Is it weird that I didn't get "German" from his pronunciations?
Nope, not weird at all. I'm not at all certain that my theory is correct. Then again, I'd venture that I've likely listened to a lot more Germans speaking English than most Anglophones have? (Whatwith training with them)
Honestly it seems more about his cadence, spoken prose, and enunciation that I just really dig. I could listen to him read the nutritional facts off a bag of chips. Especially in the 7th episode, but that may be more how his lines were written married up with his accent.
Yeah, to me it's ... I notice the harsh fricatives and explosive sounds that are typical in German, but not English, the over-precise enunciation etc, and that's simply pretty close to how many advanced German students of English sound to me (*). We learn to make our pronounciation 'rounder' than we'd naturally do while learning English, and I think German emphasizes stops and pauses a bit more. Lastly, I think the 'melody' of German is a bit more 'flat' than the English one (less variation in frequency - though I think that last point is less typical of 'Werner Herzog Villain' than the 'Arnold Schwarzenegger School of robotic-sounding foreign accents')
I just have this feeling that he's consciously
exaggerating some of his 'few remaining little tells' instead of trying to
downplay them, like a German student of English would normally do? Maybe that's what stands out to me - my natural tendency would be to try to eliminate any remaining 'foreign-ness' in my English, whereas his speaking patterns in the Mandalorian sound to me like he's doing precisely the opposite.
He does remind me of a bond villain though, and if I didn't know his name was a dead give away of being German I would have thought he was Scandinavian like Mads Mikkelsen.
Well, there were some Germanophone Bond villains (Gerd
'I expect you to die, Mr Bond' Fröbe, Lotte Lenya, Curd Jürgens and Christopher Waltz -
wiki). I'lladmit that other Germanic languages besides German may differ from English in similar ways - I think Swedish is rather close in pronounciation (I know nothing about Danish, though)?
It does seem close to his natural accent from watching him on the Late Night Show with Conan O'Brien and when he played an alien talking about human culture on Rick and Morty.
That's what I mean - it
is his natural speaking voice, just
exaggerated. Thing is that precisely the things that sound like Bond villain to you, are to me just very natural aspects of my native language (Same with Schwarzenegger's 'I'll be back' - sounds to me like he's a bit tired, rather than a 600 pound killing machine announcing it'll make short work of an adversary).
I
do agree that his natural speaking voice does have 'a certain something'. It's not his
voice - it's what he does with it?
I mean, to me he definitely did sound like a continental who learned english from another continental, not necessarily German though. Now that I think about it maybe he was trying to sound more Aristocratic about it, being some Imperial and all?
Well, 'Herzog' means 'Duke' in German.
(*) Edit: For an example of what I mean with an 'advanced German student of English', take Trixie of 'DontTrustTheRabbit' -> She doesn't make the typical phoneme-mistakes of a beginner, like the mispronounced 'th', the 'r' and 'w'. She's
admirably fluent, grammar and vocabulary are fully integrated - make not mistake, I think she's really,
really good. It's more in her cadence, rhythm and melody. Also a bit in the fricatives and sibilants, eg. when she says 'professional'.
