut sie das zum teil können. Sandra Bullock zb oder Sarah Chalke. Mach weiter so. Hast einen neuen Abonnenten 🙂
Gruß aus Unna nähe Dortmund
It’s kinda annoying when people say, a bit like Mark Wahlberg did, “I’m picking up the language,“ like they’ll be fluent given a small bit of time. The interviewers tend to agree, because they have to. Learning a few phrases and parroting them back is not speaking a language.
Well, that's, especially, Mark Wahlberg for ya.
The Beatles played clubs in Hamburg in 1960 -62. They may have gone back and forth to England but they spent considerable time in Germany and sang in German as well.
I found it funny that while you were talking about your accent your German accent started coming out. It barely did but I definitely noticed.
9:37 - Totally correct. I have a Dutch friend in which when they say a Dutch word or name and I repeat it back, I pronounce it perfect and I'm the only that does. I speak a tonal language in Cantonese so that gives an advantage in pronunciation as it places emphasis on that vs non-tonal based languages. That said, I work with people from many cultures who speak English perfectly, but with an accent from where they are from. You have a mixed German/Midwest accent I've noticed. Some words you speak in English in a Midwest accent (e.g. the rhoticity of your 'R' sounds) while others have that classic back-of-the-throat 'sharp' German pronunciation e.g. when you say 'to be'. Your 'o' sounds switch between both depending on word too! e.g the open 'o' in 'or' is very open sounding like a Midwest accent, while the closed 'o' when you say 'lose' is quite German.
No way I'm close to being a linguist, but yeah, I noticed she has a little bit of that Midwest "twang" when speaking English and very little of a German accent. I'd probably mistake you for Canadian TBH!
@@poneal666 Don' worry that "classic back of the throat pronunciation" is one of those extremely unscientific stereotypes about German. And the single "o" in lose actually a completely different vowel to German "o", and one that a single o very rarely represents in English. Wannabe linguist at work in this comment.
Love these vids, Feli! Just for info, Trevor Noah did a full stand up sketch about his dad and learning German and he goes into more depth about his "Hitler-ish" accent. He then proceeds to do a longer bit with the inflection. Really funny!
Thanks for the tip - I'll search for it.
You can tell that Will is a musician/singer. He's pretty good at getting the sound of the words right.
Not letting practice your language knowledge is not only a German habit but I experienced the same when living as a German in Sweden. Whenever I tried to practice my Swedish anyone switched to English except in one case. I went to an old shoemaker in order to let him repair my shows. Since the task was beyond my language skills, I wanted to explain it in English but he didn’t know any English. However, when I tried to explain it in Sweden, he interrupted me and asked me with only a light Swedish accent „Sie sprechen Deutsch?“ It turned out that he learned German instead of Englishat school at school and never forgot it. I could everything explain him and he taught me the respective Swedish words I missed in my first attempt.
The first and most important rule of learning another language is to know how to swear in this language😂
In Hellenic we also have a word for this situation when you are secretly happy when another has bad luck or something bad happened to him.
Χαιρέκακος/herékakos is the person that feels joy when he sees other people suffer!😒
When I hear someone speaking English with a German or other foreign accent, I am always impressed. That person can do something I cannot. Speak another language. Anyone who looks down upon someone who speaks with an accent is a bad person, especially if they don’t speak a second language themselves. I’d block anyone who was critical of a German who speaks fluent English with an accent.
I would assume that those being more critical about someone speaking with an accent are Germans themselves. It is quite common for our teachers to pester us to speak with a proper accent and especially a proper "th" that we become quite critical of people who do have an accent.
That's (an ugly) part of German culture, being hypercritical and always knowing better as well as the concept of "Fremdscham" (feeling ashamed for an error someone else committed).
@@daykibaran9668 You’d never know it from your comments. Your written English is excellent. I tend to be critical-in my head-about people who have lived in the US for 20+ years and can’t speak English. I can’t understand it.
@@914Rocky
Same with other countries. When you are living in a foreign country, then you should at least try to get some skills in that language.
@@daykibaran9668 I was referring to Germans judging other Germans for having a German accent in a foreign language (English in particular). I do catch myself doing this in my head a lot because I find a German accent awful yet it never happens to me if I hear an Italian, Russian or French accent in a foreign language.
Zwar ist das ein älteres Video, aber ich bin voll erwischt worden😂. Jedes Mal ( ich arbeite im Verkauf ) wenn ein Kunde eine Beratung möchte, und ich merke er hat Schwierigkeiten mit der deutschen Sprache, gehe ich zum englischen über. Im englischen bin ich ganz gut, bei weitem nicht perfekt, aber es reicht. Ich dachte immer es wäre ein Entgegenkommen, hab aber nie darüber nachgedacht ob es dem jeweiligen Recht ist. Deine Videos hatten also einen Lerneffekt 😂. Und sie sind super unterhaltsam, auch für eine Deutsche!
