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LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

Speaking German – 8 celebs you didn’t know were fluent

German is a tricky language, but keep trying and you could be making small talk with these Hollywood stars and world leaders who also secretly speak a bit (or a lot) of German.

Speaking German - 8 celebs you didn't know were fluent
Sprechen Sie Deutsch, Frau Cattrall? Photo: DPA/EPA

American writer Mark Twain famously called it “the awful German language”, and wrote that the dictionary definition of “eternity” was “the amount of time needed to learn German.”

If you'd like to learn – or just improve – your German, look to these stars (and villains) for some inspiration.

1. Leonardo DiCaprio

DiCaprio at the premiere of the documentary film “Before the Flood”  in Paris, France in 2016. Photo: DPA/EPA

Maybe he's trying to remember how to say “I'm the king of the world?”. The Titanic and Inception star may not have much call for German in Hollywood, but his grandparents on his mother side were German, he spent some of his childhood there, his middle name is Wilhelm and he wowed German TV interviewers during the publicity tour for Gangs of New York by reminiscing about his grandmother, and favourite foods (wiener schnitzel and spätzl) in fluent German. 

2. Natalie Portman

Portman at a screening of the film “Sicario” in Cannes, France in 2015. Photo: DPA /EPA

How do you say “I was perfect” in German, Natalie? No surprise that the Harvard-graduate is a brain-box – the Oscar-nominated star of The Black Swan speaks not only Hebrew, English, Spanish, Japanese and French, but also German. Being that bright in Hollywood must get lonely.

3. Sandra Bullock

Bullock at a press conference for the film “Our Brand is Crisis” in 2015. Photo: DPA/EPA 

Popquiz, hotshot! If the question was based on the German language, the star of Gravity would ace it. Bullock has a German mother and spent 12 years growing up near Nuremburg where her father was in the US military. Her German is apparently fluent, though she'll tell you it's a little rusty.

4. Vladimir PutinPutin speaking at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia in 2017. Photo: DPA/ Planet Pix via ZUMA Wire

Okay, not really a celebrity, just one of the most powerful men on earth, and, as one of the top KGB men in Dresden during the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, a fluent German speaker. Maybe his time here introduced him to the Freikörperkultur or naturism, which would account for the number of times he's photographed shirtless. Although, interestingly, in TV interviews with German stations over the Ukraine crisis, has chosen to use an in-ear translator. Perhaps to give himself more thinking time?

5. Bruce Willis

Willis introducing his film “A Good Day to Die Hard” in Berlin in 2013. Photo: DPA

Hey Bruce, how do you say “Yippee-kay-yay” in German? He might actually know. Although he was born in Germany, again to a US military dad and a Kassel-born mother, the Willis family left when he was just two years old, and evidence that the action-man star can still speak any German is thin on the ground.

6. Michael Fassbender

Fassbender at the premiers of the film “Alien: Covenant” in London, Great Britain in 2017. Photo: DPA/ PA Wire

How many beers was that again, Herr Fassbender? Anyone who has seen his career-making turn in Inglourious Basterds knows Irish-German actor Michael Fassbender can speak German (although not well enough not to blow his cover as a Brit). The man who garnered further attention for showing his Wurst in Shame has good enough German to ponder roles in German-language films and productions.

7. Kim Cattrall

Cattrall at the Olivier awards in Covent Garden, London, Great Britain in 2013. Photo; DPA/EPA

How do you say “Oh yes!?” in German? The British-Canadian star of Sex In The City was actually born in Liverpool (not Germany), but spent much of the 1980s with her second husband in Frankfurt where she learnt to speak the tongue fluently – although now says she has forgotten much.

8. Gene Simmons 

Simmons in Berlin in 2015. Photo: DPA

But can he sing about rock and rolling every night and partying all day in German? The KISS frontman is also Israeli-born, like Portman. His mother was from Hungary and, along with her brother, survived a concentration camp during the Second World War. Simmons also speaks Hungarian and Hebrew. That's rock and roll. 

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LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

Le Havre rules: How to talk about French towns beginning with Le, La or Les

If you're into car racing, French politics or visits to seaside resorts you are likely at some point to need to talk about French towns with a 'Le' in the title. But how you talk about these places involves a slightly unexpected French grammar rule. Here's how it works.

