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Parasite is an acclaimed film by the most popular movie director in South Korea, Bong Joon-ho, who has made The Host and Snowpiercer.
The trailer makes it appear to be a horror movie, but it’s not. This movie is about a very poor but close family of four in Seoul. The son fakes his way into a job tutoring the heiress of a very rich family, and then gets his sister hired under a pseudonym as an acclaimed art therapist for the young scion. They plot to get the chauffeur and housekeeper fired and their mom and dad hired in their places.
About halfway through there is a fun plot twist and then a fair amount of violence at the end (about as much as Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, but less entertaining).
Bong is a proficient director, but I didn’t like his Snowpiercer much at all and only liked this one a little more. None of the characters, poor or rich, seemed all that sympathetic.
One problem with watching a movie about class conflict in a foreign language is that I can’t tell from the accents what is going on in terms of class. It’s more fun to watch an English movie about class, such as My Fair Lady, because I can at least rank the accents by class from high to low. But I don’t have a hint about Korean accents.
The family lives in a terrible basement apartment, acts prole, and takes on bad jobs like folding pizza boxes. But then the son and daughter show up at a CEO’s mansion and immediately dazzle the rich mom with their supposedly American-educated expertise in child development. I presume they adopt different accents when talking to the rich folk than they use in their squalid home, but I can’t tell that from watching the movie.
But how did they learn those prestigious accents? Moreover, if they can speak in educated accents, why can’t they use them to get better jobs than folding pizza boxes, such as in sales? I imagine Koreans can fill in a more of the gaps, but for a clueless roundeye like me, it was a pretty thin experience. For all I know, Parasite might be the most sophisticated movie ever made about class in South Korea, but I didn’t learn anything from it about class in Korea other than that Koreans thinks American stuff is cool.
There are a few laughs in the movie, such as when the daughter dazzles the rich Korean lady by mentioning her cutting edge education in art therapy at Illinois State. I presume a lot of Korean references went over my head.
Anyway, Koreans and critics love Bong’s movies.
I had the same feeling. The “proles” in the movie have obviously relatively high IQ and good manners, why can’t they find a normal job ? It does not make any sense.
This is why so many want to leave the country. And many choose not to work than work at 'dirty' jobs that are given to foreign workers. And many can't marry because college-educated women have higher expectations and would rather lose themselves in soap opera fantasy than face reality.
Try being a food server at an IHOP which is located in an area that is populated by a certain demographic. Folding pizza boxes at a Korean pizzeria would be nirvana in comparison.
"why can't they find a normal job?"
Folding pizza boxes and IHOP are normal jobs in our intersectional-libertarian wonderland.
The film's purpose may be to make the mid to upper middle class anxious, as criminals may appear as their perception of the ideal. Not the usual low class thugs they can easily avoid in Gangnam.
So, you’re relying on sub-titles? You might get something out of the intonation and facial expression if you watch it again (or a few times). Yes, clearly easier when the V/O is your native tongue or you are conversant in it.
Steve- any many other anglophones – extrapolates their culture’s markers on other cultures. I don’t know about Korean, but in most central & east-European languages there is virtually no “class difference” in speaking a national tongue. Except for a range of vocabulary, workers speak more or less the same as top politicians.
That's certainly not true in Hungarian or German, and I doubt it is true elsewhere in CEE.
You can tell if someone has been educated or grew up with a Buda accent in Hungarian in how they conjugate the "-ikes" verbs. That's a very distinct marker.
Also, there is also a distinct countryside accent, often typified by dropping, for example, the "L" in a word like bolt (English: store) -- so it sound like boat.
Hungarians like to watch dubbed (instead of subtitled movies) and when they dub, they miss out on a lot of meta-data like class or nationality.
I've watched many a Hollywood movie with the actors speaking in various accents, standard American, lower-class Scottish and South African etc etc -- all of which signal this sort of meta-data to Anglophone audience --- and it is lost when it is dubbed all in Standard Hungarian.
While Admiral Horthy speaks perfect yet German-tinged Hungarian (an upper-class accent) here:
Eh, class accents is a very English thing, I don’t think anyone else has that. I guess a population randomization would take care of that
I am English and can certainly tell the class of any fellow Brits, foreigners are a different matter so I treat them all as violent children to be humoured.
That would be reasonably accurate anyway.
Barring accent the character 'Onslow' (with cap) below looks like certain Americans, Australians and Canadians.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vC-5Jw-AtaA
As a visiting foreigner last week, I particularly liked signs in shops and windows that avowed "Unruly children will be sold to the circus."
http://www.arrangementsbyarrangement.com/wp-content/uploads/edd/Debussy-Golliwog-Piano-vl-cl-web-sample-5.jpg
Give Sarah Jeong a call and ask her for advice.
I think that German and Dutch have accent differences across classes, but I agree with your point that many CE societies and Russiam don’t vary by class.
(Just the same as in the various regions of the U.S.A., of course)
Korean doesn’t have different class accents like british received pronunciation, but it definitely has regional dialects and accents and speaking with those will identify one as a bumpkin, as even provincial elites will speak with a Seoul accent.
Korean movies often have a hamfisted class war propaganda that it’s worse than in some Soviet movies. Combine that with formulaic plots, forgettable characters and horrid overacting and korean movies are pretty awful, unless they are about brutal vengeance, which is a major korean cultural trope, so they nail those movies.
The best Korean movie I ever saw was The Handmaiden. Went into the theater determined to hate it, and was bowled over.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Handmaiden
Oddly enough, it is an adaptation of Fingersmith, a Western novel.
Plenty of iSteve material resulting from the adaptation, including the Japanese elites consciously mimicking the West.
But there are regional dialects or accents and these become a distinguishing factor, especially when the respective accent is associated with negative stereotypes like poverty. In my country at least, most people lose their regional accents when coming to live in the Big City, and hilariously regain them when talking to their moms on the phone.
I also remember reading that young Turks in Germany are developing their own patois so that might be a thing too.
( Scots dont change their accent however. )
It’s a common trait among superficial director to attribute the same traits to low class people. Here, they are as smart and socially savvy, , ruthless and hypocritical than elite people but they are lazy. Laziness is the only specific trait.
In the last Ken Loach, poors are extremely hard working but with average IQ and bad at making social and economic decisions.
Thanks, that’s all I need to know. I’ll definitely skip his movies.
You may have brought up a genuinely interesting linguistic subject – the interplay of regional and class dialects in a number of languages
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For instance, I don’t care how educated you are, popping loose with a Mancunian accent you could cut with a saw will not impress an Oxford Don. Similarly, even considering the difference in vocabularies, an uneducated Mexican could never pass as an Educated Spaniard ( or Argentinian) for any length of time. I have certainly had Spaniards fall over laughing at my Tex-Mex accent. And German has so many regional accents they morph into different languages. Korean also has a wide variety of regional accents, morphing into a separate language on Jeju Island. I suspect a Seoul Korean looks upon some of those accents as pure Hillbilly, or the Korean equivalent.
In any case, I doubt there is any such thing as a language without some kind Class markers in it. It is just part of the Human condition, people have to have other people to look down on. On the other hand, centralized Mass Media tend to ruthlessly homogenize language. On the whole, a very interesting subject.
It's only once the elite were schooled together that an elite accent could emerge.
It sounds plausible, no idea if true.
It's a striking experience to hear Joseph Pearce discuss elevated literary and religious topics in his East End Cockney. Perhaps that's why he moved to "Amevica". Too many stifled chuckles back home.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA-CscQuHXE
I can see consumers demanding a Siri product that is accent regional.
Accent management matters: Tony Blair changed his accent from RP to Estuary English to promote the facade of being a regular bloke; Thatcher took elocution lessons to shift from blue collar London Tory to RP to assure the Tory Establishment that she was one of them. W Bush probably emphasized his Texan accent when campaigning as part of his authentic spiel.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/dialect/Social-dialects
I thought Snowpiercer was way over-rated and I’ll probably pass on this one entirely.
There was a Yale study which showed white libs intentionally dumbed down their language (vocabulary) when speaking to a minority or someone they thought was a minority (NAM).
Also, in the 20th C, famous Swiss psychologist C.G.Jung generally spoke Schweizerdeutsch rather than standard German. Of course he could speak standard German- but he didn't care. No class prestige there.
Although, there are instances where class element comes into play. An acquaintance of mine, who is a Croatian who grew up in Sweden, was educated in private Swedish Catholic schools. Now, virtually all Swedes are Lutherans, but there is a small indigenous elite Catholic minority (apart from newer immigrant Poles, Chileans etc.). So, the Swedish language he learned in these schools is, so to speak, "high class" literary Swedish. And, in an instance when he parked his car wrongly, a cop- when he heard him speaking; initially, cop just tried to do his job- just let him go without a ticket, assuming that my acquaintance belonged to the "elite".
I had to look his name up but Kim joe-woon is a better filmmaker, based on I Saw the Devil, one of the most disturbing serial killer films ever. I got the idea there was a lot more going on there in terms of Korean- centered symbolism and subtexts.
