{"id":3300,"date":"2015-04-27T04:49:21","date_gmt":"2015-04-27T08:49:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/?p=3300"},"modified":"2020-10-01T14:56:22","modified_gmt":"2020-10-01T18:56:22","slug":"language-learning-in-the-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/2015\/04\/27\/language-learning-in-the-movies\/","title":{"rendered":"Language Learning in the Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Itchy<\/a><\/p>\n

This one is a pet peeve of mine.<\/p>\n

Now, I admit it\u2019s only a pet peeve because language learning is something I do, and I don\u2019t like seeing things I do misrepresented in the movies. But really, who hasn\u2019t felt that way? I\u2019m sure lawyers are constantly rolling their eyes at the way trial proceedings are portrayed, police officers and soldiers must find it absurd how most people use weapons in the movies, and, of course, never watch Indiana Jones<\/em> with an actual archaeologist. They even get movie making<\/em> wrong in the movies! Wag the Dog <\/em>is a 1997 film about the government hiring Hollywood producers to concoct a fake war on the news, and the parts where they actually film these fake war scenes are completely inaccurate, to a laughable degree. I mean, how hard is that<\/em> to get right? You\u2019re making a movie about making a movie!<\/p>\n

But back to language learning. Generally, English-speaking foreigners in the movies are portrayed one of two ways. Either they have a superheroic ability to speak dictionary-perfect English\u2014they just have a strong accent so we know they\u2019re foreign\u2014or they speak a bizarre pidgin, an English native speaker\u2019s approximation of beginner\u2019s English, which is basically normal English but with a bunch of nonsensical mistakes thrown in the mix.<\/p>\n

I can think of three specific offenders off the top of my head. That\u2019s how much it bothers me\u2014I can\u2019t forget them!<\/p>\n

The first is Carol Reed\u2019s otherwise magnificent 1949 noir The Third Man<\/em>. In the film, detective Holly Martins is poking around postwar Vienna after hearing that a close friend, played by Orson Welles, has apparently been murdered in the street. Early on, the reluctant gumshoe questions various witnesses to the crime, including an old Viennese porter.<\/p>\n

Martins<\/em>: Was he still alive?
\nPorter (thick accent)<\/em>: He couldn\u2019t have been alive. Not with his head\u2026in the way it was.
\nMartins<\/em>: I was told that he did not die at once.
\nPorter<\/em>: Er war gleich tot. Er war gleich tot, gleich tot. Moment. Fraulein Schmidt? Bitte, wie sagt man auf Englisch: \u201cer war gleich tot\u201d? (Fraulein Schmidt, how do you say, “er war gleich tot”?<\/em>)
\nFraulein Schmidt<\/em>: He was quite dead.
\nPorter<\/em>: Ah ja, quite dead. He was quite dead.<\/p>\n

This exchange inspired the comic above. You\u2019re telling me this old Viennese porter knows without hesitation how to correctly use the past perfect unreal conditional (\u201ccouldn\u2019t have been\u2026\u201d) but not how to say \u201cquite dead\u201d? Unm\u00f6glich!<\/em><\/p>\n

Another Hollywood absurdity is the character with the perfect grasp of both English and an obscure local language, despite not being a native, and translates flawlessly for the benefit of the protagonist. In 2004\u2019s Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow<\/em>, the eponymous hero has an Iranian compatriot named Kaji, who conveniently speaks perfect Tibetan. When it comes time to employ it, he\u2019s so good that he doesn\u2019t even need to pause before translating\u2014in fact, he starts speaking over<\/em> the Tibetan, so that we, the audience, don\u2019t have to wait around for the local to finish his sentence. How thoughtful, if implausible.<\/p>\n

The final linguistic reprobate on my list is Modern Family, the ABC comedy sitcom about a\u2026well, a modern LA family. One such modern family member is Gloria, played by Sof\u00eda Vergara, a sexy young Colombian wife of the family patriarch. Of course, her English is perfect until, for the purposes of a joke, it\u2019s suddenly not. One particularly galling running gag is her apparent inability to remember the English word for \u201chelicopter,\u201d which she humorously calls the \u201cggda-ggda-ggda-ggda<\/a>\u201d (helicopter noise). Had any of the show\u2019s writers bothered to look up the word \u201chelicopter\u201d in a Spanish-English dictionary, they would have discovered that it translates to\u2026\u201chelic\u00f3ptero.\u201d Not exactly the most difficult word to remember, Gloria.<\/p>\n

There is, however, one movie I can think of that does a fabulous job realistically portraying a language learner: the 2003 British rom-com Love, Actually<\/em>. In one of the film\u2019s many subplots, Colin Firth plays Jamie, a fellow who\u2019s trying to woo the Portuguese Aur\u00e9lia, who doesn\u2019t speak a word of English. Our man bones up on his Portuguese and pays a surprise visit<\/a> to the restaurant where she works. Charmingly, the English subtitles approximate his broken Portuguese:<\/p>\n

Jamie<\/em>: Beautiful Aur\u00e9lia, I\u2019ve come here with a view to asking you\u2026to marriage me.<\/p>\n

Her response, of course (in English):<\/p>\n

Aur\u00e9lia<\/em>: That will be nice. Yes is being my answer.<\/p>\n

It just goes to show that portraying the imperfection of language learning is much more interesting and endearing than showing James Bond, for example, speak every language without error. But I also wouldn\u2019t mind if a bit more thought and research went into how<\/em> languages are spoken imperfectly, if for no other reason than it bothers me, and I\u2019m trying to enjoy the movie over here!<\/p>\n

What about you? What language errors have you noticed on the silver screen or boob tube? How is your native language represented?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

This one is a pet peeve of mine. Now, I admit it\u2019s only a pet peeve because language learning is something I do, and I don\u2019t like seeing things I do misrepresented in the movies. But really, who hasn\u2019t felt that way? I\u2019m sure lawyers are constantly rolling their eyes at the way trial proceedings…<\/p>\n

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