An old WW2 photo taken in the French port town of Le Havre.
An old WW2 photo taken in the French port town of Le Havre. It can be difficult to know what prepositions to use for places like this - so we have explained it for you. (Photo by AFP)

If you’re listening to French chat about any of those topics, at some point you’re likely to hear the names of Mans, Havre and Touquet bandied about.

And this is because French towns that have a ‘Le’ ‘La’ or ‘Les’ in the title lose them when you begin constructing sentences. 

As a general rule, French town, commune and city names do not carry a gender. 

So if you wanted to describe Paris as beautiful, you could write: Paris est belle or Paris est beau. It doesn’t matter what adjectival agreement you use. 

For most towns and cities, you would use à to evoke movement to the place or explain that you are already there, and de to explain that you come from/are coming from that location:

Je vais à Marseille – I am going to Marseille

Je suis à Marseille – I am in Marseille 

Je viens de Marseille – I come from Marseille 

But a select few settlements in France do carry a ‘Le’, a ‘La’ or a ‘Les’ as part of their name. 

In this case the preposition disappears when you begin formulating most sentences, and you structure the sentence as you would any other phrase with a ‘le’, ‘la’ or ‘les’ in it.

Masculine

Le is the most common preposition for two names (probably something to do with the patriarchy) with Le Havre, La Mans, Le Touquet and the town of Le Tampon on the French overseas territory of La Réunion (more on that later)

A good example of this is Le Havre, a city in northern France where former Prime Minister, Edouard Philippe, who is tipped to one day run for the French presidency, serves as mayor. 

Edouard Philippe’s twitter profile describes him as the ‘Maire du Havre’, using a masculine preposition

Here we can see that his location is Le Havre, and his Twitter handle is Philippe_LH (for Le Havre) but when he comes to describe his job the Le disappears.

Because Le Havre is masculine, he describes himself as the Maire du Havre rather than the Maire de Havre (Anne Hidalgo, for example would describe herself as the Maire de Paris). 

For place names with ‘Le’ in front of them, you should use prepositions like this:

Ja vais au Touquet – I am going to Le Touquet

Je suis au Touquet – I am in Le Touquet 

Je viens du Touquet – I am from Le Touquet 

Je parle du Touquet – I am talking about Le Touquet

Le Traité du Touquet – the Le Touquet Treaty

Feminine

Some towns carry ‘La’ as part of their name. La Rochelle, the scenic town on the west coast of France known for its great seafood and rugby team, is one such example.

In French ‘à la‘ or ‘de la‘ is allowed, while ‘à le‘ becomes au and ‘de le’ becomes du. So for ‘feminine’ towns such as this, you should use the following prepositions:

Je vais à La Rochelle – I am going to La Rochelle

Je viens de La Rochelle – I am coming from La Rochelle 

Plural

And some places have ‘Les’ in front of their name, like Les Lilas, a commune in the suburbs of Paris. The name of this commune literally translates as ‘The Lilacs’ and was made famous by Serge Gainsbourg’s song Le Poinçonneur des Lilas, about a ticket puncher at the Metro station there. 

When talking about a place with ‘Les’ as part of the name, you must use a plural preposition like so:

Je suis le poinçonneur des Lilas – I am the ticket puncher of Lilas 

Je vais aux Lilas – I am going to Les Lilas

Il est né aux Lilas – He was born in Les Lilas  

Islands 

Islands follow more complicated rules. 

If you are talking about going to one island in particular, you would use à or en. This has nothing to do with gender and is entirely randomised. For example:

Je vais à La Réunion – I am going to La Réunion 

Je vais en Corse – I am going to Corsica 

Generally speaking, when talking about one of the en islands, you would use the following structure to suggest movement from the place: 

Je viens de Corse – I am coming from Corsica 

For the à Islands, you would say:

Je viens de La Réunion – I am coming from La Réunion 

When talking about territories composed of multiple islands, you should use aux.

Je vais aux Maldives – I am going to the Maldives. 

No preposition needed 

There are some phrases in French which don’t require any a preposition at all. This doesn’t change when dealing with ‘Le’ places, such as Le Mans – which is famous for its car-racing track and Motorcycle Grand Prix. Phrases that don’t need a preposition include: 

Je visite Le Mans – I am visiting Le Mans

J’aime Le Mans – I like Le Mans

But for a preposition phrase, the town becomes simply Mans, as in Je vais au Mans.

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