This bong guy has disappointed since the Host more than a decade ago.
Critics love him so much I assume he is gay or a communist, or both.
That’s how the rest of the world treats British tourists.
This is a wide topic (and having nothing to do with Steve’s review). Some languages, like German & Italian, have pronounced regional differences. But their usage has more to do with, say, insistence on regional identities than with class. I’ve read somewhere that Duchess (I forgot her name) who was a Venetian consciously used dialectal elements characteristic of Venice, especially when in Rome, in order to show pride in her Venetian origin. This was in the 18th C.
Also, in the 20th C, famous Swiss psychologist C.G.Jung generally spoke Schweizerdeutsch rather than standard German. Of course he could speak standard German- but he didn’t care. No class prestige there.
Although, there are instances where class element comes into play. An acquaintance of mine, who is a Croatian who grew up in Sweden, was educated in private Swedish Catholic schools. Now, virtually all Swedes are Lutherans, but there is a small indigenous elite Catholic minority (apart from newer immigrant Poles, Chileans etc.). So, the Swedish language he learned in these schools is, so to speak, “high class” literary Swedish. And, in an instance when he parked his car wrongly, a cop- when he heard him speaking; initially, cop just tried to do his job- just let him go without a ticket, assuming that my acquaintance belonged to the “elite”.
Try Memories of Murder and Mother from Bong. Much better. Also — not Bong — but Burning was fantastic.
Pardon me, because if I had known this post was about some foreign movie, I’d not have clicked*. I just learned that you used to be a movie reviewer, so this post is understandable, but man, Steve! Are there no other movies out there to comment on? I, for one, would like to see your analysis of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, including which malls and streets in the movie you’d been in/on, and which of the actors used to go to your brother’s high school.
;-} OK, just giving you some shit this morning. I hope you don’t take offense. I enjoy 95% of the posts.
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* I didn’t come off the “Teasers” page, though. I should load that more.
I see Snowpiercer when I’m browsing Netflix and every time I think “oh that looks cool” then I remember having watched it already and found it a little boring.
Class-imposterism is probably top-2 most interesting premises for a “drama.”
I honestly loved this movie, but that was because of the soundtrack, camerawork and editing. The concept was also original, but yeah, there weren’t a lot of laughs to be had.
Trump bood at world series
Democrats like AOC ripping it up in congress
demographic change continues
Diversity in film getting promoted
Black little mermaid
Get Out and Slim and Queen domintating the box offfice
Trump about to be impeached
right winger racists getting deplatformed
New York times holding white people and white supremacy accountable
white privielge being discussed in pubic schoolss
Dang it feels good to be progressive!
Supposed oral sex from a female intern was considered to be more serious than the illegal war in Bosnia. The stained blue dress (and OJ's show trial) did a marvelous job of keeping Bosnia out of the news cycle.
Maybe if they impeach Trump before 11/2020, it might affect Trump's candidacy for re-election. Might still win anyway. Who really cares about Congress?
As we have seen, the meat sack that occupies the White House is just for show. The wars must go on. The crony kleptocracy must go on.
Don’t know much about the whole business of class/accent differentials. Just from the description, this movie sounds like it’s part of an emerging new genre of horror movies that one might think about as “societal horror” — the most notable and successful versions would be things like “Get Out” and “The Purge” series. They differ in important ways from previous trends like the torture-porn “Saw” and “Hostel” series, or the demonic possession genre that weirdly became huge in a post-religious society for a while, or the good old-fashioned stalker/murderer sexual revenge thingie.
It’s interesting to chart the different ontological perspectives in the zombie genre — “Night of the Living Dead” was America’s sixties-ish almost Zappa-esque critique of itself, “Dawn of the Dead” was about a fear of having one’s authentic cultural being get overwhelmed by shallow consumerism, and “The Walking Dead” is (or was) just a flat-out horror riff on the fear of being drowned by mass immigration.
This “Parasite” movie sounds like it’s a riff on fear of replacement, of maybe the cultural or ontological variety.
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For instance, I don't care how educated you are, popping loose with a Mancunian accent you could cut with a saw will not impress an Oxford Don. Similarly, even considering the difference in vocabularies, an uneducated Mexican could never pass as an Educated Spaniard ( or Argentinian) for any length of time. I have certainly had Spaniards fall over laughing at my Tex-Mex accent. And German has so many regional accents they morph into different languages. Korean also has a wide variety of regional accents, morphing into a separate language on Jeju Island. I suspect a Seoul Korean looks upon some of those accents as pure Hillbilly, or the Korean equivalent.
In any case, I doubt there is any such thing as a language without some kind Class markers in it. It is just part of the Human condition, people have to have other people to look down on. On the other hand, centralized Mass Media tend to ruthlessly homogenize language. On the whole, a very interesting subject.
I was reading somewhere about the emergence of class based accents in Britain. That they couldn’t really have existed before there were schools. Before that the young nobles were tutored at home and would have the same accents as the people who surrounded them. So if you were a lord in the Highlands, or Yorkshire, or Cornwall – those are the respective accents you would have.
It’s only once the elite were schooled together that an elite accent could emerge.
It sounds plausible, no idea if true.
The children of nobles would be sent out of the home at a very young age, often into the homes of people who weren't nobles but retainers or tenants. Partly, it was for their education; partly it was to build loyalty, for instance, between foster-brothers. In return, the foster family would get some benefit, like a certain number of cows.
The practice was ancient and lasted a long time. Daniel O'Connell was actually fostered in his youth.
The Japanese have regional accents.
After growing up in greater Tokyo, a friend of mine moved to Kansai (Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe, etc) for her high school when her sarariman father was sent there by his company, and her Tokyo accent and delivery stood out.
‘So’, I asked her after hearing the story, ‘what accent do you speak with now?’
‘NHK’ was the reply. Clever girl.
In the USA at least, among Whites, the main class marker is if you have a strong regional accent or speak in the the generic Midlandish TV accent. If the lower, you are probably lower class, if the higher, working class. Really upper class people probably have their own accents but I don’t move in this world.
Middle class Blacks and lower class Blacks also speak distinctly differently, but unlike with Whites there doesn’t seem to be a regional component.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HwvONJXJUO4
I can tell older blacks from the South apart from northern blacks. Charles Rangle and Clarence had/have different regional accents to my ear. Younger blacks are starting to sound the same to me, which is like rappers. I guess the ones who don't want to sound like rappers try to sound like the Carlton character from Fresh Prince.
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For instance, I don't care how educated you are, popping loose with a Mancunian accent you could cut with a saw will not impress an Oxford Don. Similarly, even considering the difference in vocabularies, an uneducated Mexican could never pass as an Educated Spaniard ( or Argentinian) for any length of time. I have certainly had Spaniards fall over laughing at my Tex-Mex accent. And German has so many regional accents they morph into different languages. Korean also has a wide variety of regional accents, morphing into a separate language on Jeju Island. I suspect a Seoul Korean looks upon some of those accents as pure Hillbilly, or the Korean equivalent.
In any case, I doubt there is any such thing as a language without some kind Class markers in it. It is just part of the Human condition, people have to have other people to look down on. On the other hand, centralized Mass Media tend to ruthlessly homogenize language. On the whole, a very interesting subject.
British translations of classical comedies and European farces would use Scottish accents as class markers. Or maybe they were northern, and just looked Scottish to me.
It’s a striking experience to hear Joseph Pearce discuss elevated literary and religious topics in his East End Cockney. Perhaps that’s why he moved to “Amevica”. Too many stifled chuckles back home.
At Stratford nearly all RSC Shakespeare comedy players use Birmingham/Midlands accents as the standard accent for someone who's funny because he's working class e.g. the rustics who do Pyramus and Thisbe.
Pretty sure he grew up in Ulster.
I will never forget a translation of Lysistrata that I read, where the translator had the Spartans speak in an obvious Scottish dialect. Not knowing classical Greek, I wonder now if Aristophanes, somehow, used some linguistic nuance to distinguish them from the Athenians in the original.
No class difference? No way.
That’s certainly not true in Hungarian or German, and I doubt it is true elsewhere in CEE.
You can tell if someone has been educated or grew up with a Buda accent in Hungarian in how they conjugate the “-ikes” verbs. That’s a very distinct marker.
Also, there is also a distinct countryside accent, often typified by dropping, for example, the “L” in a word like bolt (English: store) — so it sound like boat.
Hungarians like to watch dubbed (instead of subtitled movies) and when they dub, they miss out on a lot of meta-data like class or nationality.
I’ve watched many a Hollywood movie with the actors speaking in various accents, standard American, lower-class Scottish and South African etc etc — all of which signal this sort of meta-data to Anglophone audience — and it is lost when it is dubbed all in Standard Hungarian.
Although Rio shares the sounds of the poor, black northeast, it was long the capital, and is still the cultural capital, and Carioca has some prestige. Whereas São Paulo and even more so the mostly-white south have phonemes a bit closer to Spanish. (Which defeats the whole point of Portuguese, doesn't it?)
Is there anywhere else in the world where the upper- and lower-class accents are closer to each other than to the middle-class's?