Hey ich bin vor ein paar Wochen auf deinen Kanal gestoßen und habe mir fast alle Videos reingezogen. Auch wenn ich Deutsche bin ist es so cool sich das anzugucken und deine Meinung zu hören. Meistens hab ich dieselbe bevor ich deine höre echt lustig^^ Du lebst meinen Traum ich würde auch so gerne irgendwann mal in den USA leben. Danke für deine coolen Videos ! :))
like u hearing actors speak a German thanks for hearing u critic
29:26 Swiss here... Swiss German is classified as a dialect of German, not its own proper language. But yes, it is very different from Standard German (Hochdeutsch), in terms of Grammar, Vocabulary, and of course Pronunciation. And since it's not a proper language, there is also no official spelling for it. Formal/important things, or when we write to somebody we don't know well, we write in Standard German. But with close friends and family, it's more comfortable to write/text the same way we would also speak to them. And then we literally just spell things however we want. This then can make it quite challenging to read and understand, if the other person speaks a different dialect.
Official school language in the German part of the country is also Standard German, so that's always a bit of a shock to the system when kids start going to school, because suddenly they're expected to communicate in this language they maybe hear occasionally on TV, but never use themselves in their daily life.
I studied French for years but didn’t have anyone to practice with. I have fun hearing people talk to their kids. Whispering to my spouse, “That child is not going to get any candy if they don’t sit down.” Small joys.
I knew someone who was born in Brazil, moved to the USA at the age of 5, and later learned Spanish. His English sounds perfectly North American (to me whose own accent has a Romance twang), but his Spanish, though fluent (which is easy for a Portuguese speaker), has a strong Brazilian accent.
There's a series on Netflix called "The Defeated" which might be something for you to comment on. It's set in Berlin in 1946. Some American actors speaking German, German ones speaking English, and what sounds to me like some Berlin dialect.
Switzerdeutsch: I am from the "Ruhrgebiet" (Ruhrarea) - where "Krupp" is from - and the language has a lot of influence from immigrants, who came there to work in the steel- and coalindustrie, from all of europe. So the daylylanguage is very versatile.
When someone talks to me in Switzerdeutsch i don´t even umderstand a s*** 🤣
It´s like a completely different language.
LG D 🙂
Man, I can't believe it's been a year. It feels like it's just a few months old at most.
"79%".. is the way to speak as a German (thought and number order), but you actually had 97%... - Which I believe you read correctly: You only "thought-converted-to-words" turned it around. AS a non native English or German speaker, your English (and accent) is really good. Very seldom, and only "here-and-there", there is the tiniest hint of a German accent. I hope to improve my German, to only 60% of our capability, and that would in itself, be a milestone to me. Thank you for your lessons. Viele dank.
What she said about good pronounciation not always equaling fluency is so true when it comes to me speaking French. Because I'm pretty good at the pronounciation all my teachers assumed I was really good at speaking French when in reality I didn't know what I was saying half of the time.
Eigentlich wollte ich ja schlafen, aber das gebe ich mir jetzt noch ^^ Wird bestimmt wieder sehr unterhaltsam!
When I started learning German when I was 14 I immersed myself in TV shows, CDs, etc, and one of the things my mother got me to help was the Vienna cast recording of the musical "Cats" which featured a multi-mational cast who either knew German or learned the show in German (when musical theatre boomed in the German-speaking countries it became easier for performers from all walks of talent to come over work there if they could learn their lines phonetically. I guess the best example would be either Pie Douwes from the Netherlands or Helen Schneider from New York)
18:40 My godmother is native German (from NRW) and also a school teacher of English language so she speaks perfectly English, however when I am (literally) struggling with my German to get myself understood by her, she continues speaking German with me, because she knows that I DO really want to speak German with her. (I am Hungarian btw.)
Thanks, Feli! Totally worth staying up late for! :-) Always love your reaction videos! Have a great week!
In Dutch 'Shadenfreude' is 'leedvermaak' ('leed' is suffering/sorrow, and 'vermaak' is entertainment), so basically getting a laugh through someone else's misfortune (like a skater landing on his family jewels trying to slide on a handrail and stuff like that).
I love German! My dad was stationed in Heidelberg when I was a kid, and I had to take a German class. That was a long time ago, so of course only a little bit stuck with me. I would love to be fluent though!
Hello, how are you??
Hello, how are you??
