Question for those attending European shows

ScotInAmsterdam wrote:

I know what you mean... it;s good fun... but essentially if you don't speak the language you're getting a show without talking...

Yep and he seemed to speak a lot!!!! Way more than at Dublin I think.

decides2dream wrote:

or does the fact that we are evil incarnate normally come out in our american accents?

There definitely is a little bit of that these days. Not so much at the concerts with the Pearl Jam fans, but pretty much with the Portuguese people. I found that once someone found out I was American they had plenty to say (quite a commentary) but once it was out they would take a breath and regard me a person. They would relax once they saw that I made an effort to speak the language, understand them, etc.

I have been going to Portugal for 25 years and it is quite different now as an American.

redrock wrote:

Pah! After going to Portugal for 25 years, you're one of them!

Yeah, but I'm big, blond and very American. They actually think I am German at first. Now when I speak my rudimentary Portuguese I have a great accent and then they are REALLY confused.

ScotInAmsterdam wrote:

Hard to describe in text, but I know what pegasus means. It's really horrible when you hear Americans murder foreign languages with a strong accent over it. They are not the only offenders... I've heard some pretty awful English accents too, and australian, although I refer more to the people who speak the languages rather than people that are trying a few phrases for a few days...

The best way I can describe it is to say "Par lay voo fron say" with as strong a new jersey(or similar recognisable accent) as you can muster. I know people who are conversationally good in dutch but speak like that... with various accents. One of the worst being a german girl I know. She has an almost comedy German accent, but tries really hard in dutch. She has almost perfect written dutch, but speaks with some sort of German stereotype accent, which most Germans I know don't even have. All she needs to do is make an effort with the accent.

Ed was really far away from that... he seemed to have made some effort to pick up the local accent, but I think hes half way there anyway. One of my tricks for speaking languages(I am far from expert, but get a way with a few phrases in most european languages), is to mumble.. and we all know Ed is wonderful at that.....

ROFL

I mean that if you hear someone speaking say Japanese or Chinese or Czech, or any language you have no knowledge of whatsoever, you can't normally tell where they're from originally...but with Americans you can 9/10..the American accent overpowers everything...they just speak american with different words if you see what I mean..
French are quite guilty of that too, to a lesser degree (which is why nobody guesses I'm French..I don't have ZAT accent).

So it is to Ed's credit he's making the effort not just to say the words but to say them with the right accent.

negationist wrote:

wasn't fluent in french. Saw them in Marseille and Paris and he read a few sentences from a piece of paper. SO don't think he speaks any other european language.

he sure isn't..it was a joke..

Scarletstarlet wrote:

Ah ah ah.
Lol.
Americans and geography...

Blah I dont know if half of us could locate Mexico on a map so dont feel bad. They speak mexican down there right??

lgt wrote:

He did pronounce everything else pretty well, without the standard mistakes that English-speakers make in Italian. (Not only the R sound but the GN and GL sound that do not exist in the English language, as we don't have the TH). I was quite impressed, notes or no notes, to be honest.

Today I was trying to teach Romanian(very similar to Italian) 4th graders how to say THIRTY (30) and it was ridiculous. Haha thirty and forty are two different numbers! Ahh maybe tomorrow...

Pegasus wrote:

ROFL

I mean that if you hear someone speaking say Japanese or Chinese or Czech, or any language you have no knowledge of whatsoever, you can't normally tell where they're from originally...but with Americans you can 9/10..the American accent overpowers everything...they just speak american with different words if you see what I mean..
French are quite guilty of that too, to a lesser degree (which is why nobody guesses I'm French..I don't have ZAT accent).

So it is to Ed's credit he's making the effort not just to say the words but to say them with the right accent.

yea, i got that now. coool. i appreciate the clarifications. so then it was just as i thought that in general, americans are not as good at taking on the accent of the foreign language they are trying to speak.



and yea...i definitely enjoy ed's joke in belgium about french/dutch....good stuff. haha.

redrock wrote:

Yep... people run away and cross themselves when they hear an american accent (though most Europeans would also include the canadian and australian accent in there because they can't tell the difference - except in the UK and Ireland)

funny thing tho.....in countries that did not speak english as a first language, at least the ones i have visited, even when i spoke, in english of course...no one ever guessed i was american. more often than not, they would ask if i were english, which i always thought funny. but then in thinking about it.....how can one who does NOT speak the language really pick up on different accents of said language? sure, perhaps if you've a good ear, you'll hear differences...but unless you actually get to the point of hearing said foreign language spoken again and again, enough for you to notice different speech pattewrns...and also know where those people are from...would be rather difficult at best.

i know for myself, if i heard someone speaking french, there's no way i'd know whether they are from france, canada, belgium, etc. all i would know/recognize is the fact that they are speaking french.

i also know while i was learning/teaching ESL in prague...i often wondered if the american, english and scottish accents confused the students, and our instructor said not at all...that overall only the really advanced students ever even notice the difference.

all interesting stuff.

and sure......i am a very scary american, so you better run. haha.


one last thing. . .

ScotInAmsterdam wrote:

She's clearly in the wrong... she needs to buy a vowel...

clearly, i agree with you!
and my personal speech patterns absolutely concur!

Pegasus wrote:

He read from notes in all instances.
I don't think he speaks remotely any of the languages (maybe a tiny bit of Spanish or Italian??).

To his credit, he didn't sound American in any of the ones I heard him try...and that's unusual..you generally can tell even in languages you can't understand..it stands out for some reason in a way that English or Oz accents don't ...but then I don't think he has a particularly strong American accent anyway..unlike Stone or Mike!!

From what I heard of the various locals, his pronounciation wasn't bad..I know his French was pretty good, esp. considering he doesn't actually speak the language.

Made me laugh though when in Prague (and Berlin?) he went into pidgin English to say something else not translated...like anyone would understand better with bad grammar :rolleyes:

ed's an actor. a method actor and method singer. that's how he dives into shit and always 'feels' it.

Heineken Helen wrote:

But I'm presuming the notes were writting for Ed phonetically??? I doubt he could muster all the different pronunciations of several languages on his own.

Here is how the notes in croatian language looked like:

http://s103.photobucket.com/albums/m141/cieloel/pearl%20jam%20zagreb/?action=view&current=P9260052.jpg&refPage=&imgAnch=imgAnch20

the crowd in zagreb loved it, 'cause ed really tried to make all the right accents.
although the english accent was present in his speech, we understod everything he tried to say.

Mirella wrote:

At least he talked about Ireland. The same for the Netherlands: I think he tried 4 words in Dutch or less, but at least he told nice little stories about Matt Lukin's wife being Dutch, and some more. Next time he'll be forced to speak more Dutch!

groetjes,
Mirella

Are you gonna hold him at gunpoint or something?

Yeh, I liked his little stories about the girlfriends and his daughter and stuff.