Das sage ich auch ab und zu, weil es mich einfach vom Druck befreit. Saying I do speak German and proceeding to make mistakes is embarrassing to most non native speakers. i bet it's also the same for Germans who aren't confident of their English or of their English accent let's say.
He speaks it with excellent tone, but there are pauses when he seeks the word. Some people's language skills are like that: excellent speakers with limited vocabulary.
@nullptr_t It's wrong. 1977 is the true year of the last one, actually. Search the name Hamida Djandoubi, the last prisoner to be sentenced to death and guillotined in France.
@@roipapypremierdunom4078 Dude the last public guillotining was in 1939 . In 1977 it was the last sentenced to death in France it's not the same thing
Well... he Use to be a commando of some sorts in ww2... Stabbed a couple of people... Had to get close for that... I assume you had to be good with the language the satbbed people spole too XD
les R surtout sont les plus difficiles à prononcer pour un anglo-saxon, et M. Lee s'en sort merveilleusement bien. Il était juste phénoménal cet acteur.
I have. As a truck driver I was often in Britain before Brexit. At the customs in Dover there are several English speaking most perfect German, no accent at all. Every time I was there speaking to one of them I couldn't get rid of a sensational amazement feeling. How did they learn, i asked. With a smile they all said military.
It's quite likely that being able to speak perfect German was essential to staying alive at one point for him, seeing as he was in Special Operations during WWII. On the set of LOTR, Christopher Lee told Peter Jackson he had personal experience in knowing what someone stabbed in the back would sound like. @@dotconfig
He says he never studied or learned German, he just sang in German and played roles in German and continues to speak better German than many people who lived in Germany for decades. This man really was a legend!
As some others have stated, he was fluent in all these languages, he has to be, since he served as both an intelligence officer to the Royal Air Force during WW2 and as an agent in the “central registry for war criminals”, essentially a post war Nazi hunter, he then went on to become an actor, this man was a true legend, he will be missed, may he rest in peace
That's that inner humble gentleman, he probably actually felt like his German was lacking to his standards, but they are so high that to us it sounds great.
Don't forget that he is actually the guy who inspired the character of James Bond. (The writer of the 007 books was actually a cousin of Christopher Lee)
As an Italian I find his accent so fashinating. You need time to tell he's not a native speaker , because of a slight inflection in the pronunciation, but his control of the language rhythm is perfect.
@@inquisitorwalmarius6650 in Italian he tells about his ring, that belonged to his great-grandfather, Girolamo Carandini, who was Italian. He also explains that he got his middle name "Frank" because of Girolamo's son, Francesco. P.S. Although he speaks unusually slow, his accent is so clean that one may think he's Italian
Y se esforzaba por pronunciar muy bien todos esos idiomas. Qué gran cultura la que tenía. Hablar en todos esos idiomas, va más allá de sólo pronunciarlos y listo, para comunicarte, debes pensar como piensan los naturales de ese idioma, entonces este hombre, había interactuado toda su vida de esa manera con mucha gente. Conocer personas, hablar idiomas, te culturiza, te educa, te hace aprender sobre la vida, sociedad, costumbres, etc.
C' est très possible de faire tout ca. Il faut rester 1 certain temps ds 1 nation & c' est faisable. Pas 10 ans non plus. Il avait ce que j' appelle " le syndrome arménien".
It's one thing to learn a language, it's another thing to be fluent in it down to the language tics, regional flavors, personal intonations, and even be able to play with the language's own rules and melody. I can't tell for the other languages, but his French is astonishing.
