Pronunciation Diary: Learning from Cowboys and Sitcom Characters

We all know that there are many varieties and accents in every language. Well, there are also neutral "accents" which often serve as a basis for language learners. But once you have mastered them, why not go for specific accents? The thought of speaking various English accents sounds really awesome to me. After all, my parents always wanted me to talk Standard German, which is why I am really bad at pulling off Austrian accents -- even if I try really hard.

So, besides accents I think sound charming while listening, I looked for accents I would like to speak myself. Generally, I prefer American English, maybe because I am listening to it a lot. For example, I recently noticed that I really like the way George Costanza in the 90s sitcom 'Seinfeld' talks.


I really like the way he is saying "coffee". It sounds like there is a /w/ between the /k/ and /o/, which really makes a huge difference. And when he is saying "clock", he seems to pronounce the /kl/ sound further in the throat. I like how clearly he voices voiced sounds, and also his intonation is very interesting. According to the internet, the actor Jason Alexander is from New Jersey, therefore speaking the New Jersey accent. So, this accent is definitely on my list for further research.

Another actor I love listening to is Clint Eastwood when he was young. His reputation actually is to not speak very clearly as he tends to talk through clenched teeth. Not so much in this one though:


I noticed that he tends to stretch voiced sounds, which somehow sounds really beautiful in a linguistic kind of way. He also pronounces the /h/ in /wh/-words, like in "which" or "white" towards the end of this video. As for intonation, he rarely raises his voice (as opposed to George Costanza above), and speaks in a slow and regular rhythm.

I tried to find out which accent he specifically speaks. People on the internet say it's Standard American English, so nothing specific I could research further for. However, I think he doesn't speak entirely Standard American, as he stresses certain sounds a bit more than other people would.

Actually, I think trying to talk like a bit young Clint Eastwood (without clenched teeth), as far as this is possible with a different voice and being a woman, sounds like a good plan. 

American Civil War: How 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly' Can Teach You Something About the Civil War

My all-time-favorite movie, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, is settled in the time of the American Civil War. However, the war itself is not the center of attention in the storyline. But the protagonists take advantage of certain situations relating to the war by pretending to belong to one party. The first time they do that is when they put on uniforms of dead soldiers to get treated in a nearby military sanatorium after having suffered wounds during another story. After their recovery, they head to a cemetery in which a treasure is supposed to be buried. However, on their way, they come across other soldiers:

Until this scene, I hadn't realized that each side of the Civil War had different colored uniforms and what these colors meant. So for the rest of the movie, there were only the "blue ones" and the "grey ones" for me. I looked them up: the two sides are the Confederate soldiers and the Union soldiers, as we know from the chapter War of Northern Aggression. If I understood it correctly (it seems there were various uniforms in various colors), the Confederate soldiers are those in the gray uniforms, thus soldiers of the Confederate States from the South. The Union soldiers are those in the blue uniforms from the North, who are taking Tuco and Blondie as prisoners of war.

In this movie, before having been taken prisoner, Tuco (the one with the fake eye-patch) says three things that should prove the soldiers that he is a true Confederate soldier. The first is "To hell with General Grant!" that refers to the most successful Union general Ulysses S. Grant. He continues, with a bit of help from Blondie, "Hurrah for General Lee!" that refers to Commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virgina Robert E. Lee. The third claim to make the approaching soldiers believe that he is a Confederate soldier, is the sentence "God is with us because he hates the Yanks too!" -- Yanks (the singular form is Yankee) is, according to Wikipedia, an informal term for the Union soldiers or Northern Americans in general. So basically, Tuco did everything right, except that his audience was the wrong one.

As you can see, there is not only superb storytelling and tough gunslinger-action, but also historical accurateness in "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly". But I had expected nothing less from director Sergio Leone. Did I already mention that this is my all-time-favorite movie? If not, now I have.

"I cannot knot!"

While we were talking about pronunciation and the silent "k" in certain words today, I couldn't stop thinking about this scene from one of the Winnie the Pooh movies. I actually never really watched or read the Winnie the Pooh series or films or books, but I often heard that there are always brilliant puns in them. This is one of them, dealing with the words "not" and "knot".

