It was Italian or Spanish, and it sounded more like Spanish to me - I'd be able to tell if I saw it written down, but maybe someone can tell?

1st impression was spanish...he was speaking in tongues...in keeping with the whole "i found god" riff

I think the last word was "ahora", which would be Spanish. But Nathan really eludes me, no matter in what language.

I'm now fairly sure it was Italian - I think it was "dío" in there, not "diós".

Can anyone confirm that?

Let me throw another possibility into the mix. I don't even recall where he is speaking the other language but I'm going to throw in Latin as a possibility since the Catholic Church did services exclusively in Latin until the 1960's, thus it seems a more 'heavenly' language.

He was speaking directly to the family in the church. My guess is that he spoke in their native tongue: Spanish.

I'm pretty sure it was spanish, but Nathan's speech is a little mumbled sometimes, and it's hard to tell.

I speak fluent Spanish and I can assure you all that it wasn't Spanish. It was most likely Latin.

I'm sure G7 would have recognized it if it was Latin, as she's a Latin teacher.


I'm not a native Spanish speaker so I might be wrong, but I'm rather sure it was not Spanish. This, or Nathan's accent is horrible. G7 already pointed it out: in Spanish the word for god is "dios" with the stress on the "o" (in fact you pronounce "io" like only one vowel in this case). Nathan clearly had the stress on the "i". Apart from that I did hardly understand anything - and I've spent half year of my studies in Spain. OK, I know the South-American differs in terms of dialect, but that much?

my friend told me when he saw it on the tv the captions said he was speaking in spanish so im thinking spanish

Exactly my first (and only) guess. But since I had Latin in school for 6 years, I found the pronunciation really odd (but that's the thing with people from english-speaking countries. They've got problems with proper pronunciation of the hard vocals and all)

So that makes two of us. OK, I'm not totally fluent, but widely. And I agree it's not Spanish.

well, per Tim Kring in the epsiode commentary, that was Nathan/Adrian's first Spanish line.

O_o

Aren't they supposed to have accent coaches on the set?

Why? It's not like Nathan is supposed to be a native speaker of the language.

It should at least be recognizable, don't you think? People are wondering here, if it was Spanish, Italian or Latin. I don't think that was the intended outcome.

Why was he speaking another language at all? It was not really necessary, from my point of view.
I agree that the actors should be taught the basics of the language they are to use. There's this x-files episode with half the guys talking German and some of them had German lessons in advance and you can really tell who that was. Others were only told how to pronounce their lines. Sounds ridiculous to a native German speaker like me. One of the funnies episodes ever because of that!

he says "vi a dia senora" and his suppose to say "vi a dios senora", with is odd becouse in the traduction it says "i saw god today" and it really say "i saw god madame ".

Which also confuses me for the use of the past tense, but South-American Spanish may differ from the Castellano here. In Castellano you would have to use the present perfect.



@ Heidi: You can have a hell of a time, listening to what is supposed to be German in Hollywood movies. Nightcrawler in X2 was a similar case. Even in the X-Men comic books they make the funniest mistakes when they let Kurt say some German lines.

oh come on! his FIRST spanish line EVER. i would like to see you guys try and speak something like finnish or japanese for example and get it right the first time. I know people who've lived in a country for 5 years and still don't get the pronounciation right. and i have japanese friends who say ando sounds stupid speaking japanese cause he's actually korean. and angela sounded awful when she was speaking french. but SO WHAT?! it doesn't matter at all.

clearly in the show nathan thought it would be nice for him to speak spanish to the spanish lady. he might even know himself that his spanish isn't fluent but nathan wanted to try. if someone would come up to me and tried to speak finnish i'd be jumping for joy even if they got the grammar wrong. there are a lot fo people on this forum too who get their english wrong but we dont complain cause we still get the message. my english proably isn't perfect most of the time, proably cause i dont care. but yah.

it was his first time and it really doesnt matter at all if he got it a bit wrong. so what. it doesn't change the story one bit. now if they would have an actor portraying a spanish teacher and the actor couldnt speak spanish then that might be a problem.

Where can you see the online commentary? On the NBC site?

Heidi: Was that the Bermuda episode? I need to rewatch that in English then, I only know the dubbed version

On the other hand, it's highly unusual to have correct accents of "non-standard" languages on TV. Heroes is already special in that for having at least a handful of real Japanese people who speak their Japanese lines. I can't really comment on Angela's or Mohinder's French, but how many baaadly delivered English lines do you get on German TV? Just as many. It's a losing battle and I fight it daily.

But if it was supposed to be Spanish, it IS odd if it wasn't done better.

Or it just went to show Nathan doesn't speak Spanish properly, which, of course, he's fully entitled to.

I'd say it's one thing to have a less-than-perfect pronouncation (I for myself don't have a good pronounciation in English either, which I know) and another to pronounce a sentence so badly people don't recognize the language at all.


But hey, there is no need to get angry. I was amused but there was no offense towards Adrian Pasdar or anyone else. Nonetheless I DO think it is possible to teach an actor how to pronounce four single words more or less properly. But that's the task of the production crew and that's why I asked for language coaches on the set.


@ seacow: You are Finnish? I understand you well, to me it's also always a nice thing, meeting someone who tries to learn German (our language is not what you would call "popular" ). As Finnish is said to be one of the hardest languages in the world, I suppose you hardly find any foreigner learning it.

They could do it like they did while filming The Lord of the Rings. All the non-British actors had to order their meal in the canteen in the correct accent, or they'd have gone hungry.

Well, it sure made the scene a lot more corny.

Yep, "Triangle"'s the episode. One of my all-time favourites! They've got a lot of obviously originally German migrants doing the background roles with flawless German while the main actors (especially Cancer Man) say stuff that reminds one only very faintly of German.

That's one thing I was really shocked when I saw Heroes on German TV: That everybody speaks German. No Japanese or something. That really takes a lot of appeal from the show.

German and English are two very different languages and I agree that most English native speakers have problems with German pronunciation and the other way round. I had the luck of learning from a very good teacher and think my pronunciation is pretty good (compared to what I hear from others) but I don't claim to be perfect, either. My English is far from flawless (thought I'm learning a lot by hanging around on all the fan-boards I visit)

Still, actors should practice their lines till they are about right. There's enough time for learning when the camera's not rolling and TV gives the opportunity to do a take more than one time, too. You can even add the dialogue after shooting!

i got friends who don't speak spanish at all they knew it was spanish. im fluent in spanish and i knew it was spanish. it did sound weird but still. you could tell.

and yeah im finnish 8) youre right on it being really hard, even i have problems with the grammar and ive been speaking/writing it my whole life!

but still don't think that it matters at all that his spanish wasnt good. apparently the character knows some spanish but not that much. plus i dont think they can use a lot of money just to teach adrian to say a few lines in spanish.

and this kind of stuff just makes me angry, im usually a happy person! i have to admid i did have a hard time understanding him but i still did, kinda. at least i knew he was speaking in spanish. and i love adrian so.. hehe. sorry.

I don't speak much Spanish, and wouldn't recognize a "good" accent if it bit me, but I thought it was quite obvious which language Nathan was speaking in that scene.

Petrelli being an Italian name, and clearly recognizing the Italian "dío", it wasn't that clear to me.

Hey, but that's the solution. Nathan probably speaks Italian fluently and, naturally, doesn't bother to pronounce Spanish much differently.