I met Sir Christopher Lee on the concourse of London Waterloo station back in 1987. I was a train guard for BR/NSE at the time and he approached me and asked if I knew which platform the next train for Shepperton would be going from. He’d just missed one so I explained and said we’d have to keep an eye on the departure board. Only 30 seconds before he came to me I’d been listening to my Sony Walkman. After explaining about the Shepperton services, he said: “I notice you were listening to music on that gadget, there. Anything good?” I told him I had been listening to Iron Maiden “Live After Death”, to which he replied: “A very fine recording and one of Iron Maiden’s best I must say.” I stood there aghast, truly. Cutting the story short he told me that he’d had a soft spot for heavy rock and metal for years and that he’d love to make his own heavy metal record one day. And do you know what, he did; a couple in fact. All about Charlemagne. Bloody good as well. We talked about music in general for a while and I discovered he loved classical and opera. He also commented on my Yorkshire accent and asked why was I down in London. I told him I’d always wanted to work on the railway and at the time the majority of jobs were in the south. “You moved down here with family?” ‘No on my own’, I explained. “Any friends?” ‘Not before I moved down here, no.’ He said I was very brave and that you should always follow your dreams. Meeting Sir Christopher Lee remains one of my most favourite happenings in my life and I shall cherish that memory until I pop my mortal coil. He was an impressive, warm, kind, humble and funny man. They’ll never be anyone like him again. May he rest in peace.
Sir Christopher Lee did everything, from WWII veteran, theater, movies and even sang in a heavy metal band (Rhapsody of Fire). RIP Sir Christopher Lee.
His German pronunciation was very good, as far as I can tell that also goes for the other languages. It’s very impressive to not only be able to be fluent in 5 languages but also nail the pronunciation. What a legend.
Christopher Lee was literally him. He was a badass secret agent, Nazi hunter, royal Air Force, a literal Knight, an actor, musician, could speak multiple languages. Dude had so much class.
As a Spanish I must say that he spanish pronunciation and accent are really impressive, not bad at all for a british nazi-hunter, swordman, wizard, master sith, count, dentist, metalhead, dracula, actor, singer, composer, charlemagne descendent, knight of Queen Isabel II, agent from Royal Air force and intelligence secret service.
"as a spanish" is not normal English, you have to add a noun such as speaker, national, person etc. while he is very impressive, he does have British vowels in all his languages - I get that people like the sonority of that, but it is far from perfect
Sempre fui fã de seu trabalho, pela sua bela voz e sua presença marcante. Grande ator que esteve além e acima do papel que o marcou, como Drácula. Agora mais ainda, pela sua cultura como poliglota. O italiano o espanhol e o francês eu entendo e ele fala perfeitamente. O alemão os comentários daqui o aprovam. Um belo homem e um grande caráter. Descanse em paz
Glorious man. His pronunciation in French was absolutely seemless and in Spanish, while more accented, the C's which roll normally hard for any English native were as soft as any castillian. My deepest and most sincere respect, Sir Christopher Lee. Rest in peace.
that is one of the thing that impressed me the most, since usually foreigners struggle with that one... that shows how remarkable and caring for even the smallest details he was
Same in German. His pronunciation was perfect, without any accent. He pronounced the difference between s and ß perfectly, which even most Germans do not. I am truly impressed.
@@Boredoutofmywits Yeah and? His* Spanish pronunciation was very good, which was the point of my comment. You won't see many native English speakers going all in with that accent. The sound of the C/Z, the hard R and the strong vowels are pretty difficult for them and the Castilian accent is the one that emphasizes them the most.
One of the most amazing men of his generation who possessed a life well lived! It’s amazing to watch his acting, never a confused moment, always focused like a razor!
In my opinion, one of the last great iterations of the quintessential Renaissance Man. Well rounded in all ways. An actor, musician, experienced combat veteran, polyglot; you name it. An absolute legend.
@@Ihavehadmanynames7779 Where or when did it all go wrong? Why couldn't we catch the signs? We must've realize we were drifting to a point of being rudderless! I say we, because we all knew the signs, but we kept going deeper to a point of no return. No matter what philosophical bent you bare, a little piece of us all died on the road to purgatory. I just was wondering....was it the JFK assassination or Martin Luther King, Vietnam, 9-11? Maybe by 9-11, there was nothing worth fighting for?
