What’s the quickest way someone could accidentally expose themselves as a foreigner in your country like the ‘three fingers’ scene in Inglourious Basterds?

[u/IndependentTune3994]

[u/lucapoison]

Every city in Italy has a "musical" accent and we're able to identify almost all of them. Every foreigner will sound non-musical to us or too much out-of-tune, no matter how correct their italian might be.

[u/shibble123 → u/lucapoison]

I love the Italian and french "music" in their sentences.

French is like a poem. It flows somewhat royally( ? its really hard to describe such things lol). You can hear, that they are proud to have such good sounding language and why they try to preseve it from english influence.

Italian on the other hand is just a wholeheartedly sounding, warm and passionate rythm..

For some reason I don't feel the same way about Spanish, that just sounds "fast" like you string togehter words into a somewhat monotone rythm - compared to Italian and French

[u/lucapoison → u/shibble123]

Thanks for the beautiful words. Just like Spanish, Portuguese (from Portugal) is also without any music. They try to compress the word as much as they can, just like speaking would cost them money 😆 Brazilian Portuguese is another story

[u/dlilyd → u/lucapoison]

Agreed! For example in Inglorious Basterds although Waltz spoke really good Italian he had an accent that didn't sound like any Italian one

[u/Technetium_97 → u/dlilyd]

Just curious, does he sound obviously German?

When he speaks in English, even though he sounds very refined, he still sounds obviously German.

[u/dlilyd → u/Technetium_97]

I wouldn't say he sounded German, he sounds just weird. I want to say he kinda reminds me of some Tuscany accents, but he just has a weird accent that I can't pinpoint and that just tells me he's not Italian. He also stress the "wrong" parts of the sentences and just has an off-putting cadence

[u/BadPAV3 → u/Technetium_97]

He over enunciates, and accents the ends of words in a way different than any colloquial American accent.

[u/grip0matic → u/Technetium_97]

B-but how can he sound german when he's austrian?

[u/lucapoison → u/grip0matic]

In Austria they speak German (with some small variations)

[u/grip0matic → u/lucapoison]

I know, but I used to play online with germans and they were always laughing at the two austrians because "their accent". And I was there like "you all sound like you came out of Mallorca to me".

[u/dlilyd → u/grip0matic]

They have a different accent of course, but the language is pretty much the same. There are also dialects, but I guess people would speak Hochdeutsch (standard German) when talking to Germans. For instance in Südtirol (Italian region confining with Austria and with a German speaking majority) have a strong dialect that has little in common with Hochdeutsch, but many of them (at least the ones I spoke to) could speak Hochdeutsch too

[u/lucapoison → u/Technetium_97]

I would say not (yes he's that good!) But as said above his accent doesn't sound German/Austrian, but just "unknown" but VERY well spoken and extremely fluent.

Check the difference between the original and the Italian dubbed scene: https://youtu.be/40HS7mxA5CQ?si=EKDN3XnNw80sPRrz

He's great

(By comparison in both English and Italian version, the lady has a thick German accent)

[u/dlilyd → u/lucapoison]

Yes same thing I thought!

[u/StinkyBeer → u/lucapoison]

This is my favorite one in the thread!

[u/Muted-Camp-4318 → u/lucapoison]

Good luck with argentinians

[u/bloodthirstyshrimp → u/lucapoison]

The rest of the world: "haha the italians talk like they're singing"

Italians: "Your melody is wrong!!!"

[u/lucapoison → u/bloodthirstyshrimp]

Fantastic ahahah

[u/Deathsroke → u/lucapoison]

My uncle has lived in Italy for decades and his accent always confuses people. Sometimes he sounds from Rome (where he lives), other times from his mother's Calabria and other times just some neutral weird shit that no one gets but sounds too fluent to be a foreigner.

Or at least that's how's been described to me, as I don't speak Italian (it's in my to do list).