How Spaghetti Westerns turned me into a Movie Addict

I never was a big fan of watching movies. I knew that fantastic stories would be told by them, but I never had the patience to sit through a whole movie without thinking "why am I staring at a screen without doing anything?" at one point. It's not like I didn't like storytelling at all - I love going to the theater and getting sucked into a certain atmosphere. Unfortunately, a film never had managed to do this before. But then I started forcing myself to watch the big classics during the summer and I finally came to realize that it was not my lack of patience - I was just watching the wrong kind of movies all the time.

In yesterday's class, when we were introducing ourselves to our fellow students, I had mentioned the biggest trigger to my sudden love for movies: spaghetti westerns. Basically, these are westerns by Italian directors, most famously by Sergio Leone who is actually the iconic director in that department. There are quite a few differences between American and Italian westerns, most importantly in the way of storytelling. There is a very nice interview with the the iconic actor of the spaghetti westerns Clint Eastwood, in which the basic differences are explained briefly. (And Clint Eastwood mocking John Wayne's - the American icon of westerns - way of speaking is priceless!)

The first western I watched was the first part of the most famous trilogy in the world of spaghetti westerns: A Fistful of Dollars (1964). In my opinion, it is not the best part of the "Man with no Name"-trilogy, but as an entrance to the world of spaghetti westerns, it caused me to have a culture shock: The looks were different from anything else I had ever seen before in a movie. There is a perfect harmony between the landscapes and the interactions of the actors. Every scene seems to be a perfectly composed painting. Everything was done in a very minimalist way, like the dialogues were kept very short and the expressions (or the lack of expressions) of the characters told so much more than words could have. All these things made the storytelling straightforward and clear in a very unique way. This added a beautiful kind of tension to the climax and also the rest of the film. There was nothing too much or too less of.

But a Fistful of Dollars was only a mild introduction in comparison of what was about to come: the following two parts of the trilogy, namely For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966), were even more mind-blowing. They were also composed perfectly, but you could also really see that they had learned from their experiences. Also, the soundtrack by the musical genius Ennio Morricone finally caught more attention, and became part of the director's way of composing a picture of every scene. For example, here is the scene before the climax (which is, by the way, even more dramatic) of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, which is still to this day considered one of the best movie scenes and music ever made.

In my opinion, it is safe to say that no other westerns - nor Italian nor American nor Spanish or whatever ones - ever reached the quality of the "Man with no Name"-Trilogy. Certainly, there still were some good ones, like Two Mules for Sister Sara or The Big Gundown, but, in my opinion, it never managed to establish the atmosphere the trilogy has. Surprisingly, also the newer westerns from nowadays could copy it. It seems it not about to the new technical equipment, but the establishment of a certain atmosphere. It just isn't the same. And this results in me watching these three movies over and over again, and never getting tired of it.

Spaghetti westerns not only waked my interest in watching movies, but also on how films are composed and what emotions can be triggered by the way a scene is built. I hope that I keep my motivation up to look deeper into the science of movies. The following might sound cheesy, but I am incredibly happy that westerns came into my life. And thus, it is proven that I was not joking when I told you all that I was obsessed with westerns. It is truly deep love.

Movie: Hunger (2008)

Sometimes, when I want to get into a certain topic that I am interested in (or at least should be for university), I like to start getting into it by watching a documentary or video adaption about/of the topic. This is also what I did when I had started researching about the Irishman Bobby Sands for my culture essay for English class. I felt that the political issues that surrounded his actions were a bit hard to understand. So I hoped that I would get the grasp of a basic image about these when I would be watching a movie or documentary about it.

The most recent and popular adaption of Bobby Sands' hunger strike in 1981 is the movie "Hunger" (2008), directed by Steve McQueen. It describes the hunger strikes in an unpolitical way, showing pain and fear on both sides (in this case: by both the guards and the hunger strikers) equally with using only a few words throughout the whole movie. McQueen rather focuses on delivering the right atmosphere by using strong images. A good example for such are the scenes in which fully-armed guards and naked prisoners fight each other brutally, both trying to gain control over the other. In contrast, a dialogue of 20 minutes between Bobby Sands (portrayed by Michael Fassbender) and a priest is shown in the middle of the movie, which, by the way, was filmed in one single take without changing the perspective of the camera. It is the exact opposite of the first third of the movie and mostly consists of skirmish between these two. The last third of the movie is showing the process of Sands' turning more and more into skin and bones, by using again strong and depressing images, this time ones of a broken man. The movie ends with Sands' death, not showing the aftermath and political consequences.


