Question: As Al arrives, the terrorists run to a window and talk in German, laughing at him. What are they saying?
Charles Austin Miller
16th Dec 2017
Die Hard (1988)
Answer: "nür einmal" - literally "only one"
"Nür ein mann" - literally "only one man".
Answer: I wonder why they didn't take the German subbed version for it where they say "Wieviele Bullen sind es?" to which the other one replies "Nur so ein Fettsack" which translates to "how many cops are there?" "Just one fat guy" and is grammatically correct.
Answer: I always thought that they were discussing the fact that it was just the one policeman responding. Something about einman meaning one man. But that's my broken gcse German from secondary school.
Answer: "Neuer ein man..." literally means 'One new man." But he says it more Anglicised so "neuer" sounds like English "newer."
Nür ein Mann is what's said - Only one man.
I believe it was 'nur ein man' - or 'only one man'.
6th May 2016
Die Hard (1988)
Question: My question is about radio chatter. Sometimes in the movie McClane talks on the radio and the bad guys hear him, and sometimes the bad guys talk and everybody hears. Now there are times that McClane is talking to the Sergeant and it appears only him and the Sergeant are listening - can everyone listen to them? Also when talking with Theo about the safe, can McClane hear their conversation?
Chosen answer: The gangster/terrorists were using a set of what are called "commercial" or business walkie-talkies which have special, dedicated channels so that they only communicate with other radios within the set. These are typically used by security and event-staff personnel, and they can't be monitored by general-purpose or citizens-band radios. Even the police wouldn't be able to monitor commercial radio traffic unless they had special tuning gear and scanners. The major mistake in "Die Hard" was that John used one of those commercial radios to contact a police dispatcher and then an individual police officer. No can do.
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Answer: Based on the original film, it's almost impossible to say, as the actors could not actually speak German and were faking it. A search of the Die Hard script shows no specific German words or phrases, only vague notations such as "they speak briefly in German"; so, the German dialogue scenes were improvised outside of the script. Thus, most of the terrorists' "German" dialogue is incoherent gibberish with terrible pronunciation and grammar, such that it's incomprehensible. When they released this film in Germany, they even changed the terrorists' nationality from German to "European" (rather than insult German audiences with the garbled, nonsensical dialogue). Supposedly, when the movie was first released on VHS, they went back and dubbed in real German dialogue, but I've never seen or heard that version.
Charles Austin Miller