Storytime!

No comic this week - I wrote one, but I decided to save it for next week since I'll be in Finland, and probably not too keen on writing one! So instead, you get a recent story that I just couldn't figure out how to turn into a comic, and a look into my other nerdy side...

Yesterday the new Star Trek movie came out in cinemas here in France. I love having bragging rights (haha, I got to see it two days before you all!) so of course I went to the first showing of the day. This is France, however, so that means the movie was dubbed into French.
Now my French is good enough by now that I have no trouble following a movie in French. I don't mind it too much, especially if I haven't yet seen the movie in English (that way I don't get nitpicky about the voice actors). Still, there are certain things I find horribly amusing, and this particular instance has to do with a certain character in the movie - this isn't really a spoiler in case you worry about those things. Now as you may or may not be aware, there is a character named Chekov, a Russian ensign that in the original series was known for his crediting all inventions to Russia, and of course his odd pronounciation of certain words.
And I was both amused and pleased to hear this preserved in French!
Yes, that's right, a stereotypical Russian accent perfectly preserved in French. I always wonder how different accents come through in certain languages, because often I can't hear it myself excepting in English. I've been told that I speak Italian with a French accent and Korean with a Japanese one, but honestly I can't hear that, and just attribute it to having studied the similar language first. But to hear this! It was all I could do to keep from bursting out laughing in the theatre.

I'm just disappointed they didn't seem to do the same for Scotty. But then I'm told French people can't really distinguish between anglophone accents anyway - it's why they all assume I'm English!

Comic #3: Improvising

Click to enlarge:

I'm lucky enough to have studied so many languages, that some that I haven't make sense to me sometimes. Meaning I was able to read street signs in Portugal, order food in Catalonia, and so on. Sometimes the languages I have studied are the ones that give me a bigger problem - I know I only had a semester of Italian for example, but for some reason I would get mad when my horrible accent would make people switch into English for me. It's not like I could properly speak in Italian anyway! Still, what was even more fun was people coming up to me and asking for directions or some such - I would know what they were asking, but either not know the answer or not know how to say it. A little embarrassing! I guess when you travel alone people are going to mistake you for a native - it's much more likely for someone who knows the city to be wandering it alone without a map.