By 80's Big Hair request, as a french born, i was asked to give my piece of advice concerning the quality of the french lines that were supposed to be declaimed in the episode 7.7 "Little girl who".
First i have to say that I enjoyed that very emotional opus , full of good acting, especially from Marta DuBois (sorry to heard that she passed away two years ago)...
So, Here is my little report you will be free to comment.
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif)
severals introductory and general comments:
-the little actress that plays Lily-Catherine is by no means french or from a french spoken country (her accent is clearly anglo saxon by the way). She was doing quite well for her age, but she mostly declaimed (from time to time correctly or awkwardly) learned words or little sentences . From her attitude (staring eyes and pauses), i would say there was some kind of prompter for her behind the camera;
- TS is a complete neophyte in french, that is obvious he hardly catch even the simpliest words; His vietnamese seems not to be convincing too (I tried to match what he said with phonetic dictionaries on the web, and had no result, except for one line);
- JH surprised me since his french -while limited to the simpliest sentences - is clearly understandable, with the right pronunciation;
- Marta Dubois do not say a word of french (except at the end of the episode) but his english pronunciation and tone is pretty close to what i would have anticipated from a french born person. I guess she made here a remarkable performance. From that point of view, she is a very credible 'Michelle'.
Usually there i a clear difference between anglo saxon and french: anglo saxon use much more the rear part of the mouth and sinus while speaking while french make more usage of the fore part of the mouth and tongue. For french hears, english spoken people, and especially american, usually sounds like more 'nasal'. For me this was clear during that episode.
To be continued, tomorrow.
![Cool 8)](./images/smilies/icon_cool.gif)
PS: i would to deeply thanks Styles Bitchley. Without him, this review would not have been feasible.