Greetings from Heidelberg :)
The accent that is used is a reminder of the show Hogan's Heros. That was the accent used in the TV show from the mid-60's.
Jennifer Lawrence was endlessly amazed with Chris Pratt during the promo's during this tour. He did magic tricks and crazy english accents during other appearances.
Ich muss zugeben das ich kaum bis gar kein Englisch kann. Darum verstehe ich wirklich nicht viel von dem was du kommentierst, aber dennoch fesselst du mich mit deinen Erklärungen und finde deine Videos allgemein sehr interessant. Besonders wenn ich dann doch mal das ein oder andere verstanden habe....Da gucke ich mir gerne mehr an...
Schöne Grüße aus dem Norden Deutschland´s
I come from Hamburg, where the Beatles' international career started, the Beatlesplatz is on the Repperbahn, near the great freedom.
Love your videos! There is actually an English word for Schadenfreude - epicaricacy. Admittedly it's not often used.
Thanks for the new word! But, saying "it's not often used" seems to be a bit of an understatement. Apparently it appeared in a dictionary for about 50 years in the 18th century, but there is not really any record of usage since then, other than appearing on lists of interesting words.
I completely agree with the point you make at 10 minutes in. I am English and speak Greek with a Cypriot accent. I'm far from fluent, but my pronunciation is often commented on favourably, but it causes me awkward moments from time to time: Like speaking to a Greek or Greek Cypriot I don't know - I might give them a fairly long and detailed question, but when they reply, I might only know half of the words they are using and have to stop to try and make sense of their answer. At that point, they are confused because they assumed I was fluent. 😞
great danke greetings from Bolivia
In Danish we have 'Skadefro', which is the exact same thing as 'Schadenfreude'. :-)
Ciao!
Your videos are always enjoyable and informative.
Agree! The actor( forgot name) who played main character in House.
Hello jeweliedear 👋👋
German accent vs grasp of the language: My mother has a super strong accent still at 80 but has a firm grasp of the language and still learns. I could not be more proud of her. Coming to a country totally foreign and doing totally great! Let’s just say that her English is better than my German every will be and I grew up there farming with my family!
Das ist eine sehr gute UA-cam Kanal! Ich liebe Ihre Arbeit mit deine Videos. Hallo für dich aus West Lafayette, IN von Vereinigte Staaten von Amerika!
24:00 - the beatles have lived in Hamburg for some time - they spoke german to some extent ;)
My Aunty is German - Austrian (born in Australia) so after lockdown I might see if she can teach me some words/sentences
Danke Feli
You should do a reverse video where German actors speak English or use an English/US accent in movies or shows. I'd love to hear some. Just a suggestion. Stay gold 💛
Chris Pratt can totally come over and pratice his German for all his life with me!
Hello kerstingast 👋👋
Funny to hear you mention people raising the pitch of their voice when speaking German - when we would watch movies dubbed into German in my German classes growing up, I noticed quite often the voices were significantly higher than the American whose speech they were portraying, so having never been to Germany, I actually wondered if Germans just did actually tend to have higher voices for some reason.
Yes I would definitely say German have a higher voice than English speakers
@@keti.rg.editzzz I don't see that. Some dialects sometimes have a higher intonation within a sentence or question. But this exist in some English dialects as well.
In modern movies, this happens mostly in comedies, because the creators of dubbing believe that high-pitched voices sound funnier. But this does not apply to all roles. In action movies, low-pitched voice actors are more likely to be chosen. And even Hugh Grant once said that part of his success in Germany was due to the fact that his voice sounded much more masculine in the German version.
The imitation Feli addresses may refer to very old films or historical speeches and radio broadcasts. At that time, speakers had to speak higher and sharper because the microphones of the time were poor at transmitting low frequencies.
@@keti.rg.editzzz It is a quirk of the German language that different vowels in otherwise very similar words can greatly change the meaning. You have to speak much more clearly and precisely in the service of intelligibility. That's why German doesn't allow mumbling. There are also many hard consonants. It may therefore sound sharper and brighter, especially for Americans.
Hey Feli.
From a Brits perspective (ie possibly having more exposure to foreign languages than the majority of Americans) one of the other things I''ve noticed in Europe generally (rather than Germany specifically) is in many cases English is poken because it is the only common language many people have.
As an example I rmeber many years ago going into a bar (at a youth hostel) in Stockholm where there was a group of people speaking English. On joining hem it turned out not one of them was English :) They were a mixture of Swedes, Germans, French, Italian etc
So what, a universal language ain´t no bad thing...
Helps ok, i understand English allready....