C'est incroyable comment son francais est bon, la majorité des anglos ont un français pourris, si j'aurais juste entendu sa voix, j'aurais pas deviné que c'étais lui
Se echará de menos su imagen de malo malísimo en todos los papeles que interpretaba con esa pronunciación única en un inglés inmaculado. Un actor que fue algo más que un actor, una persona entrañable y tremendamente carismática, con una vida digna de un superhéroe. Creo que todos lo recordaremos siempre con cariño. Christopher, genio y figura.
He said, his German ''isn't so good'' but he actually did the german dubbing for the evil king in ''The Last Unicorn'' in addition to the english one and his voice-acting was so good, that most people thought it was a german voice-actor and he sounds really good in this video here. In addition to these languages here, he also knew to a lesser degree, ancient Greek, Latin, Russian and Swedish.
Latin does not surprise me actually, a good chunk of the languages he knows are actually Romance languages, French, Spanish, and Italian. English also has a bunch of words derived from Latin, but idk how much that counts because he was a native English speaker
@@jtraptor7776 I sold everything I owned and went to Brasil for a year back in 2013. I was with a Brasilian woman for 9 years prior to this, but I didn't learn any BP (Brasilian Portuguese) as she spoke fluent English, but I heard a lot of it. 4 months in Brasil and I was speaking as a native and getting compliments on my pronunciation and proficiency. When I eventually and regretfully returned to Canada, Home of the Cucked, I realized I could read the French on the back of packaging.
His Spanish remarkably good. The fact is that he speaks with Castillian accent, which is EXTREMLY difficult for foreigners, and yet he speaks it like a Quijote.
He has an ear for language and a tongue for it; meaning, he hears and speaks with a good accent, almost native. That's a very difficult thing to do for most non-native speakers. To be able to get the accent right, and to be able to think in the language rather than to translate back and forth with your native language, both are difficult skills. It looked to me like he was trying hard to think how to say what he wanted to say in German and Italian, and he seemed a bit more comfortable in French. His Spanish was pretty good, although he was overdoing the R and RR. I don't speak German or Italian well, and my Spanish and French are rusty and not as fluent as I would want. I'm American. His fluency is really very good, I'm impressed. I wonder if he was a good singer too.
Translating is not learning a language, learning a language is like absorbing it and being able to think in it, that is to say if you are someone with an internal monologue which half of the population doesn't have. Modern language learning techniques are quite different from what the school systems teach the people, you're not supposed to learn how grammar works and lots of vocabulary and then piece those two together to form sentences, that's not how you do it with your native language for example, you just think and say and write. To achieve this with a new language you must first understand it, and to understand it you must first not understand it but just know what it might refer to, and you keep doing it and slowly you start to naturally learn words. And what does that refer to? Consuming media. Especially media where you're talked to, like youtube videos. Why and how does this work? Well to put it simply it's analogous to the way babies learn to speak. But as you're an adult you already have a language model in your head and don't need to learn any new concepts related to the world, and on top of that, despite not being recommended as the way to learn a language, learning about grammar, vocab and about pronunciation and the phonetic system of your target language will increase your speed of learning that language, your absorption rate per se, but it shouldn't take more than 5 to 10 percent of your time. Now as a disclaimer it takes thousands of listening hours to learn a language, so like you'll spend 100 hours tops learning vocab and grammar on the side, mostly in the beginning, but yes, thousands of hours. Because how many hours did you spend as a baby and toddler learning your native tongue? Well yeah, all your waking moments, so you have to imagine how many hours will add up if you listen 8 to 16 hours a day to a different language, why do you think in another comment someone was talking about how some people learned german in the military to perfection, if you're suddenly in a different country surrounded 24/7 by a new language, in a few months you'll learn it no problem. I personally have spent more than 25k hours 'immersing' as some will say, in English, which is a funny way to say instead of consuming media in my native language in the past 13 years I've instead consumed media in English, predominantly youtube. To put that into more digestible numbers, I've spend around 5 hours a day in those 13 years consuming some sort of English content. So like, if you have asd like me and can hyperfocus and have special interest than this is going to be easy, otherwise Idk.
