[Lexicog] Humour, OTT completely

[Mike Maxwell]

While we're on the sense of cross-national humor, let me ask a 
linguisticy question.

I know a number of jokes in which people of various nationalilties play 
crucial roles.  Some of them (Sven and Oly jokes) are told by people of 
the nationalities themselves (Swedes and Norwegians living in the US). 
Others aren't, but just come across better if I use an accent.

One of these jokes concerns a Chinaman with three sons.  (No, I won't 
tell it in email...)  The first day we moved to Colombia, I found myself 
sitting at the lunch table with several Colombians, and--as I found out 
later--the SIL member who was to evaluate our competence in Spanish.  I 
decided to tell the Chinaman joke, in Spanish, with the parts spoken by 
the Chinese characters in a Chinese accent (which is of course an 
exagerated accent in English for joke telling purposes; I made up the 
Chinese accent in Spanish as I went along).

Later, having watched various foreign programs dubbed into Spanish in 
which characters had accents in the English versions (the Pink Panther 
movies in particular), I noticed that none of the dubbed voices used an 
accent.  I therefore suspect my Chinese accent in Spanish just sounded 
strange; Chinese people in Spanish-dubbed shows don't have accents, no 
matter how strong their accent is in the English original.  So my 
hearers at the lunch table probably just thought I was weird.

I've seen several movies dubbed into English where actors were given 
accents; Das Boat stands out as a very good example.  Do people ever 
speak with accents in dubbed-in movies in other languages?
-- 
	Mike Maxwell
	Linguistic Data Consortium
	maxwell at ldc.upenn.edu


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