Polish? Why does he speak German?
If he's from Poland, then why does he count in German several times throughout the movie??
shareGermany borders Poland
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MovieChat Forums > The Frisco Kid (1979) Discussion > Polish? Why does he speak German?
I think he's trying to fake speaking Yiddish.
I think that board of seniors at the Rabbinical School (back in Poland at the start of the picture) were doing the same thing.
He us speaking Yiddish which was a language common to most Eastern European Jews. The Amish are speaking a different dialect of Germany. I found it strange that they couldn't work through it considering the overlap.
shareTrue enough. From what I understand (as a 30-something American Jew with little knowledge of Yiddish), German and Yiddish are mutually intelligible. An elderly Polish Jew I know told me that when he was a kid and encountered Germans for the first time, he asked his mother, "Why are those goyim speaking Yiddish?"
shareNot sure if it's supposed to be authentic, but the Amish in this film seemed to be speaking pretty much standard German.
"facts are stupid things" Ronald Reagan
I understood enough of their conversation to know that the Amish were saying that Wilder was not speaking German and they were confused by this. Evidently they understood a little bit of it, as Yiddish is a mix of German and Hebrew.
shareHe's mostly speaking Yiddish (which, in one of its forms, contains a lot of German words). However, in that era, much of what is now currently Poland (its borders have been shifted a lot) was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire whose official language was German. Most educated Jews living in Poland spoke German (and Polish) while illiterate Jews mostly only spoke Yiddish (and sometimes a little Polish).
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