Any Hungarian speaker can hear the difference between Kate McKinnon rapping very well (phonetically) about Budapest’s 8th District. The proletarian accent is distinct.
While Admiral Horthy speaks perfect yet German-tinged Hungarian (an upper-class accent) here:
Thats not dissimilar to the US, most of the UK Australia etc. You’re just describing rural cosmopolitan divide that exists everywhere.
( Scots dont change their accent however. )
I see Snowpiercer as a representation of Palestinian-Jewish conflict.
So are you saying this is likely another Bong hit?
This reminds me of that show Shameless about an alcoholic lowlife played by William H. Macy and his underclass family. They all basically live like gypsies, getting by on scams. But the problem is that all the characters are strangely articulate, clever, and well-put-together for such ostensibly lower class people. There’s not much low class about the characters other than that the show tells you they are supposed to be low class and shows them all living in a messy house. Despite all of that ridiculousness, viewers are somehow able to suspend disbelief and forget the fact that such people would probably not be lower class in real life, whether they have an alcoholic abuser for a father or not. Or perhaps it’s that shows like that only appeal to people who have little sense about class dynamics and think that class really is only about money.
I think the one that used accents to code social class more was “Crazy Rich Asian.” It got a lot of flak by coding people from Hokien speaking family as speak English like rich low class Blacks. Then the high class rich speak in Mandarins. With Michelle Yeoh’s character had sob story about her not being accepted by her Mandarin speaking in-laws due to her Cantonese speaking background, and had to let her Mother-in-law raise her son.
That’ really not how Singaporean society worked.
It's a striking experience to hear Joseph Pearce discuss elevated literary and religious topics in his East End Cockney. Perhaps that's why he moved to "Amevica". Too many stifled chuckles back home.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA-CscQuHXE
“British translations of classical comedies and European farces would use Scottish accents as class markers.”
At Stratford nearly all RSC Shakespeare comedy players use Birmingham/Midlands accents as the standard accent for someone who’s funny because he’s working class e.g. the rustics who do Pyramus and Thisbe.
‘I am English and can certainly tell the class of any fellow Brits, foreigners are a different matter so I treat them all as violent children to be humoured.’
That would be reasonably accurate anyway.
S. Korea has over-abundance of college-educated people. Too many graduates, too few white collar jobs. This account for high suicide rates in a society obsessed with status and shame. Those with credentials want good jobs, but there are limited amount. Also, women in the work force reduced the number of such jobs for men.
This is why so many want to leave the country. And many choose not to work than work at ‘dirty’ jobs that are given to foreign workers. And many can’t marry because college-educated women have higher expectations and would rather lose themselves in soap opera fantasy than face reality.
As an American listening to the BBC over the decades I’m shocked at how the received English of the announcers has degraded to street trash-level soccer fan or knocked-up teen girl delinquent dialect.
Bong made two worthy movies.
BARKING DOGS and the masterpiece MEMORIES OF MURDER which owes a lot to Imamura whom he cited in Sight & Sight Poll.
MOTHER is half-interesting, but HOST is garbage. I refuse to see the moronic SNOW PIERCER.
Running theme in his movies is the repression/denial of trauma, betrayal, or crime. There is the sense that Semblance of Normality has been built on a foundation of lies, even blood-soaked lies. Thus, his movies are metaphorical of modern Korean history as well.
https://collider.com/sight-sound-directors-list-quentin-tarantino/
Middle class Blacks and lower class Blacks also speak distinctly differently, but unlike with Whites there doesn't seem to be a regional component.
Apparently this is what a classic Boston Brahmin accent sounded like:
>bad guys get in by exploiting the East Asian credulity regarding tutoring
Interesting.
>but how would unethical poor climbers learn to talk good
Accent polishing is the easiest and quickest thing they could do, the wardrobe and access would be harder.
Steve, could you let the word spread to the alt right, then the wider world that I’ve found a new way to troll. They shut down most of my social media. But my new one is at GAB – my name is CuckKillingPirate BC I hate cucks & my mother is descended from pirates.
“There are a few laughs in the movie, such as when the daughter dazzles the rich Korean lady by mentioning her cutting edge education in art therapy at Illinois State. ”
I dunno. I remember reading an article about how a large number of South Korean students were attending Columbia College of Chicago (https://www.colum.edu/); I kind of recall the article being whether or not you could have too many students from another country altering the artistic experience of the student body.
Maybe the Illinois reference is that?
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For instance, I don't care how educated you are, popping loose with a Mancunian accent you could cut with a saw will not impress an Oxford Don. Similarly, even considering the difference in vocabularies, an uneducated Mexican could never pass as an Educated Spaniard ( or Argentinian) for any length of time. I have certainly had Spaniards fall over laughing at my Tex-Mex accent. And German has so many regional accents they morph into different languages. Korean also has a wide variety of regional accents, morphing into a separate language on Jeju Island. I suspect a Seoul Korean looks upon some of those accents as pure Hillbilly, or the Korean equivalent.
In any case, I doubt there is any such thing as a language without some kind Class markers in it. It is just part of the Human condition, people have to have other people to look down on. On the other hand, centralized Mass Media tend to ruthlessly homogenize language. On the whole, a very interesting subject.
will Siri and its equivalents cause accent convergence? I can imagine that a regional politicialn will want his kids to be able to speak with a regional accent e.g. Texas accent so that his kids can inherit his Deep State seat.
I can see consumers demanding a Siri product that is accent regional.
Accent management matters: Tony Blair changed his accent from RP to Estuary English to promote the facade of being a regular bloke; Thatcher took elocution lessons to shift from blue collar London Tory to RP to assure the Tory Establishment that she was one of them. W Bush probably emphasized his Texan accent when campaigning as part of his authentic spiel.
It's only once the elite were schooled together that an elite accent could emerge.
It sounds plausible, no idea if true.
Once upon a time the upper class in the UK spoke french and the low class english. They werent the same people. Using french words in english is still consider high class. I ate vs I dined.
The polite words are French - penis, copulate, vagina, excrement.
Legacy of the Norman conquest in 1066.
My grandmother, an Ozark farm wife who churned her own butter and made her own quilts, still said "Ye'uns," as in "Ye'uns come in to supper".
I came across "Ye'uns" reading Chaucer. In Middle English the Kings and Queens said "Ye'uns." The word hung on in the Ozark back country until the 20th century and is now completely gone from the language.
In my experience the clothes and the behavior are much bigger markers of class in Germany. You can also gain a lot of information (including political leaning) by the names Germans give their children.
I'd like to cross check my German friends--whose kid's names just seem pretty normal to me.
(BTW "more kids!" would be what i'd like to see from the Germans whether the names are traditional or not.)
The old comedy Keeping Up Appearances is a good parody of the silly British class system. It was quite popular in certain parts of Europe.
Barring accent the character ‘Onslow’ (with cap) below looks like certain Americans, Australians and Canadians.
Where’s Twinkie when we need him? While we are waiting for his appearance, there is this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyeonggi_dialect
If this WIKIPEDIA article can be trusted, the “general” accent seems to be the prestige variety.
Middle class Blacks and lower class Blacks also speak distinctly differently, but unlike with Whites there doesn't seem to be a regional component.
Middle class blacks speak like preachers, while lower class blacks speak like rappers. It sounds too general, but I think it holds pretty well.
I can tell older blacks from the South apart from northern blacks. Charles Rangle and Clarence had/have different regional accents to my ear. Younger blacks are starting to sound the same to me, which is like rappers. I guess the ones who don’t want to sound like rappers try to sound like the Carlton character from Fresh Prince.
I’ve been to Japan twice, but never to Korea.
Japan is really a great country.
But from what I have been told from people who visited – Korea is like visiting a far more shabby and less interesting version of Japan, although it is still more civilized compared to China.
And so in the film industry, there is probably some similar ordering.
1. Japanese cinema – interesting and with many historic masterworks.
2. Korean cinema – somewhere in the medium level.
3. Chinese cinema – generally still in the third-world level.
https://www.alsolikelife.com/20002003-jonathan-rosenbaums-1000-essential-films
Korea itself seems very modern and developed, and doesn't lag Japan in that respect. What it seems to lack compared to Japan is culture. The cities are clean and modern but boring. The people well dressed but dull. Few original authors. None of the eccentricity of the Japanese, or their artistic tendencies, or their originality and artistic productivity, or their modern but chaotic and interesting cities densely packed with stores, bars, eateries, and exciting activity 24 hours a day.
1. Japanese cinema – interesting and with many historic masterworks.
2. Korean cinema – somewhere in the medium level.
3. Chinese cinema – generally still in the third-world level.
I'm not sure this is entirely so. While it's true that there is a vast bottom layer of junk in Chinese cinema, there are some excellent Chinese films as well. The Fifth Generation films like 'To Live and 'The Blue Kite', are very well done. Indeed, 'Farewell my Concubine' is a minor masterpiece.
Didn’t Russian used to have a prestige accent? I’ve read that Lenin, for example, spoke with a “posh” accent.