In my opinion, "Hunger" is not only the best adaption of the Irish hunger strikes, it is also an outstanding movie in general. The movie does not go for the heartstrings, but sticks to simply showing strong and disturbing images. Every further spoken word would be one too much, because the uncommented pictures speak for themselves. Even the dialogue between Sands and the priest requires to look at the picture itself and not focusing what they actually say, rather focusing on what they do not say. Creating an atmosphere and emotions in this quite theatrical way is what really astonished and touched me about this movie. It might not have cleared the fog about the political background in my head, but it left me incredibly impressed.

Movie: Soldaat van Oranje

Yesterday night I chose to watch a DVD that has been hiding unwatched in my shelf for far too long: Soldaat van Oranje (engl.: Soldier of Orange) - a Dutch film from 1977. It portraits the life of six Dutch college students and the paths they follow during the Nazi occupation of Holland during WWII. The film is based on the autobiography of Dutch war hero Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema (portrayed by Rutger Hauer). It is, until today, one of the most successful and known Dutch movies. Although it is set in the dark times of the World War and follows a serious storyline, it is mostly not gloomy or depressing - sometimes, the movie even makes you laugh.



On a more linguistic side, it was also interesting to follow the switches between languages. Obviously, most of the time they spoke Dutch, but also German when talking to Nazis and English when they cooperated with the British government. 

Nonetheless, I enjoyed watching Soldaat van Oranje, especially because they managed to lighten up such a serious topic in a very charming way.

Movie: Pontypool - Radio Zombie

Last week, I was just casually browsing the web and listening to the radio. However, when I switched the channel, I wasn't greeted by friendly radio hosts nor was I pleased with music: people on the radio were panicking about other people repeating single words over and over again, and how infectious this behavior was. Luckily, I was able to tell: this is not live radio, this must be a radio drama!

And I was right. In fact, FM4 broadcasted the radio drama version of the movie Pontypool, which is not your usual zombie flick. I personally think that Pontypool has a very philosophical and theatrical plot. To put it briefly -- beware of reading further if you want to watch or hear it!: it's about a virus that is spread through the English language. Various words are infected, which are repeated endlessly by the victims without having themselves under control. In the end, they feel forced to eat everything that produces English words: other human-beings as well as radios.

In the movie and in the radio play, we get to know of that event in a radio station, which is the main setting of the movie. During their broadcast, they get strange calls from their correspondent outside the studio, describing infected people and how he fears for his life. At one point it seems that the host and a radio technician are the last sane survivors in this town, when they realize how to save oneself from the infection: people just have to stop actually understanding these words.


The fact itself that a language or rather words are infected and that you have to alienate their meaning is just mind-blowing. I think that's such an intelligent thought and nothing you would expect in a horror movie.

The plot of Pontypool is only partly based on the book "Pontypool Changes Everything". As far as I've read in the book reviews, the virus itself is already present in the book and the radio host is only a minor character. Basically, the movie only borrows the idea of the virus itself, while the book deals with the results. I haven't read it yet, but it is definitely on my list. I'm very curious how the virus is described and if I can expect full pages with one repeated word.

If you want to listen to the radio drama yourself, you can do it on the BBC website right here. Strangely, although the drama consists of the audio of the movie itself, they have different endings. However, I still can't decide whether I prefer the movie over the radio drama or not. I'm just fascinated by the idea itself, in case you haven't noticed it yet.

What is a hillbilly?

I think I have mentioned quite a few times that I really like watching TV shows. One of my current favorites is "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" from the 90s.:

There are four actors who play out different improv games, which contents are based on suggestions from the audience or from the producers of the show. The actors work notably well together and think of the most hilarious things off the top of their heads. In some games they have to fulfill character suggestions, which are often stereotypes. One is quite often suggested: the stereotype of a hillbilly. Wikipedia defines a hillbilly the following:

Hillbilly is a term for people who dwell in rural, mountainous areas of the United States, primarily southern Appalachia but also the Ozarks. Owing to its strongly stereotypical connotations, the term can be offensive to those Americans of Appalachian heritage.

Here's a good example of how the "Whose Line" cast likes to interpret the hillbillies:



The reason I'm posing is that while I was reading about Appalachia for the next Progress Check, the actors of the show doing their hillbilly parodies kept popping into my head. They do exaggerate a lot, but like we also mentioned in class: stereotypes do help to get a slight image of what it's really like there. And now I finally know who the cast of "Whose Line" are trying to show.