In a thread in IMHO, MPH mentions an apocryphal story regarding detecting German spies during WWII by getting them to sing stanzas of the Star Spangled Banner which no American would know.
Now in my experience, I don’t recall ever meeting a German whom I couldn’t detect the moment s/he opened her/his mouth. The accent is just too distinct. I would certainly never mistake one for a native-born American. And I lived in Germany for two years, so I am not just talking about the phoney, Hogan’s Heroes kind of accent.
My question is this: How do they de-accent spies? Was there a special Nazi language school? Is there some special school U.S. program for this in Monterrey? Do they only get spies who are native speakers or raised as little polyglots from birth?
Anyone have any actually historical knowledge or experience with this? And if you tell me, will you have to shoot me?
Well one of my friends from my Comp. Sci. class last semester had a very thick British accent but you’d never know it. She spoke in a perfect “normal American” accent. She told me that she had speech training of some sort after her parents moved to the states. So my guess is there is a speech training thing that they do to “de-accent” them. Hope it helps.
I recommend the book The Charm School, by Nelson DeMille. It is fiction but enjoyable nonetheless. It is based on the premise that the KGB gave SAM’s(surface-to-air missles) to the North Vietnamese during the war in exchange for the MIA pilots. The MIA’s were then sent to a school in Russia where they would teach KGB agents how to look, act, and think like Americans.
It is required reading in many high schools and universities, so it is not just good because I say so.
It is difficult but not impossible to learn an accent. My native language is not English and yet nobody would ever notice it. Some people have more ease than others and some people make more effort than others. But the main thing is that among the millions there is always a bunch who, for various reasons, speak the language and know the culture like natives. So you select a few from that pool.
I bet in the USA today you can find Americans who can speak any language and know any culture as well as any native.
It’s easier if you learn English from Americans from what I’ve seen. I went to Slovakia last month, and 2 of the people I met spoke perfect English: One had a northern American accent (she spent 2 years in the States) and the other had a smashing British accent. Why? Because he learned English in school, and honed his skills watching the BBC.
sailor, I think that you are correct on this, but not so sure you could always find Americans who can pass as native in a country and have the skill set needed to become a spy and have the inclination to spy against what they might see as their home country.
In the reverse I suppose it is now very easy to blend in as American, because American can be such a broad definition. Even an accent now should, at least theoretically, not be a valid reason to cast aspersions.
I was actually wondering more along the lines of 1938-1945 time period as well. Did the Nazis recruit German-Americans and then have them infilitrate intelligence operations or “enemy lines”, or did they do this with their own home-grown, native Germans?
Another example I notice that some Germans I met from central to north west parts of Germany, think Koeln through Duesseldorf, seemed to have almost a British lilt to their German. Their might be parts of Germany where the language has similar inflections to English that made these ideal spy breeding grounds. The analogy in the US would be that in certain states, the American accent is so “flat” that most Americans don’t consider this to be accented English (Brits and Aussies tend to disagree).
I recall reading once that there actually was a Nazi spy ring operating in the United States during WWII and it was busted by the FBI. The German spies had been trained to speak American English with no trace of an accent. The counterespionage had to spot them by asking questions like how the Yankees did last season.
Can you put on a british or german accent? well they do the same with whatever accent they need, they’re just very good at it. Mike Myers does an almost flawless Scottish accent, I’m told it’s almost indistinguishable from a real scottish accent.
How do they learn to have such good accents? well I’m a Linguist, and I know that there is lots of cood money out there in accent reduction… a lot of foriegn businessmen pay lots to sound more ‘American’ (or Canadian, in my case) because they seem to be treated better if they can be easily understood. Once someone learns how to ‘put on’ an accent, they can switch back and forth, just like everyone else who can do an accent can.
