Italian linguists unpack Lady Gaga’s Accent ‘House of Gucci’

The gang is all here; let’s discuss.
Photo: Courtesy of Metro Goldwyn Mayer

About eight months ago, the paparazzi surprised us with a gift that keeps on giving: the first look Gucci house, Ridley Scott recounts the assassination of Maurizio Gucci (organised by his ex-wife), through photos they took from the set in Italy. This is Lady Gaga in her Patrizia Reggiani wig (?), crammed with a sizzling ripieno . pizza into the mouth of her doomed husband, Adam Driver; our big boy again, bundled into a sweater the size of the Alps Behind him; It’s a Jared Leto walks around looking like funny Dr. Phil? The construction material is amazingly exaggerated, and even these visuals leave me largely unprepared for the next clips. To watch first intro, I know roughly what to expect visually (Leto wears a cap), but mentally? That every actor in a speaking role might have attempted to recreate the hilly rhythms of English understood by Italian? It was a possibility for which I was not prepared. Straight out of the gate, Gaga’s voice ringing in the lead, hoarse and murderous and maybe also Slavic? Arrest and jamming too. What is this voice doing?? What are any of these accents doing? Shall we say a gorgeous and mysterious hybrid, but Italian?

According to two linguists who are also Italian and have agreed to help me with the heavy task of reviewing these accents, we will not do so. “I sent the trailers to my colleagues in the Italian department, all – but one – Italian. And my general reaction is the same, This is not a real Italian accent,” Anna De Fina, professor and chair of the Italian language department at Georgetown University, told Cut. Originally from Sicily, De Fina specializes in sociology. “Italian is a language where every syllable, more or less, has the same duration,” she explains. “So that’s why you get the feeling that Italian is some kind of melodious music, a good song.”

Italian is also less distinct in the sound that vowels make: “ship” can sound like “sheep”, “cat” can sound like “crib”, “ankle” can sound like “uncle” “. In contrast, English is a stressed language, like Russian: stressed syllables have regular intervals, broken by shorter, unstressed syllables. De Fina explained: “When Lady Gaga speaks, she doesn’t lose that quality, so that’s one thing that I think makes it sound strange to us.”

And then there’s another complicating factor: The Italian accent really doesn’t exist – not in the singular sense, anyway. “Until World War II, Italians did not speak Italian. Just dialects that we still speak,” Mariapaola D’Imperio, distinguished professor in the department of linguistics at Rutgers University, told the Cut. “Suppose standard Italian was something that was officially invented, because journalists and actors had to be able to act professionally. It’s something that people don’t use in everyday life,” nor necessarily (necessarily) in broadcasting, acting, or politics. Speaking Italian, D’Imperio explains, “will vary not only between regions, but also between cities. Even if it’s only 30 kilometers away.” Means to really go far on a scene. Indeed, Gaga’s character, from Vignola in the province of Modena, will appear to be different from the Florentine Gucci family, and she does, though not for reasons that have to do with dialectical accuracy. , even as she seems to be aware of the difference: “I started with a specific dialect from Vignola, then I started working on more advanced speech that would have been more appropriate in places like Milan and Florence,” she told Anh Vogue. “In the movie, you’ll hear that my voice is a little different depending on who I’m talking to.”

This highlights a relevant point: Gaga is committed to this 200 percent bit, embodying her voice nine months without interruption in which she intentionally says exclusive is Reggiani – or her version of Reggiani; Gaga never met her subject, so Reggiani’s Disappointment – both on setup and off. She even dyed her hair brown to enhance the highlight effect. The end result encapsulates tremendous transport force. Gaga can get you from Russia, France to the UK in the span of a sentence, a mouthwatering international soup mixed with convincing ripples. brrrravas. Her accent may not be technically correct – a Gucci house dialect coach agreed, told Daily Monster it “sounds more Russian than anything else – but somehow it feels right to the movie, the atmosphere is suspenseful, dramatic and fun. You can really hear her effort, and the same cannot be said for the other members of the cast. Like Jeremy Irons (as Rodolfo Gucci), for example, the sound is sleek and British and readily narrates an audio tour of Westminster Abbey. Al Pacino (Aldo Gucci) often falls into default on Mob Guy debt. Adam Driver (Maurizio Gucci) serves up something vaguely European that comes and goes – except for the moment he climbs aboard a rowboat with a “Ooh noo” swaying that beautifully mimics my grandfather’s.

But “even if you are a linguist,” De Fina observes, “it is very difficult to determine the stress.” The Italians can come up with a particularly difficult puzzle as it varies from region to region, but D’Imperio and De Fina (working from Gucci house intro) does however offer some suggestions: To try reading an Italian passage, you should keep all the vowels in a sentence as they appear on paper; give them equal length and stress instead of flattening the unstressed vowels into a generic “uh” sound. (Speak out loud: It’s called schwa, and it repeatedly appeared in English; A similar sound occurs in spoken Russian.) Put the sound “uh” at the end of words ending in a hard consonant. (Think “Roma” versus Rome.) Don’t use contractions. Any CHEAP Doll sound appears in the original position using the tip of your tongue. When you come across a word that starts with “H”, drop the letter completely and gently lean on the vowel that follows: For example, Happy becomes ‘ep-py. Understand? Okay, let’s take a look at the video:

Without the truncated R notes and extended vowels, Gaga’s pronunciation would have been short and short. The rhythm, intonation and collapse of unstressed vowels feel more appropriate to the Russian pronunciation: “Ethical” rather than “etical-e” in Italian; “Puhrson” not “pehrrrrson-e.”

Let’s look at it from another angle:

Or compare it directly with Reggiani, who showcased the full range of Italian brands in the interview below. All vowels stretch out and breathe, with appendages to cushion the punctuation; all initial R trill; no H or contractions are attempted. She scrolls her words rhythmically – you can hear them move up and down.

So you’re probably wondering: Who, if anyone, really speaks their accent? I’m sorry to tell you this, but… i’m dottore Phil for the win. D’Imperio shows how Leto’s Paolo splits his single syllables in two – “chic” becomes “chic-e” – and how he cheats, such as when he informs Gaga- Driver’s husband that he had “choose-a rrrreal firecrrrrackerrrr- e.” (“That’s exactly how Italians say it,” agreed De Fina.) Leto maintained his undulating bravado for more than 2.5 hours. Gucci houseAs time passed, sparking laughter in my screening room with lines like “a memorrrrrapped-e in-e Lycrrrra.” Perhaps because most everyone else misses the mark by such a wide margin, the one who captures it sounds almost gratuitous, like comic relief, throughout the season. big movie. But am I prepared to give him an Oscar just based on how he pronounces the word “svelte”? I am thinking about it.

For her part, Gaga suggested that we everyone is so confused about her voice – the time she spends talking to it more than sounds catchy, but that’s the point. The highlight may be all over the map, but the character she creates makes sense in the soap opera she plays: She’s engaging and relatable. I trusted her all the way – not that she was Italian, but that she fell in love with Maurizio first and power second; that she cares about both her husband and the Gucci name, but not too much about herself. I don’t know if the real Patrizia Reggiani would agree, but tasked with bringing a script to life, Gaga nailed it. Maybe we should calm down and see her in action.