Il suo italiano è incredibilmente grandioso. in Italian he said that the ring on his finger belonged to his great-grandfather and that he took the name of Frank from his grandfather Francesco 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
This man was a special operations officer in WWII and hunted nazis at the end of the war. In his unit, knowing so many languages probably wasn't just for fun, but mandatory for infiltration and espionage. The man told Peter Jackson how men sound when they're stabbed in the lung. A truer badass may never be seen again. Rest easy, warrior, poet, scholar and knight. Your legacy will live on forever
He also witnessed the last guillotine decapitation in France and even met Tolkien when he was still alive - decades before PJ even had the idea of turning Tolkien's tales into a movie trilogy
his french is almost fluent and his accent is flawless like he was born in a french speaking country. Incredible for an englishman who is not a native nor a scholar.
My dad came from a poor area of Kabul, Afghanistan. He didn't let poverty stop him from getting a PhD. He also learned 6 languages fluently which included Farsi, Pashto, Russian, Turkish, German and English. He could communicate fully in all 6 languages. It goes to show you that if you put your mind and soul into something, you can accomplish so much.
@@davidsf101im just wondering did he go into diplomacy or history? Thats usually where you often see ppl learning so many languages outside of of course genuine just passion for languages, or people, or travel. Also Central Asia itself just had so many languages and sub-dialects. What people see as an impressive amount of languages in Europe is the sort of standard for getting around in other regions of the world,
As a native Spanish speaker I would love to hear him narrating the LOTR saga in this language, great pronunciation and love your accent Sir. Lee. R.I.P. gone but never forgotten.
He was SUCH A LEGEND! A real life James Bond, veteran of two armies (he volunteered for Finnish army during the Winter War), an extraordinary actor, the lead singer for a heavy metal band, author of several books, and a good husband and father.
As an Italian I'm particularly surprised with his performances in Spanish and Italian! He was great with accents and pronunciation of course, but his phasing, the pauses and even used the figures of speech correctly. We will miss him forever.
Il secondo cognome di Christopher Lee era Carandini, da parte materna: Estelle Marie Carandini (1889-1981), nipote di Girolamo Carandini, marchese di Sarzano (1803-1870). Il 21 giugno 2004 gli è stata conferita la cittadinanza onoraria nella città di Casina, in provincia di Reggio Emilia, dove vissero i suoi antenati.
True, both his pronounciation and his inflection are perfect and the phrasing - though relatively simple - is effective and formally correct... he may very well be mistaken for a native speaker
“It is obvious that this contest cannot be decided by our knowledge of the force, but by our skills with a lightsaber.” My favorite quote from Count Dooku. Rest In Peace Christopher Lee.
It was nice to see him dust off his swashbuckling skills for the Star Wars franchise. He played pirates now and again in his early film career, and I was glad to see he still had the chops, so to speak.
I was born in Italy, and he's Italian is even purer than mine, I studied Spanish for ten years and he's pronunciation is still better than mine, what a legend
What a legend! Born of half Italian nobility, Carandini, Marquis of Sarzano, on his mother's side, spoke the language beautifully Actors like him are a dying breed
He actually had Italian blood too; he was descendant of noble Italian through his maternal great-grandfather who was, in fact, an Italian political refugee, Jerome Carandini, the Marquis of Sarzano, whose wife, Lee's great-grandmother, was English-born opera singer Marie Carandini...
@@mikhailabunidal9146 Thank you very much but I'm well aware of is Italian blood. I've always known it. I was just pointing out how good his Italian was.
