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At least they got Kim Ki-duk right! I suppose that one is spelt the way it sounds!

I saw that on Twitter a couple of years ago and haven't stopped thinking about Quantum Tarantino since.

FakeBonanza wrote:I saw that on Twitter a couple of years ago and haven't stopped thinking about Quantum Tarantino since.

Yeah, that one is going to stay with me too.

And who or what is Luis Wels?

And from what region is the picture taken? My guess is Eastern Europe (like Serbia), based on Devid Linc.

It certainly has a transliterated-from-Cyrillic feel to it - "Antoniyoni".

Looking at the posters/covers, I'd guess Turkey.

colinr0380 wrote:At least they got Kim Ki-duk right! I suppose that one is spelt the way it sounds!

But they forgot the hyphen! Improper spelling is the first step in the downfall of a people.

When I started listening to the Nick Pinkerton commentary for the Kino Lorber edition of Buñuel's The Milky Way, I was expecting the frequent mispronunciations of French words, titles and names; it seems par for the course with many US-based scholars and critics. NP distinguishes himself however by finding a new incorrect pronunciation just about every instance he has to mention the same word once again; you could make a good drinking game based on each time he flubs the same word in a different way. Which leads me to wonder how many times i cannot detect similar goofs in commentaries over films in languages I do not speak and where I have to fully trust the commentator to get the pronunciation right.

Florinaldo wrote:One recent case in point for me was the disappointing Nick Pinkerton commentary for the Kino Lorber edition of Buñuel's The Milky Way. I was expecting the frequent mispronunciations of French words, titles and names; it seems par for the course with many US-based scholars and critics. NP distinguishes himself however by finding a new incorrect pronunciation just about every instance he has to mention the same word once again; you could make a good drinking game based on each time he flubs the same word in a different way. Which leads me to wonder how many times i cannot detect similar goofs in commentaries over films in languages I do not speak and where I have to fully trust the commentator to get the pronunciation right.

I hope my pronunciation of Czech words, names and titles in my various Czech-film commentaries is accurate - I’m certainly familiar with pronunciation rules (which are very consistent and pretty straightforward), so I always know in my head how the word/name/title should be pronounced, although actually getting my tongue around it is another challenge altogether!

I know I flubbed an obscure title at least once (Na laně, which I pronounced as Na lane after carelessly omitting the diacritic from my notes), but hopefully that’s a one-off, or close.

But I do make a point of identifying likely problem areas before the actual recording and rehearsing anything that’s likely to prove tricky.

Talking of pronunciation, one of my bigger challenges is Bernard Herrmann - I know exactly how he pronounced his name, of course, but Bernard is “BERnard” in British English, and so “BerNARD” just sounds weird coming from me. But I think I did ultimately go for the correct version, although I can’t remember.

MichaelB wrote: Sat Nov 02, 2019 1:37 pm But I do make a point of identifying likely problem areas before the actual recording and rehearsing anything that’s likely to prove tricky.

Yes a little phonetic research and rehearsing before having to make a speech (or recording a commentary in this case) is the least a conscientious speaker should do. Of course, in some instances it may be difficult to locate a reliable source or coach for the rarer languages.

The correct positioning of stresses is indeed a frequent difficulty. It is often possible to spot someone speaking in a language not native to them just by the misplaced stresses, even though they might not display the smallest whiff of an accent. Or in the same language, identifying the region or country different speakers come from even though they ostensibly have the same mother tongue.

I'm pretty safe with regard to French, Italian, Polish and Czech as I'm familiar enough with all four languages in their spoken as well as written form. French is actually the toughest to get reliably right (and I suspect tougher for Americans, who are much less likely to have had years of compulsory French lessons at school) - the other three have much more consistent phonetic spelling rules.

But while I'm just as familiar with Hungarian cinema as I am with the Polish and Czech equivalent, I don't know the language at all - and just to be even more confusing, their pronunciation rules are occasionally the exact opposite of those for, say, Polish. For instance "s" is "s" in Polish but "sh" in Hungarian, while "sz" is the other way around - meaning, amongst other things, that the correct pronunciation of István Szabó is closer to "Ishtvaan Saboo" than what I suspect most people would instinctively assume. I haven't recorded a Hungarian-film commentary yet, but if I ever do (and the possibility is far from remote), I might have to do things like writing names out phonetically and having them in front of me, as I can easily see myself mispronouncing them if I just left them in their common spelling.

Hungarian is supposed to have more in common with Finnish than anything else

swo17 wrote:Hungarian is supposed to have more in common with Finnish than anything else

Only in terms of their historical roots and the basic grammatical structure - they’re otherwise mutually unintelligible.

In the mid-90s I went to a talk by the composer György Ligeti who told a story about a woman who said “I imagine you find it very easy to talk to Esa-Pekka Salonen, what with you being Hungarian and him Finnish?”, to which Ligeti replied “Yes, because we both speak English and some Swedish” - before going on to explain that Hungarian and Finnish now have about as much in common as English and Ancient Greek.

swo17 wrote:Hungarian is supposed to have more in common with Finnish than anything else

Yah, Finnish, Estonian, and Hungarian all share a language group, tho’ I think the first two are more closely related than either are with Hungarian. They’re the only languages in Europe not from the Indo-European language group, which means for instance English shares more with Hindi and Urdu than it does with any of the three above.