Kind of ;-)
"I'm full of bug bites." I'm definitely learning that one just to be silly haha
In Norwegian we have a translation of «die Schadenfreude» as «Skadefryd», and it means to have the joy/pleasure of seeing someone’s misfortune or faliures
There's a fun moment in the new Beatles' documentary "Get Back" where Paul counts in saying "Eins, Zwei, Viertel-nach-Drei" 😅 I loved that. And he still knows a bit of German to this day.
Schadenfreude is Skadeglädje in Swedish, haven't found it in other languages tho.
Skadefryd in Norwegian and probably Danish! We have many words derived from German 😊
It exists in Hungarian, as well, the term is "káröröm" and is composed of the same meaning parts.
I'm in South Africa. My father was an immigrant from Germany, and we only spoke English at home. When I was a child my uncle and aunt from Germany visited. I couldn't speak a word of German. About 5 years later, in 1981 & 2, I was in Germany. They were surprised that I could speak such good German. They even had learning English books that they had recently obtained. They would also speak slowly to me, and use just simple German words. Now, the reason why I could, is because South Africa has the language Afrikaans, which I knew, and is quite similar to German. Some Afrikaans even comes from German. I never told them that.
(Afrikaners are (originally and mostly) a mixture of Dutch, German and French descent.)
I have German heritage, but cannot get the accent. You almost have to grow up in Europe to get a European accent. I hear a subtle German accent when you talk. It's very subtle. Considering you have only been here a few years, that subtleness is very impressive.
English has many European accents and dialects. Guess where these accents originate from.
What has your heritage to do with the way you speak? There is no connection. Also, what the hell is a european accent supposed to be? You do know, that there are not just a lot of different languages in europe, but also many different language families, do you?
20:00 - It's funny how he sounds like German with a very strong Dutch accent. Literally. I've worked with Dutch people before and they had this exact accent.
I dated a gal in high school whose grandparents were both Jewish Germans who had spent time in Auschwitz. Her grandfather had spent over 50 years in the states and had never really gotten rid of his accent at all, in fact it was quite thick, and wasn’t helped much by the fact that he had a couple of strokes before I met him, so his thick accent was also very slurred. Despite that I loved his accent, it could definitely at times be hard to understand his English because it was heavily influenced by German pronunciations, but it was a great experience to get to know some things about German culture and language from a native speaker. I did learn quite a few useful phrases from him, but I don’t remember most of them, unfortunately.
Hi from Czech Republic 🖐️great content :)
Paul McCartney speaks some German, he said he learned it at school, and during their time in Hamburg of course. They lived at Astrid Kirchherr's house, and there was their buddy Klaus Voormann, too, who often played with them (not on any album of the Beatles, but on some solo albums) and who did the cover art for Revolver.
for 6:20: watch All American, the main protagonist's actor (Daniel Ezra) is British and did the typical American blaccent so spot on and kept it going off camera for months so that some of his co-stars didn't even know he had a British accent until they were done filming season 1
31:42 - The one with Trevor Noah ordering in German at a restaurant was really funny!
I once taught myself the Cyrillic alphabet with russian pronunciation... My Polish neighbor even said my reading sounded very genuinely russian... Problem was just that I had no idea what it said... It was just making the right sounds according to the letters I saw, so probably the same level as a GPS.
I'm quite good at German pronunciation because I grew up with it... But I really struggle if I am to put together a correct sentence myself.. but at least in that case I understand what I'm saying.
Edit: back when I was in my late tweens (1992-1995), English wasn't very common to be understood in Germany.. or at least they were not very confident in their skills. Gott sein dank, ich versteht ein bischen. (Probably spelled something wrong, haven't had to use it for years).
Anyway, it has improved so quickly, so kudos to the German education system for that. When we first got our satellite dish, it was a few British channels, and a lot of German ones, so I've watched almost all of the American block busters, from the 80s, with German voices. I couldn't understand why they couldn't just subtitle it, like on Danish TV, tho.
Edit 2: schadenfreude is skadefro in Danish... I think that English is one of the few Germanic languages not having a direct translation of it... Just like you never combine words in English. But, schhh... Long words scares the English.
Feli, you just crack me up sometimes! Your English is quite fluent and idiomatic and unmistakably American. You have a light German accent that is appealing rather than appalling (like an ABBA song). I agree with you about accent not equating with competency or comprehension. My immigrant grandfather spoke English with a fairly heavy Serbo-Croatian accent, but he could read and write English very well. I have fond memories of him smoking his pipe and reading "another damned thick, square book" in English. 🤓💖
I agree with you that we don't have high-pitched voices, but then I heard the interviewer at 25:23 and he sounded EXACTLY like what Chris Pratt was mocking earlier :D:D:D
"Bei dir piept's" is derived from another idiom - "Du hast einen Vogel".
