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(Mis)representation of language in Hollywood movies (beehaw.org)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Through the years I've noticed that quite a few Hollywood films play fast and loose with any other language than English.

I was watching Oppenheimer yesterday and the titular character was supposed to be speaking Dutch fluently, but the actual lines spoken were mostly jibberish, and more like German than Dutch. As a native speaker, I found this quite jarring and sloppy. Though I can imagine that to non-native speakers this would probably fly under the radar.

This got me thinking if there were more examples of shoddy translation, weird pronunciation, mishandling of language or dialect that you as a native speakers have noticed when watching movies?

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You have to be able to hear and to reproduce the sounds of the language.

I'm French, and I have an Italian friend. She can't hear the difference between \u\ and \y\ For her, "dessus" (above) and "dessous" (below) have the same sound.

And I've never been able to reproduce the sound \r\ . I can only say \ʁ\ , which ruins any attempt to say something as simple as "ragazza" (girl).