It's the norm, worldwide.
And it's more than vocabulary. How does one walk, carry oneself; relax on a street corner or in a park. You can't fake these habits. Today I was a little cold, so I stuck my hands into my front pockets. Then I remembered that a native lady somewhere had told not to do that, as it implied laziness (at least in her opinion).
IMHO, non-natives cannot be trained.
It's a striking experience to hear Joseph Pearce discuss elevated literary and religious topics in his East End Cockney. Perhaps that's why he moved to "Amevica". Too many stifled chuckles back home.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA-CscQuHXE
Is that “East End Cockney” or just a personal speech impediment?
Barring accent the character 'Onslow' (with cap) below looks like certain Americans, Australians and Canadians.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vC-5Jw-AtaA
Steve, go see The Lighthouse, and let us know what you think.
Japan is really a great country.
But from what I have been told from people who visited - Korea is like visiting a far more shabby and less interesting version of Japan, although it is still more civilized compared to China.
And so in the film industry, there is probably some similar ordering.
1. Japanese cinema - interesting and with many historic masterworks.
2. Korean cinema - somewhere in the medium level.
3. Chinese cinema - generally still in the third-world level.
Hmmmmm….. I don’t follow it, but Rosenbaum would have disagreed…
https://www.alsolikelife.com/20002003-jonathan-rosenbaums-1000-essential-films
Japan is really a great country.
But from what I have been told from people who visited - Korea is like visiting a far more shabby and less interesting version of Japan, although it is still more civilized compared to China.
And so in the film industry, there is probably some similar ordering.
1. Japanese cinema - interesting and with many historic masterworks.
2. Korean cinema - somewhere in the medium level.
3. Chinese cinema - generally still in the third-world level.
Korean cinema has some first rate works, or at least very enjoyable works.
Korea itself seems very modern and developed, and doesn’t lag Japan in that respect. What it seems to lack compared to Japan is culture. The cities are clean and modern but boring. The people well dressed but dull. Few original authors. None of the eccentricity of the Japanese, or their artistic tendencies, or their originality and artistic productivity, or their modern but chaotic and interesting cities densely packed with stores, bars, eateries, and exciting activity 24 hours a day.
It is a deep conceit of most prosperous societies that their poor and poor-adjacent classes are filled with highly capable people, such that any movie depicting them leaves you wondering “Hey, we could use somebody like that at the office, why aren’t they working?”
The reality is that the poorer classes are filled with many less-than-capable people — still deserving of full rights, respect, and love — who are not just in need of a break in order to prosper economically.
A free market economic is the ultimate meritocracy — creating a feedback loop where those with the least are also the least capable. No movie would ever tend to show characters who are in low station, but tend to belong there based on their decision-making and communication skills.
It's only once the elite were schooled together that an elite accent could emerge.
It sounds plausible, no idea if true.
In the Highlands, I believe they practiced fosterage, as did the native Irish.
The children of nobles would be sent out of the home at a very young age, often into the homes of people who weren’t nobles but retainers or tenants. Partly, it was for their education; partly it was to build loyalty, for instance, between foster-brothers. In return, the foster family would get some benefit, like a certain number of cows.
The practice was ancient and lasted a long time. Daniel O’Connell was actually fostered in his youth.
Somewhat related:
As a visiting foreigner last week, I particularly liked signs in shops and windows that avowed “Unruly children will be sold to the circus.”
Middle class Blacks and lower class Blacks also speak distinctly differently, but unlike with Whites there doesn't seem to be a regional component.
There are huge regional differences in accent among US blacks. It’s basically different languages.
Japan is really a great country.
But from what I have been told from people who visited - Korea is like visiting a far more shabby and less interesting version of Japan, although it is still more civilized compared to China.
And so in the film industry, there is probably some similar ordering.
1. Japanese cinema - interesting and with many historic masterworks.
2. Korean cinema - somewhere in the medium level.
3. Chinese cinema - generally still in the third-world level.
And so in the film industry, there is probably some similar ordering.
1. Japanese cinema – interesting and with many historic masterworks.
2. Korean cinema – somewhere in the medium level.
3. Chinese cinema – generally still in the third-world level.
I’m not sure this is entirely so. While it’s true that there is a vast bottom layer of junk in Chinese cinema, there are some excellent Chinese films as well. The Fifth Generation films like ‘To Live and ‘The Blue Kite’, are very well done. Indeed, ‘Farewell my Concubine’ is a minor masterpiece.
It's like the difference between French New Wave and British Angry Young Men films. 400 BLOWS and LONELINESS OF LONG DISTANCE RUNNER & SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING are all about working class or lower-middle class folks and their everyday problems. And yet, there is poetry in Truffaut's realism whereas the Angry Young Man films, though admirable in many ways, are like punch in the gut.
Consider this movie. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ash_Is_Purest_White
In some ways, it's an excellent work that is very truthful about life, but its raw and bare-bones aesthetics is like being served with uncooked meat and veggies. Hard to digest. Same goes for much of Turkish cinema. Nuri Bilge Ceylan is an estimable director, but his works don't go down easy. Not much in the way of aesthetic lubricant.
Koreans in Korea are fine with me. Koreans in the USA should be encouraged to go back to Korea.
The American Empire should withdraw all troops and military installations from Korea and Korea should turn the screw and gain a nuclear deterrent for itself. Japan and Germany should also get nukes. Australians and Italians too.
Koreans and Chinese and Asian Indians should be strongly encouraged to leave the USA and other European Christian nations and return to their own nations. President Trump will destroy the Republican Party with his call for the USA to be flooded with mass legal immigration “in the largest numbers ever.”
When the next round of the global financial implosion hits is the time to put this repatriation plan into operation. The globalized central banker shysters are panicking now and doing all kinds of monetary extremism to keep the asset bubbles from imploding, but it won’t work and it will cause inter-generational strife to bust out all over. Trump says the economy is booming but Trump says the Fed has to cut the federal funds rate below 2 percent. Donny Trump can’t explain that except for currency devaluation purposes to boost American manufacturing.
“better jobs than folding pizza boxes”
Try being a food server at an IHOP which is located in an area that is populated by a certain demographic. Folding pizza boxes at a Korean pizzeria would be nirvana in comparison.
“why can’t they find a normal job?”
Folding pizza boxes and IHOP are normal jobs in our intersectional-libertarian wonderland.
“None of the characters, poor or rich, seemed all that sympathetic.”
Said the producers who passed on the scripts that became great movies.
James Mason from Yorkshire has a plummy accent that’s not too plummy to be irritating.
James Mason grew up in Huddersfield. Huddersfield is in West Yorkshire.
Huddersfield has been overrun by Muslim Rape Gangs and other nation-wrecking multicultural mayhem.
When the English ruling class is removed from power it will be nice to restore the traditional ancestral stock of Huddersfield.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8wDUCqeY94
A few comments on language:
a) Every major language has a prestige variant. Languages spoken by few speakers or in backward regional areas may avoid this, but then the language itself is a marker of lack of prestige.
b) I don’t know much about Slavic languages, but any lack of major dialectal variance might be explained by the fact that until the 19th century, their elites conducted their business in other languages (in Russia, for instance, French). Nonetheless, nowadays, the language of the media, usually based on that of the capital, is certainly considered the prestige language.
Perhaps you can help me Romanian: It is well known by now that the governor of California is nosferatu. He even sports a Christopher Lee-like hairdo. All that’s missing is the cape. I mock him by referring to him as Dracula. In your land, would that be considered an insult to compare this Napa Valley jackass to the great Vlad the Impaler? Maybe I should call the jackass Count Yorga, in reference to the low-rent LA vampire?
Yorga is too obscure for me, though the Internet tells me its Aboriginal slang for woman as well, so it might work for you. But do you really want to go down that rabbit's hole of sensitivity?
Newsom does not really that prominent widow's peak that would be stereotypical imagery.
It's a striking experience to hear Joseph Pearce discuss elevated literary and religious topics in his East End Cockney. Perhaps that's why he moved to "Amevica". Too many stifled chuckles back home.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA-CscQuHXE
It’s a striking experience to hear Joseph Pearce discuss elevated literary and religious topics in his East End Cockney.
Pretty sure he grew up in Ulster.
No. Why would he, he was gutter trash.
Movies are for women and faggots.
James Mason grew up in Huddersfield. Huddersfield is in West Yorkshire.
Huddersfield has been overrun by Muslim Rape Gangs and other nation-wrecking multicultural mayhem.
When the English ruling class is removed from power it will be nice to restore the traditional ancestral stock of Huddersfield.
https://youtu.be/I4LsSlWzITA
Mason had elements of Yorkshire in his accent. In GEORGY GIRL, he really let loose with it:
Don’t think so:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Lenin
There’s a difference?
What would be some “right wing” German names? (I’m pretty sure people aren’t naming their boys Adolf.) And “left” ones?
I’d like to cross check my German friends–whose kid’s names just seem pretty normal to me.
(BTW “more kids!” would be what i’d like to see from the Germans whether the names are traditional or not.)