Mr Sausage wrote: Sat Nov 02, 2019 3:31 pm
Yah, Finnish, Estonian, and Hungarian all share a language group, tho’ I think the first two are more closely related than either are with Hungarian.

Groupings of languages can sometimes be surprising. I remember when the now defunct international organisation called the Latin Union was still around some people were surprised to see Romania as a member, but it turns out that Romanian is indeed part of the family of Latin languages, now more commonly called Romance languages. When you listen to it being spoken, you can hear similiarities with Italian, French and others. Also, nearly all the Romanians I have know displayed a fiery character true to their sang latin (or latin blood).

MichaelB wrote: Sat Nov 02, 2019 4:02 pm Indicator releases four or five titles a month, and that's honestly the team's realistic limit without corners having to be cut - it averages out at about one per week, which sounds about right in terms of what's needed. Although of course the size of the team is a key factor here.

And despite the limited staff, they still manage to put out more interesting releases and satisfyingly loaded with extras than many bigger or more prolific labels do. Dedication is a factor I would suppose.

Florinaldo wrote: Sat Nov 02, 2019 4:05 pmGroupings of languages can sometimes be surprising. I remember when the now defunct international organisation called the Latin Union was still around some people were surprised to see Romania as a member, but it turns out that Romanian is indeed part of the family of Latin languages, now more commonly called Romance languages. When you listen to it being spoken, you can hear similiarities with Italian, French and others. Also, nearly all the Romanians I have know displayed a fiery character true to their sang latin (or latin blood).

Romanian is apparently closer to Latin than any other living language. And yes, it's surprisingly easy to make out the gist of written Romanian if you already know at least one of the Romance languages, especially if you swot up on a few local grammatical quirks (such as the definite article being expressed by the suffix "-ul", which is sometimes then followed by another suffix - for instance in the original title of The Child's Pose, which is Poziția copilului).

An elderly friend of mine just visited in Romania. He says he was understood when he spoke Latin.

And yes, Finnish and Estonian are very very close. Hungarian is a language which is considered to have no close linguistic relatives.

I remember on my first trip to Budapest the guidebook helpfully said "Don't worry about the language - everyone will assume you don't speak a word of it".

Florinaldo wrote: Sat Nov 02, 2019 4:05 pm

Mr Sausage wrote: Sat Nov 02, 2019 3:31 pm
Yah, Finnish, Estonian, and Hungarian all share a language group, tho’ I think the first two are more closely related than either are with Hungarian.

Groupings of languages can sometimes be surprising. I remember when the now defunct international organisation called the Latin Union was still around some people were surprised to see Romania as a member, but it turns out that Romanian is indeed part of the family of Latin languages, now more commonly called Romance languages. When you listen to it being spoken, you can hear similiarities with Italian, French and others. Also, nearly all the Romanians I have know displayed a fiery character true to their sang latin (or latin blood).

Speaking of unexpected groupings, there's a controversial theory in linguistics that posits that Finnish, Estonian, etc., share a language family with Korean, based on the fact that apparently there's some similarities in vocab and grammar. Apparently Korean speakers find Finnish more intuitive to learn than other Western languages.

Mr Sausage wrote: Sat Nov 02, 2019 4:30 pmSpeaking of unexpected groupings, there's a controversial theory in linguistics that posits that Finnish, Estonian, etc., share a language family with Korean, based on the fact that apparently there's some similarities in vocab and grammar. Apparently Korean speakers find Finnish more intuitive to learn than other Western languages.

I have heard that Japanese find Finnish interesting because Finnish and Japanese are the two languages that are hardest to learn. Your Korean connection is new to me. Man, this is deep off topic.

Florinaldo wrote: Sat Nov 02, 2019 1:42 pmThe correct positioning of stresses is indeed a frequent difficulty. It is often possible to spot someone speaking in a language not native to them just by the misplaced stresses, even though they might not display the smallest whiff of an accent. Or in the same language, identifying the region or country different speakers come from even though they ostensibly have the same mother tongue.

A good example being with female Czech surnames, which invariably end in -ová - and the diacritic on the A matters*, as it lengthens the vowel more than you might instinctively expect from a native English-speaking perspective. To my shame (since I did know the pronunciation rules, and long before I saw it for the first time), I mispronounced Marketa Lazarová for years before I heard a Czech person do it - and after I'd got over my surprise at how different it sounded, it was a proper head-slapping moment for me, because there's no reason why I should have got it wrong before if I'd followed the rules. It's something like "MarKETa LazARovAA", whereas I instinctively - and incorrectly - thought that the surname was "LazarOHva", ending in a short "a".

(*This is why I'm an absolute stickler for including diacritics in my own writing on central/eastern European cinema, and if they're omitted in the final published version, it will be because the publication simply can't handle them - as is sadly quite common.)

Kauno wrote: Sat Nov 02, 2019 7:29 pm I have heard that Japanese find Finnish interesting because Finnish and Japanese are the two languages that are hardest to learn. Your Korean connection is new to me. Man, this is deep off topic.

I thought Chinese was more difficult to master than Japanese, no?

Finch wrote: Sat Nov 02, 2019 8:21 pmI thought Chinese was more difficult to master than Japanese, no?

Apparently no. No idea of Japanese and I can't read kanji, but Finnish is suicidal.

My Polish friends assure me that Polish is the hardest language to learn.

(It's certainly the hardest language that I've ever tried to learn - the grammar is a nightmare!)