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| User | Thread poster: Bin Tiede Off topic: Politician speaking the national language with a foreign accent |
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Edward Potter 
Spain
Local time: 20:49
 Member (2003)
Spanish to English
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The only prominent politician in my country who comes to mind is Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former Governor of California.
Although at times his accent might be a bit too thick for some, on balance this has been a plus for him. The idea is that anyone can come to the United States and make good for himself.
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Gennady Lapardin
Russian Federation
Local time: 22:49
Member (2006)
Italian to Russian
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had heavy Georgian (Caucasian) accent. This accent was and is largely imitated by Russians, when "quoting" Stalin, as a sign of respect. Also, it may be suspicious to hear a politician from Baltic region or Ukraina speak perfect Russian.
[Edited at 2012-01-06 07:53 GMT]
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Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 19:49
Member (2008)
Italian to English
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Ty Kendall wrote:
.... the most heinous crime in modern Britain: Racism
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Racism is indeed a serious criminal offence, punishable by law, in the UK but is not the most heinous crime here; I believe the most heinous crime in modern Britain is murder.
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Ty Kendall
United Kingdom
Local time: 19:49
Member (2011)
Hebrew to English
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Just Opera
Belgium
Local time: 20:49
French to English
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| | Belgium has 3 official languages: Dutch, French, and German. | Jan 6 |
Elio Di Rupo, the francophone PM is often lambasted for his Dutch (spoken by nearly 60% of the population here.) After taking up the hot seat he was quoted as saying, "I need to improve my Dutch, I will work tirelessly to do this". note: Belgian French speakers are close to 39% of the population and German-speakers around 0.80%.
[Edited at 2012-01-06 17:10 GMT]
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Heinrich Pesch
Finland
Local time: 21:49
Member (2003)
Finnish to German
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| | Not quite in the scope of this topic... | Jan 22 |
Last year a feature film was launched "Five Days in August" about the Russo-Georgian war 2008. Andy Garcia was playing Georgia's president Saakashvili, who speaks perfect American English, but in the movie Garcia speaks English with heavy Caucasian accent. Saakashvili was reported to have been deeply hurt.
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RtooDtoo
Belgium
Local time: 20:49
Dutch to English
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Just Opera wrote:
Elio Di Rupo, the francophone PM is often lambasted for his Dutch (spoken by nearly 60% of the population here.) After taking up the hot seat he was quoted as saying, "I need to improve my Dutch, I will work tirelessly to do this". note: Belgian French speakers are close to 39% of the population and German-speakers around 0.80%.
[Edited at 2012-01-06 17:10 GMT] |
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Just so. Dutch speakers have become so used to Premiers who have Dutch as their native language that they forget that just under half the country speaks French. Dutch-speaking premiers have inflicted some awful French on the French-speaking population, but this tends to be ignored in the absurd debate between the "language communities".
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Neil Coffey
United Kingdom
Local time: 19:49
Member (2009)
French to English
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| | "Foreign" accents in the UK | Feb 6 |
The selection of UK prime ministers in the last few decades reflects an accent selection phenomenon that occurs in the UK for various "authority figures": that they can have either (a) a "standard" non-regional English accent, or (b) a Scottish (or Welsh) accent, be they from wherever.
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RafalW
Poland
Polish to English
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I guess it would have to boil down to a simple question - what is their L1? I find people who pretend that they've acquired a foreign accent after living abroad for a short period of time dense.
From my personal experience [20 years abroad], I can tell you that I still speak without a shadow of an accent in my L1, yet I'd managed to perfect my English pronunciation.
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Bin Tiede
Germany
Local time: 20:49
Member (2008)
German to Chinese
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TOPIC STARTER |
Tom in London wrote:
Ty Kendall wrote:
.... the most heinous crime in modern Britain: Racism
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Racism is indeed a serious criminal offence, punishable by law, in the UK but is not the most heinous crime here; I believe the most heinous crime in modern Britain is murder. |
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To be politically correct we may say: The most heinous modern crime in Britain is racism.
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Helena Chavarria
Local time: 20:49
Member (2011)
Spanish to English
| | But you can't lower your guard | Feb 19 |
RafalW wrote:
I guess it would have to boil down to a simple question - what is their L1? I find people who pretend that they've acquired a foreign accent after living abroad for a short period of time dense.
From my personal experience [20 years abroad], I can tell you that I still speak without a shadow of an accent in my L1, yet I'd managed to perfect my English pronunciation.
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Although I still speak English like a native, some years ago I discovered I had started to phrase my sentences as though I was speaking Spanish: "Please could you tell me..." instead of "Could you please tell me...". I've even had to google the title of my post, just to make sure I hadn't translated from Spanish!
I also tend to speak English more slowly than Spanish. I don't know if this is because I'm used to speaking to non-native speakers of English or if it's because I haven't kept up with the times. I recently read that we are speeding up everything we do, including speech. I speak Spanish at the rate of knots but I speak English as I did in 1977!
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| Pages in topic: < [1 2] |
The translation workplace 