But whodathunkit? There are Chinese-- Chinese Chinese-- who breed like nigeriennes, i.e., nigeroises:
The world’s most fertile Chinese live in a violent backwater of Myanmar
Conservative Germans: Older German names, that were already popular around 1900, mostly longer
Examples: Maximilian (very popular in Bavaria), Alexander, Friedrich, etc. for boys
Charlotte, Elisabeth, Luise/Luisa, Sophie/Sophia, Johanna, etc. for girls
Green-Party-voting parents: Scandinavian names in a lot of cases
Examples: Torben, Solveigh, etc.
Very religious Christian parents: Names from the old testament
Examples: Sarah, Rebekka, etc.
Underclass Germans: English/Irish (mostly for boys) and French (mostly for girls) names
Examples: Ricky, Steven, Kevin, Justin for boys ("Kevin is not a name, Kevin is a diagnosis")
Chantal, Jacqueline, etc. for girls
Regular Germans: Mostly shorter names, in a lot of cases vaguely Italian-sounding
Examples: Mia, Lina, Lea, Hanna, .. for girls
Ben, Jonas, Paul, Leon etc. for boys
Historically, in the former Eastern German Republic people who were dissatisfied with the system gave their children American/French/English/Italian names, while people who were in favor of socialism gave their children Russian names.
One of her charges was a boy named Adolf. By her account, he was a nice young man. Unfortunatedly for him, no family wanted to take him and she thought this was because of his name.
Eventually, they found some family in Argentina, who took him in. (After WW2 a lot of Nazis fled to Argentina. We both suspected his guest-family had some Nazi-roots)
That's certainly not true in Hungarian or German, and I doubt it is true elsewhere in CEE.
You can tell if someone has been educated or grew up with a Buda accent in Hungarian in how they conjugate the "-ikes" verbs. That's a very distinct marker.
Also, there is also a distinct countryside accent, often typified by dropping, for example, the "L" in a word like bolt (English: store) -- so it sound like boat.
Hungarians like to watch dubbed (instead of subtitled movies) and when they dub, they miss out on a lot of meta-data like class or nationality.
I've watched many a Hollywood movie with the actors speaking in various accents, standard American, lower-class Scottish and South African etc etc -- all of which signal this sort of meta-data to Anglophone audience --- and it is lost when it is dubbed all in Standard Hungarian.
I was told– by none other than the Joseph Pearce of the video above– that the ultimate expression of this is in Millwall, or “Miwwwaww”, of the notorious football hooligans. I replied that Brazilians do the same– “Braziw”, “Portugaw”. But it’s been standardized there.
Although Rio shares the sounds of the poor, black northeast, it was long the capital, and is still the cultural capital, and Carioca has some prestige. Whereas São Paulo and even more so the mostly-white south have phonemes a bit closer to Spanish. (Which defeats the whole point of Portuguese, doesn’t it?)
Is there anywhere else in the world where the upper- and lower-class accents are closer to each other than to the middle-class’s?
OFF TOPIC
Morgoth:
“The “hatchling” is a kind of leftist who…their talking points and their psychology…it’s all fake of course…but it’s as if they just cracked out of an egg. And they’ve just arrived in the world. And they have no a priori knowledge of the universe, of history, of humanity, of basic common sense. Nothing.”
https://twitter.com/LivesMorgoth/status/1188074782492971008?s=20
I'd like to cross check my German friends--whose kid's names just seem pretty normal to me.
(BTW "more kids!" would be what i'd like to see from the Germans whether the names are traditional or not.)
Especially Erzgebirge and Thuringian kids. Both are endangered.
But whodathunkit? There are Chinese– Chinese Chinese– who breed like nigeriennes, i.e., nigeroises:
The world’s most fertile Chinese live in a violent backwater of Myanmar
There is nothing in that quote to indicate that Lenin’s family was not gutter trash.
1. Japanese cinema – interesting and with many historic masterworks.
2. Korean cinema – somewhere in the medium level.
3. Chinese cinema – generally still in the third-world level.
I'm not sure this is entirely so. While it's true that there is a vast bottom layer of junk in Chinese cinema, there are some excellent Chinese films as well. The Fifth Generation films like 'To Live and 'The Blue Kite', are very well done. Indeed, 'Farewell my Concubine' is a minor masterpiece.
True. Japanese cinema reached its peak in the 50s to mid-60s. It’s been pretty much all downhill since then. And in the past 20 yrs, Japanese cinema has been less interesting and lower-quality than Korean and Chinese cinema. Granted, there are exceptions like Hirokazu Kore-eda, but most of it is beyond belief in juvenilia and retardation. For a long time, Korean cinema used to be a joke in the international film circuit. But things began to change sometime in the 90s when some real talents began to emerge, and since then, Korea has produced more interesting ‘auteurs’ than Japan. As for Chinese cinema, it showed great promise in the 80s with a resurgence of humanist films by directors like Yimou and Kaige. One advantage of state-funded film industry is movie projects aren’t always decided by profit motif. Also, the fading of Maoism meant directors could work on more personal projects than simply make propaganda. There is a similarity between Korean and Chinese ‘art cinema’ in that they are very unsparing, raw, and blunt about life and its struggles. In some ways, too much so. And this may be why even their best works are less appealing than Japanese films of the golden era. Directors like Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, Kobayashi, Imamura, Ichikawa, and etc often made realist works about hardship and struggle, but they had a keen and meticulous aesthetic sensibility that made their films far more appealing. Korean cinema wants to beat you up with the truth. Despite the improvement in quality and sensibility, it’s still ham-fisted.
It’s like the difference between French New Wave and British Angry Young Men films. 400 BLOWS and LONELINESS OF LONG DISTANCE RUNNER & SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING are all about working class or lower-middle class folks and their everyday problems. And yet, there is poetry in Truffaut’s realism whereas the Angry Young Man films, though admirable in many ways, are like punch in the gut.
Consider this movie. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ash_Is_Purest_White
In some ways, it’s an excellent work that is very truthful about life, but its raw and bare-bones aesthetics is like being served with uncooked meat and veggies. Hard to digest. Same goes for much of Turkish cinema. Nuri Bilge Ceylan is an estimable director, but his works don’t go down easy. Not much in the way of aesthetic lubricant.
OT:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8wDUCqeY94
Mason’s family wasn’t living in a hole in the road like the Yorkshiremen in the Monty Python sketch.
From Wikipedia:
“
Mason was born in Huddersfield, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, to Mabel Hattersley (Gaunt) and John Mason.[1]
His father was a wealthy textile merchant. He was educated at Marlborough College, and earned a first in Architecture at Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he became involved in stock theatre companies in his spare time. Mason had no formal training in acting and initially embarked upon it for fun.”
An entertaining piece providing an insight into the range of vocabulary of the English gentry is available in
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_F***ing_Fulfords
I'd like to cross check my German friends--whose kid's names just seem pretty normal to me.
(BTW "more kids!" would be what i'd like to see from the Germans whether the names are traditional or not.)
Here is my estimate. Please note, that in a lot of cases you cannot tell the political leaning of the parents with a 100% accuracy, unless the people were born in the Former Eastern German Republic (more about that later). Especially some of the names I would assign to conservative parents (Alexander, Luisa) are quite popular at the moment for the rest of society as well.
Conservative Germans: Older German names, that were already popular around 1900, mostly longer
Examples: Maximilian (very popular in Bavaria), Alexander, Friedrich, etc. for boys
Charlotte, Elisabeth, Luise/Luisa, Sophie/Sophia, Johanna, etc. for girls
Green-Party-voting parents: Scandinavian names in a lot of cases
Examples: Torben, Solveigh, etc.
Very religious Christian parents: Names from the old testament
Examples: Sarah, Rebekka, etc.
Underclass Germans: English/Irish (mostly for boys) and French (mostly for girls) names
Examples: Ricky, Steven, Kevin, Justin for boys (“Kevin is not a name, Kevin is a diagnosis”)
Chantal, Jacqueline, etc. for girls
Regular Germans: Mostly shorter names, in a lot of cases vaguely Italian-sounding
Examples: Mia, Lina, Lea, Hanna, .. for girls
Ben, Jonas, Paul, Leon etc. for boys
Historically, in the former Eastern German Republic people who were dissatisfied with the system gave their children American/French/English/Italian names, while people who were in favor of socialism gave their children Russian names.
Maybe the solution is to watch movies in English starring White people; you might be surprised by how many there are…
NYT: Are we ready for breastfeeding fathers?
https://t.co/xinwum9h3M?amp=1
Lenin : his brother :: John Wick : his dog
Stalin was from the Hardly Working Class.
memes mocking WAPO headline of dead terrorist on a roll.
A function of energy levels: the white liberals in the study din feel no ways tah’d.
This movie, like the recent Joker, was way too overhyped, although I thought it was better than Joker. Overall, I thought both movies were not very good.
Both films seem to be overhyped by critics and film snobs for Marxist, class reasons and because socialism is fashionable among millenials these days.
Part of the hype for this movie also seems to be due to Bong’s older movies rather than due to an objective judgment of it. Bong’s Memories of Murder is very good, one of the best movies of this century.