In, like, mediaeval times, people used to fear a person who didn't seem quite right in the head might have birds nesting in their skull, which was making them silly and dumb (could be compared to calling someone 'cuckoo' in English).
So, it wouldn't be 'something beeping' but rather 'tweeting'. :)
I think the Host of the Rosamund pike Interview has a real strong German accent. In my German ears your accent is Just perfect.
I always thought that "Schadenfreude" would translate more or less to "mischievousness" or "spitefulness" (wohl eher "Gehässigkeit" for the latter). Nice video again!
02:06: Bei dir piept's wohl! = You must be off your head; You must be off your rocker. (BE)
Prettiest German girl I know! And I know a lot of German gals from school! I love what your doing for the world and teaching a lot of people you’re native language. Much respect
Schadenfreude has entered the US lexicon, most often used when discussing sports rivals. As for your sponsor app, it will probably be like Siri and not understand my southern accent half of the time.
When I was in Berlin, I experience that situation. Of me trying to improve my german, and Germans immediately changing to english. It's kind or rude. I prefer always that someone tells me what was my mistake than changing to another language. I didn't invest so much time, effort and money to go to Germany and speak in english. I enjoy this videos. Hope you can make another one. Tschüss!!
Most people just try to make it easier for you and don't do it to be rude. I would just tell them to please speak German to you, most will switch back easily.
I've done the same for my target languages before and 8/10 times people will just use their native language again if I ask.
Sandra Bullock grew up in Deutschland, and speaks very good german.
she is half german...
@@rabautios That I knew.
I think the Beatles had a translator from Hamburg who wrote the German lyrics. I remember reading somewhere that Paul McCartney once told the translator that, as English people, they had trouble pronouncing the "ch" sound. So he proposed to change "Sie liebt dich" to "Sie liebt dir". The translator rejected this, arguing that only people from Berlin talk like this and nobody in the west would want to hear that
Dominic West (very English) playing a Baltimore detective in The Wire absolutely crushed the local "sound". I didn't know of him prior to The Wire and could've sworn he grew up in or near Baltimore (where I live).
Whait what? Dominic West is british??? I had no idea.
@@K__a__M__I So is Idris Elba, who played Stringer Bell.
Es gab mal die Schweizerdeutsche Rechtschreibung, meine Mutter hatte die noch in der Schule. Wurde jedoch verworfen und nur noch Hochdeutsch oder wie es bei uns heisst Schriftsprache unterrichtet. Ausserdem finde ich euer Deutsch viiiel härter, ihr habt einfach mühe mit dem ch. 😉 Grüsse aus der Schweiz
In the early 90's, I lived in the Saarland. My neighbors spoke French, not much English. I learned a lot. However, I have forgotten most. I struggle now.
Nice video as always!
Dachte kurz schon das wäre ein Reupload 😅 Kannst du vielleicht Part 2 in den Titel packen? 😇
In the movie Bad Boys (1st one) Will Smith says to Martin Lawrence. "You drive slow enough to be driving Miss Daisy!" I'm pretty sure that is what they were referring to.
32:24 I said before that this was like sadistic joy/pleasure, which I think some people would use that like that, but that doesn't really mean the same thing. I've been thinking about it and I think a better translation would be vindictive joy/pleasure. It's not quite the definition you get when you look it up, but I've definitely heard people use it to mean getting joy from someone else's misfortune, especially if they hurt you in the past.
Rühreier sounds like swiss chueheier what means cow eggs 😂 you explained the swiss in a lovely way 👍 i think for the reason that you are from munich you could understand swiss after a short time. greetings from switzerland 🇨🇭
I can usually tell when an English or Australian actor is doing an American accent. There are tells. You still have some German in your accent - it is very light but it is still there. You still talk with the back of your mouth a lot which we don't here. They still play "Sie Liebt Dich" on the radio here occasionally. I here it every once in a blue moon when Q95 does a Beatles marathon. Calling Trevor Noah a comedian is a very far stretch... The reason we put that high tone in a "fake" German accent is from the sitcom Hogan's Heroes. There were a notable German character that did that in the show. I KNOW NUSSINGT! Check out clips of the show.
Sargent Schultz and Hogans heroes put germans in a lot more human light at the time though bumbling. Most Germans were portrayed as cold molecule wearing serial killers smoking a cigarette .That black crown has been passed on thankfully.
I work for a German firm in their U.S. division and we have people come there from Germany and we also have people that decide to live in the area permanently and are from Germany and in the case of one East Germany, Overall they're very friendly and nice people to bump into, Some has a thick accent others don't.