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by nosianu 1102 days ago
There is some comedy in speeches of the head of state of the GDR - former East Germany - who often read his speeches from paper, and used some veeeery long sentences, spoken slowly and with many pauses. I remember listening and breathlessly waiting for the verb, to finally find out what he actually wanted to say :) Not that it was interesting, it was boring propaganda, I just found this effect so interesting. He used a "sentence melody where every single section ended high, and only at the very end, after a looong sentence, he finally lowered his voice.

Example: https://youtu.be/a5zRik-6eVI

Even without understanding the language, you can recognize the structure. Every sentence is split into short sections, and the end of the sentence is clearly recognizable by the voice finally lowering. You do need some knowledge of German to see that the very important verb is only revealed in this very last part, only then do you know what that entire looong sentence was actually about.