There’s a Korean movie that came out last year called Burning which was good, much better than Parasite. It’s basically a much better version of Parasite in terms of the class theme stuff.
Golliwogs begin at Calais?
Best movie lately was Dunkirk.
Anyone planning on seeing Midway in IMAX? I’ve never seen a hollywood feature in imax, just short educational movies when I was a tyke.
I wasn’t that impressed back then. Bigger screen, sit further back, don’t they cancel out?
IMAX has a bigger screen but also better sound.
http://www.arrangementsbyarrangement.com/wp-content/uploads/edd/Debussy-Golliwog-Piano-vl-cl-web-sample-5.jpg
Speaking of degraded language… It’s the homophonous use to. Writing takes more forethought than speech; why this error is so common is beyond me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Handmaiden
Oddly enough, it is an adaptation of Fingersmith, a Western novel.
Plenty of iSteve material resulting from the adaptation, including the Japanese elites consciously mimicking the West.
I heard the girl-on-girl scenes in this were up there with Bound and Blue is the Warmest Color.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEUra7FFpGo
Ahem, actually they were very tame (basic erotica) compared to Blue is the Warmest Color (La vie d'Adele, as I saw it), which was the closest thing to porn I have ever seen coming out of cinema until Love. Actually, I am lying - google Lucia y el sexo. Pretty soon, there will be no shock value left in sex in cinema. I have not seen Bound.
As an American visiting parts of Germany and Italy, it certainly seemed to me that the working class people there seemed to have more pronounced regional accents, whereas the educated class spoke a more “standardized” national tongue.
(Just the same as in the various regions of the U.S.A., of course)
Pretty sure he grew up in Ulster.
You’re mad, Barking mad.
Memories of Murder is fantastic, have not seen any of his other movies, but that one is so great.
It’s fiction. Actors speak lines, and do things, that don’t make sense, to move a story towards a contrived conclusion. As long as a large enough audience pays to see the film, it’s all good.
The film’s purpose may be to make the mid to upper middle class anxious, as criminals may appear as their perception of the ideal. Not the usual low class thugs they can easily avoid in Gangnam.
Of course Russians have prestige accents. I’ve never encountered a language that didn’t have class signifiers (although I’ve never studied the utopian’s dream language, Esperanto 😉
It’s the norm, worldwide.
And it’s more than vocabulary. How does one walk, carry oneself; relax on a street corner or in a park. You can’t fake these habits. Today I was a little cold, so I stuck my hands into my front pockets. Then I remembered that a native lady somewhere had told not to do that, as it implied laziness (at least in her opinion).
IMHO, non-natives cannot be trained.
I think that typing is to blame. For example, I never confuse their and there while using a pen/pencil, but I do occasionally make that kind of error while typing. Friends of mine have noted making similar kinds of mistakes while at the keyboard.
I’m not sure that that’s true in the internet age. A lot of people nowadays write as they speak, with a kind of careless ease.
Disobedience had some great….hmmm….cinematography, yeah, great cinematography….
I couldn’t get through “Snowpiercer”. “Parasite” sounds like one I’ll give a miss.
Proofreading is another thing that’s harder to do while staring at a computer screen. To do a thorough job, I need paper. A friend of mine who works as an editor at a publishing house says that she’s the same way.
Democrats like AOC ripping it up in congress
demographic change continues
Diversity in film getting promoted
Black little mermaid
Get Out and Slim and Queen domintating the box offfice
Trump about to be impeached
right winger racists getting deplatformed
New York times holding white people and white supremacy accountable
white privielge being discussed in pubic schoolss
Dang it feels good to be progressive!
You have to understand being impeached is not that big of a deal. Clinton was impeached and still finished his second term.
Supposed oral sex from a female intern was considered to be more serious than the illegal war in Bosnia. The stained blue dress (and OJ’s show trial) did a marvelous job of keeping Bosnia out of the news cycle.
Maybe if they impeach Trump before 11/2020, it might affect Trump’s candidacy for re-election. Might still win anyway. Who really cares about Congress?
As we have seen, the meat sack that occupies the White House is just for show. The wars must go on. The crony kleptocracy must go on.
It's the norm, worldwide.
And it's more than vocabulary. How does one walk, carry oneself; relax on a street corner or in a park. You can't fake these habits. Today I was a little cold, so I stuck my hands into my front pockets. Then I remembered that a native lady somewhere had told not to do that, as it implied laziness (at least in her opinion).
IMHO, non-natives cannot be trained.
Esperanto, contra the Hoodoo General Don Lancaster, is in fact the native language of some, particularly notably George Soros, a first class monster. (If Madge is the Sizequeen General, Don’s the Hoodoo General, which see). Whether there are enough native Esperantists and whether they know each other well enough to have cliques, who knows?
Doing so is a big part of what intelligence agencies train people to do and the better ones are good at it. In the Cold War heyday the CIA at its “Farm” could select and train American farm kids to convincingly pass themselves off as a KGB officer from Minsk to real KGB officers from Minsk, and vice versa. Not everyone is trainable and it’s a lot of work but that’s what those organizations did. They went to the extent of finding Russian dentists, tailors, shoemakers, you name it so that these people would be dressed indistinguishably and their dental work would even pass muster.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Barsky
I like this SK zombie movie; maybe you will too.
The DVD had an English translation; the YT version subtitles.
Conservative Germans: Older German names, that were already popular around 1900, mostly longer
Examples: Maximilian (very popular in Bavaria), Alexander, Friedrich, etc. for boys
Charlotte, Elisabeth, Luise/Luisa, Sophie/Sophia, Johanna, etc. for girls
Green-Party-voting parents: Scandinavian names in a lot of cases
Examples: Torben, Solveigh, etc.
Very religious Christian parents: Names from the old testament
Examples: Sarah, Rebekka, etc.
Underclass Germans: English/Irish (mostly for boys) and French (mostly for girls) names
Examples: Ricky, Steven, Kevin, Justin for boys ("Kevin is not a name, Kevin is a diagnosis")
Chantal, Jacqueline, etc. for girls
Regular Germans: Mostly shorter names, in a lot of cases vaguely Italian-sounding
Examples: Mia, Lina, Lea, Hanna, .. for girls
Ben, Jonas, Paul, Leon etc. for boys
Historically, in the former Eastern German Republic people who were dissatisfied with the system gave their children American/French/English/Italian names, while people who were in favor of socialism gave their children Russian names.
This is very interesting, and not entirely what I was expecting. Thanks much for posting it.
Uh, the most famous KGB illegal didn’t have it quite as easy as you suggest:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Barsky
Well, in Spain and Mexico and other Spanish-speaking countries of course you can tell class by accent, vocabulary, voice modulation, etc, etc. What, do you think only consumer status symbols are social class markers?
Conservative Germans: Older German names, that were already popular around 1900, mostly longer
Examples: Maximilian (very popular in Bavaria), Alexander, Friedrich, etc. for boys
Charlotte, Elisabeth, Luise/Luisa, Sophie/Sophia, Johanna, etc. for girls
Green-Party-voting parents: Scandinavian names in a lot of cases
Examples: Torben, Solveigh, etc.
Very religious Christian parents: Names from the old testament
Examples: Sarah, Rebekka, etc.
Underclass Germans: English/Irish (mostly for boys) and French (mostly for girls) names
Examples: Ricky, Steven, Kevin, Justin for boys ("Kevin is not a name, Kevin is a diagnosis")
Chantal, Jacqueline, etc. for girls
Regular Germans: Mostly shorter names, in a lot of cases vaguely Italian-sounding
Examples: Mia, Lina, Lea, Hanna, .. for girls
Ben, Jonas, Paul, Leon etc. for boys
Historically, in the former Eastern German Republic people who were dissatisfied with the system gave their children American/French/English/Italian names, while people who were in favor of socialism gave their children Russian names.
A German friend explained once that Claudia and Berta were lower class German names. His wife’s name is Monika, an acceptably higher class one. You forgot Christian names that transcend better the social chasms: Joseph, Maria, Gloria. Not a believer, are you.
Parasyte – Toonami Promo – Adult Swim October 2015
Some of the most interesting regional dialect ive never heard elsewhere is from the newton mass. village of nonantum.
Some of it bled into our bordering neighborhood.One example is the word mush which could mean guy, dude or
buddy as best i could tell. Example, me and mush are are gonna make a packy run you guys want anything?
Our cuss words in English are old anglo saxon words – dick, fuck, cunt, shit.
The polite words are French – penis, copulate, vagina, excrement.
Legacy of the Norman conquest in 1066.
My grandmother, an Ozark farm wife who churned her own butter and made her own quilts, still said “Ye’uns,” as in “Ye’uns come in to supper”.
I came across “Ye’uns” reading Chaucer. In Middle English the Kings and Queens said “Ye’uns.” The word hung on in the Ozark back country until the 20th century and is now completely gone from the language.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Barsky
Pretty interesting story. Each side thought it was a little better than the other and both had successes and failures, some tragic, some now in retrospect funny.
