Actually, I have no idea how many American actors speak German! I also don’t know how many English actors speak German!
As a young child in Germany I thought they all do. Then, as I got older, I found out they don’t. The films get dubbed. I never knew how John Wayne sounded for real, or Tony Curtis, or Roger Moore, or Sylvester Stallone, or any others …
This isn’t particularly good for Germans who are learning English (although nowadays you can watch a lot more films with the original voices than you could then). When I moved to England and started watching English or American films, I was stunned to hear all the different accents and words. I have to admit, I didn’t know American English sounded different to British English.
But, having films dubbed into German can be an advantage for those who are learning German, because you can watch your favourite films AND learn German at the same time.
Start with YouTube. Think of which films or TV programmes you like and then try and find the German versions. Just type the name of the film and the word deutsch, that should do. Whole films are not too easy to find, but you might be lucky with older ones.
I did a quick search and found complete films in German, but, as often happens on YouTube, they got taken down, so I had to remove them again from my post.
If you are looking for old classics you might find the whole film in German. For modern ones you should find trailers or snippets of the films, which might be enough for you … and if you wanted to see the whole film in German, there’s amazon (or amazon.de) where you should be able to buy them.
Have you watched any ‘foreign’ films in German? What did you think? Which ones did you like/ not like?
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