It amazes me that we grew up with so many talented artists, but sometimes we don't appreciate it enough because we were young and only realize when they're gone. Rest in peace
I feel like German pronunciation is easier for native English speakers, as they're closely related. Similar to how Romance language speakers will sound more proficient when speaking French, Italian, Spanish etc
@@lacasadelavida292 Pensé que estaba leyendo en esa parte, quizás se le intentó dar un aire anticuado al texto por ser referente a El Quijote. De todos modos, se entiende todo muy bien, un capo
@@lacasadelavida292 Auténtico? eso no existe, cualquiera que haya estudiado lingüistica básica (diferencia entre lengua y habla) lo sabe. Yo hablo la variante más inauténtica (seguramente piensas eso), la de Chile.
Ein fantastisches fast dialektloses Deutsch !!! Meinen Respekt an diesen wundervollen Menschen und Film Darstellers des 20. Jahrhunderts ! Er bleibt bei uns allen als " Graf Dracula" und in anderen Rollen unvergesslich denke ich !!! Einfach gesagt ein großartiger Mensch 👌👌👌👌
His spanish is quite good,he kinda struggled with the "r" pronunciation but just few times some other times he pronounces them really smoothly and he nails the spanish (from spain) accent quite good ,he sounds really classy and with his deep voice it makes him sound like a really wise old professor giving a speech.
@@Ezequiel-lh4ub Yeah although some people from my school had the same problem cuz we grew up learning french so yeah. I think I’ve gotten better at it though, but had to do it on my own.
He even does the French and German accents well, he doesn't just sound like an Englishman speaking them in their own accent. I guess that's somewhat due to his role in some very clandestine part of World War II.
As a German - his German does have a slight accent but if I only heard him without knowing who he is or where he's from, I definitely wouldn't place him as Englishman. Maybe Southern Europe?
Poliglota, espía, actor, cantante, descendiente de la nobleza, solado de excelencia, único miembro del cast de TLotR en haber conocido a Tolkein, de los pocos que vivieron para contar que presenció la última ejecución pública con guillotina en Francia... ¡Este hombre no es un hombre! ¡ES UNA PUTA LEYENDA!
@@chucknorris9667 I feel like I'm missing something. Unless like, we're talking about a cult against candy lol. But I assume we're talking about real life Christopher Lee, not his characters, so I'm still missing the context.
Pero leer no es hablar,algo de conocimiento tiene por la manera de pronunciar las vocales y tal, pero hablar lo que es hablar, obviamente no sabe español
@@Kev_pencils Aún así sólo fueron 10 palabras que podía perfectamente haber memorizado o leído en una chuleta al lado de la cámara, como buen profesional que era y por el respeto que le tenía al público. No le estoy quitando mérito ya que, además de la cortesía, hizo el esfuerzo de intentar pronunciar correctamente, cosa que el 99% de los artistas de habla inglesa no hacen nunca. Pero de ahí a hablar el idioma hay un buen trecho. Yo, que tengo una edad como para acordarme de sus apariciones en televisión como invitado, puedo asegurar que todas sus entrevistas las hizo siempre en inglés con pinganillo de traducción simultánea. Jamás en castellano.
His Italian was incredibly impressive, the pronunciation of some words is very tricky for people speaking English as first language and he just does it greatly with no struggle
@@t3rmipvp if your mother is a native speaker of a language that definetely helps you with that language, probably he learned italian when he was a child
I speak quite a few languages to some extent and I can understand what he is saying in all these, but his pronunciation and ability is amazing. Doing interviews, where you cannot prepare in detail beforehand. Wow. This has increased my already very high esteem of this man.
He was not only a fantastic actor, but he was also articulate and proficient in all of these languages. I'm Italian and his pronounciation is near flawless. I feel inspired to challenge myself and learn more languages after watching this.
@@up0the0ions Actually, if you read his autobiography, his lineage is much more significant. Funny the story about his projected marriage with a swedish girl whose father was obsessed by noble ancestry and found that the italian ancestors of Lee were much more important than his own.