Well, it does indicate that Lenin didn’t grow up in the gutters…..
Wasn’t implying that they did; I was merely observing that there was a bit of Yorkshire in his voice.
Conservative Germans: Older German names, that were already popular around 1900, mostly longer
Examples: Maximilian (very popular in Bavaria), Alexander, Friedrich, etc. for boys
Charlotte, Elisabeth, Luise/Luisa, Sophie/Sophia, Johanna, etc. for girls
Green-Party-voting parents: Scandinavian names in a lot of cases
Examples: Torben, Solveigh, etc.
Very religious Christian parents: Names from the old testament
Examples: Sarah, Rebekka, etc.
Underclass Germans: English/Irish (mostly for boys) and French (mostly for girls) names
Examples: Ricky, Steven, Kevin, Justin for boys ("Kevin is not a name, Kevin is a diagnosis")
Chantal, Jacqueline, etc. for girls
Regular Germans: Mostly shorter names, in a lot of cases vaguely Italian-sounding
Examples: Mia, Lina, Lea, Hanna, .. for girls
Ben, Jonas, Paul, Leon etc. for boys
Historically, in the former Eastern German Republic people who were dissatisfied with the system gave their children American/French/English/Italian names, while people who were in favor of socialism gave their children Russian names.
What would you sat about the name Björn?
If the wiki list of famous Björns is a good sample, the name is at least 25x as popular in Scandinavia as in Germany.
Some of the “German Björns” are, on closer inspection, either of recent Scandinavian origin (e.g., this one) or from the far north of Germany, near Scandinavia (e.g, Björn Engholm, SPD politician, of Lübeck, a Baltic Hanseatic city).
Anyway, we now have the case of Björn Höcke (recently the subject of discussion in Anatoly Karlin’s open thread [currently comment-181]). He is now a famous due to his success, since 2015, as an anti-Merkel insurgent political figure of the Right. Björn Höcke defeated the CDU (regionally, for now), and on a nationalist platform, despite the usual slanders, slurs, and hysterics directed against him. (His AfD took 22 of 90 seats in the new Landtag, more than the CDU [21 seats], in Thuringia this week.)
I’ve heard German media often misquoted Björn Höcke as “Bernd Höcke” in the early years — because of uncommonness of the Björn name?
This particular Björn’s father, who I can only suppose must have named him (or at the least endorsed the name choice) is said to have been a quiet ethnonationalist (a.k.a., a centrist of the past), whose parents were expelled from East Prussia in 1945. So why would the father have chosen “Björn” when his son was born in 1972 in W.Germany?
The “Björn” choice does not fit with your
But that may be overruled by the father’s Baltic (East Prussia) origin.
That' really not how Singaporean society worked.
What I found most odd about “Crazy Rich Asians” was that not even one Singaporean character in the film sounded Singaporean. At all.
They all sounded like they had boarded at Eton.
In my experience, professional/upper-middle class Singaporeans spend a lot of times/efforts to differentiate themselves from their "kampung" countrymen.
What kind of perv do you take me for? I watched it for the sake of art!!! 🙂 I had no spoilers going in, so I did not know what to expect, or to watch out for sexual content.
Ahem, actually they were very tame (basic erotica) compared to Blue is the Warmest Color (La vie d’Adele, as I saw it), which was the closest thing to porn I have ever seen coming out of cinema until Love. Actually, I am lying – google Lucia y el sexo. Pretty soon, there will be no shock value left in sex in cinema. I have not seen Bound.
Of course it is. Vlad was a patriot, at least by the standards of feudal times, and is common meme material around here for anti-governmental messages, what with his impaling of local noblemen for corruption and treason. He was also very non-PC, as evidenced by the fight against his brother, Radu the Beautiful, whom the Ottomans wanted on the throne instead of him and who had went native while a royal hostage in Constantinople – loyal companion to Mehmed II, head of Ottoman troops. Hell, if you google Radu cel Frumos and Mehmed, the Internet is full of gay art (Yaoi style). The Ottomans called it Greek love.
Yorga is too obscure for me, though the Internet tells me its Aboriginal slang for woman as well, so it might work for you. But do you really want to go down that rabbit’s hole of sensitivity?
Newsom does not really that prominent widow’s peak that would be stereotypical imagery.
This is the BBC’s deliberate policy. The usual suspects doing the usual thing.
That's certainly not true in Hungarian or German, and I doubt it is true elsewhere in CEE.
You can tell if someone has been educated or grew up with a Buda accent in Hungarian in how they conjugate the "-ikes" verbs. That's a very distinct marker.
Also, there is also a distinct countryside accent, often typified by dropping, for example, the "L" in a word like bolt (English: store) -- so it sound like boat.
Hungarians like to watch dubbed (instead of subtitled movies) and when they dub, they miss out on a lot of meta-data like class or nationality.
I've watched many a Hollywood movie with the actors speaking in various accents, standard American, lower-class Scottish and South African etc etc -- all of which signal this sort of meta-data to Anglophone audience --- and it is lost when it is dubbed all in Standard Hungarian.
The dubbing craze is catching up in Romania. We used subtitles exclusively until a few years ago. Now, they are dubbing movies for children (which is very bad for any incipient English language skills).
An entire movie based around a Nick Drake song. Looking forward to the sequel, “Free Ride.”
It's a striking experience to hear Joseph Pearce discuss elevated literary and religious topics in his East End Cockney. Perhaps that's why he moved to "Amevica". Too many stifled chuckles back home.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA-CscQuHXE
Re: Scottish accent as low class marker
I will never forget a translation of Lysistrata that I read, where the translator had the Spartans speak in an obvious Scottish dialect. Not knowing classical Greek, I wonder now if Aristophanes, somehow, used some linguistic nuance to distinguish them from the Athenians in the original.
As for the Scottish-accented Spartans, it makes sense given their reputations as warriors. Today's Scots are rather tame but as recently as the 18th century they still deserved their reputation as rebellious warriors.
Despite my grandfather being of 100% German extraction, I’ve gotten to know very few real Germans in my life, so I’m surprised that Björn could be an uncommon name in Germany, since the male German whose acquaintance I’ve most strongly made in my life is named Björn.
I will never forget a translation of Lysistrata that I read, where the translator had the Spartans speak in an obvious Scottish dialect. Not knowing classical Greek, I wonder now if Aristophanes, somehow, used some linguistic nuance to distinguish them from the Athenians in the original.
I imagine Sparta and Athens had different dialects so it probably wouldn’t have been hard to do.
As for the Scottish-accented Spartans, it makes sense given their reputations as warriors. Today’s Scots are rather tame but as recently as the 18th century they still deserved their reputation as rebellious warriors.
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For instance, I don't care how educated you are, popping loose with a Mancunian accent you could cut with a saw will not impress an Oxford Don. Similarly, even considering the difference in vocabularies, an uneducated Mexican could never pass as an Educated Spaniard ( or Argentinian) for any length of time. I have certainly had Spaniards fall over laughing at my Tex-Mex accent. And German has so many regional accents they morph into different languages. Korean also has a wide variety of regional accents, morphing into a separate language on Jeju Island. I suspect a Seoul Korean looks upon some of those accents as pure Hillbilly, or the Korean equivalent.
In any case, I doubt there is any such thing as a language without some kind Class markers in it. It is just part of the Human condition, people have to have other people to look down on. On the other hand, centralized Mass Media tend to ruthlessly homogenize language. On the whole, a very interesting subject.
This Britannica article has some interesting general comments on dialects, mostly of the regional kind, but also of the social and generational kind:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/dialect/Social-dialects
I do. The trailers don’t look like the story is all that great, but the action scenes look nice.
IMAX has a bigger screen but also better sound.
OT
Mollie Tibbetts’s killer is going to walk (just like Kate Steinle’s killer) because he was not read his Miranda rights in Spanish.
https://nypost.com/2019/10/21/mollie-tibbetts-accused-killer-not-properly-read-miranda-rights-court-docs/
Well, in my experience, Singaporean professional class don’t exactly talk Singalish ending in “lah” when talk to outsider or even each other when outsiders are around. Don’t have contact with the top end elites as depicted in the film, but that’s not out of questioned that some of them to go to boarding school in UK. Even the poor SAF Captain who married into the family could had been a Presidential Scholar that went to school in UK.
In my experience, professional/upper-middle class Singaporeans spend a lot of times/efforts to differentiate themselves from their “kampung” countrymen.
I have yet to meet a single Singaporean who talks like an upper class Brit the way they all did in “Crazy Rich Asians.”
Been to Singapore many times, done business with Singaporeans, met many high level professionals.
Not one spoke like that. All sounded distinctly Singaporean. Even the ones educated abroad for uni.
I can see consumers demanding a Siri product that is accent regional.
Accent management matters: Tony Blair changed his accent from RP to Estuary English to promote the facade of being a regular bloke; Thatcher took elocution lessons to shift from blue collar London Tory to RP to assure the Tory Establishment that she was one of them. W Bush probably emphasized his Texan accent when campaigning as part of his authentic spiel.
Tony Blair did this a lot. He also sounded Scottish when addressing Scots audiences, Australian when visiting that country (he lived there as a kid), and when talking to Americans he turned into Hugh Grant.
I will never forget a translation of Lysistrata that I read, where the translator had the Spartans speak in an obvious Scottish dialect. Not knowing classical Greek, I wonder now if Aristophanes, somehow, used some linguistic nuance to distinguish them from the Athenians in the original.
He did. Aristophanes has the Spartan women speak with the Doric accent, which sounded quite harsh and rough to Athenians. Brits tend to use Scots accents as the Anglophone equivalent in their translations. Yank translators, in contrast, tend to use either Texan or Appalachian.
Just saw Parasite. I liked it. Slyly funny until the unexpected end. Only downside is that it’s kinda long at 2:12.
I beg to differ: “middle class” in Imperial Russia was gutter.
It's only once the elite were schooled together that an elite accent could emerge.
It sounds plausible, no idea if true.
I’ve heard similar things about “received pronunciation” but it seems to me that within whatever accent one is raised, learning to read would have a big impact on how one speaks. I remember changing how I pronounced things once I knew how they were spelt. I stopped saying “sall” for “saw,” for example.
The children of nobles would be sent out of the home at a very young age, often into the homes of people who weren't nobles but retainers or tenants. Partly, it was for their education; partly it was to build loyalty, for instance, between foster-brothers. In return, the foster family would get some benefit, like a certain number of cows.
The practice was ancient and lasted a long time. Daniel O'Connell was actually fostered in his youth.
Montaigne was brought up for a while with a peasant family on his father’s estate. He remembers it fondly.
I'd like to cross check my German friends--whose kid's names just seem pretty normal to me.
(BTW "more kids!" would be what i'd like to see from the Germans whether the names are traditional or not.)
I have never met someone named Adolf in Germany, who was younger than 80. Someone told me, that in Austria people still call some boys Adolf, but in Germany this is vanishingly rare. In my opinion, you should not name your child Adolf, but it will make his life a lot harder. For instance, a friend of worked for an organisation, that placed Germans, who wanted to spend a year of high school in another country with guest-families and looked after them abroad.
One of her charges was a boy named Adolf. By her account, he was a nice young man. Unfortunatedly for him, no family wanted to take him and she thought this was because of his name.
Eventually, they found some family in Argentina, who took him in. (After WW2 a lot of Nazis fled to Argentina. We both suspected his guest-family had some Nazi-roots)
His brother went off to a free state university. Joined a revolutionary group and was hanged for it. Both the state university professors and the public school teachers and administrators were heavily involved in 19th century Russian revolutionary politics
Mollie Tibbetts's killer is going to walk (just like Kate Steinle's killer) because he was not read his Miranda rights in Spanish.
https://nypost.com/2019/10/21/mollie-tibbetts-accused-killer-not-properly-read-miranda-rights-court-docs/
To be expected. Thank judicial supremacy for that.
Yorga is too obscure for me, though the Internet tells me its Aboriginal slang for woman as well, so it might work for you. But do you really want to go down that rabbit's hole of sensitivity?
Newsom does not really that prominent widow's peak that would be stereotypical imagery.
Vlad was a great hero of the European people.
In the Cold War heyday the CIA at its “Farm” could select and train American farm kids to convincingly pass themselves off as a KGB officer from Minsk to real KGB officers from Minsk, and vice versa. Not everyone is trainable and it’s a lot of work but that’s what those organizations did.
With all due respect, I can’t agree. Perhaps a farm kid can be taught to sit around to monitor, translate and transcribe foreign-language materials, but “passing” as a native is something else entirely. We have a giant industry in the US training diplomats, unconventional diplomats and special operator types in foreign languages, but there’s no alchemy that can teach an 18- to 23-year-old kid to speak a language — one that he didn’t hear growing up — with native fluency.
They went to the extent of finding Russian dentists, tailors, shoemakers, you name it so that these people would be dressed indistinguishably and their dental work would even pass muster.
Yes, and that’s still happening, but no non-native is going to pass a language test among native speakers who are paying attention.
In my experience, professional/upper-middle class Singaporeans spend a lot of times/efforts to differentiate themselves from their "kampung" countrymen.
Maybe we’re talking about 2 different Singapores.
I have yet to meet a single Singaporean who talks like an upper class Brit the way they all did in “Crazy Rich Asians.”
Been to Singapore many times, done business with Singaporeans, met many high level professionals.
Not one spoke like that. All sounded distinctly Singaporean. Even the ones educated abroad for uni.
There may be a truly upper-class subset of Singaporeans who speak the Queen's, but they don't invite me to their parties.
I have yet to meet a single Singaporean who talks like an upper class Brit the way they all did in “Crazy Rich Asians.”
Been to Singapore many times, done business with Singaporeans, met many high level professionals.
Not one spoke like that. All sounded distinctly Singaporean. Even the ones educated abroad for uni.
Same here. I know a quite a few Singaporeans, some of whom are (at least) upper-middle class, and their accents are immediately recognizable.
There may be a truly upper-class subset of Singaporeans who speak the Queen’s, but they don’t invite me to their parties.
The polite words are French - penis, copulate, vagina, excrement.
Legacy of the Norman conquest in 1066.
My grandmother, an Ozark farm wife who churned her own butter and made her own quilts, still said "Ye'uns," as in "Ye'uns come in to supper".
I came across "Ye'uns" reading Chaucer. In Middle English the Kings and Queens said "Ye'uns." The word hung on in the Ozark back country until the 20th century and is now completely gone from the language.
I thought it was “you uns” or you ones. A form of you all. I heard it when I was a kid in Missouri too.
Then what were the proles?
Depends. In places like the South, NYC, and New England, the General American accent is a status marker, a sign that the speaker is of middle class+ origins. When I was living in Boston, I noticed how people in certain “prolish” occupations (cops, service industry, etc) all had classic Boston accents (“Pahhk the cahh in Hahhvahhd yahhd”). Lawyers, MDs, and bank employees, in contrast, all spoke GA.
Obviously, GA as a signal of status doesn’t really work in places like the Midwest and the West Coast, where the majority of the Anglo-Whites speak with GA accents. There, class is more a matter of good grammar and clear diction.
Pre-’45, things were different. Back then, there were elite local accents:tidewater Southern, Boston Brahmin, etc.But those accents have largely died out.
Dubbing is a terrible thing. It really hurts English acquisition.
If only an infallible judge from a family [sic] court were in charge of things, he’d handle it all properly….
Steve,
I just asked my Korean wife about the accents/diction in “Parasite.” She said both families have the same accent, but the parasite family speak like poor people . I asked her to elaborate on this. Here’s my take: in America, a poor black person begging on the streets in a major city might have any number of regional accents, in addition to his slang/wrong grammar. She said both families have Seoul accents, but the parasite family speaks how poor people speak.
I would add this about the movie: I laughed quite a bit throughout it. My wife watches a fair amount of Korean TV, and I’ve seen a fair few of their movies. Koreans love watching Koreans eat. They also love physical comedy and drinking.
I loved the opening scene of the dad saying to leave the windows open while guys outside sprayed pesticides, to get free fumigation of their bug-infested basement apartment. Unlike most movies about class, “Parasite” was not sympathetic to the poor family. The rich family was basically portrayed as decent/dimwitted folks, while their loyal servant had her own crazy secrets.
I just asked my Korean wife about the accents/diction in "Parasite." She said both families have the same accent, but the parasite family speak like poor people . I asked her to elaborate on this. Here's my take: in America, a poor black person begging on the streets in a major city might have any number of regional accents, in addition to his slang/wrong grammar. She said both families have Seoul accents, but the parasite family speaks how poor people speak.
I would add this about the movie: I laughed quite a bit throughout it. My wife watches a fair amount of Korean TV, and I've seen a fair few of their movies. Koreans love watching Koreans eat. They also love physical comedy and drinking.
I loved the opening scene of the dad saying to leave the windows open while guys outside sprayed pesticides, to get free fumigation of their bug-infested basement apartment. Unlike most movies about class, "Parasite" was not sympathetic to the poor family. The rich family was basically portrayed as decent/dimwitted folks, while their loyal servant had her own crazy secrets.
It’s not really a “My Fair Lady” sorta thing, more like “What About Bob?”.
It's the norm, worldwide.
And it's more than vocabulary. How does one walk, carry oneself; relax on a street corner or in a park. You can't fake these habits. Today I was a little cold, so I stuck my hands into my front pockets. Then I remembered that a native lady somewhere had told not to do that, as it implied laziness (at least in her opinion).
IMHO, non-natives cannot be trained.
Russian does NOT have class-specific accents. Sure enough, it does have regional accents – lots and lots of them. Prestige accents also DO NOT exist, for all intents and purposes. Sure, there is something called “Moscow accent”, which is very fuzzy but then, many proles in Moscow would intone the exact same sounds as many rich Moscovites or fresh srtiver arrivals who bothered to imitate it. So, no big deal. Certainly nowhere close to England or New England.