post-dramatic stress disorder ([info]zarriq) wrote in [info]linguaphiles,
@ 2004-10-04 02:04:00
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I heard a rumor that in the Star Wars movies Jabba the Hutt is actually speaking in some obscure African language. Does anybody know if that's true?

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[info]alcarilinque
2004-10-04 06:05 am UTC (link)
I thought they just made it up. ;)

http://huttese.fw.hu/

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[info]alcarilinque
2004-10-04 06:08 am UTC (link)
Heh, I always remember this line:

"Wanta chi sa krispa kon Grido."

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(Anonymous)
2004-10-04 06:57 am UTC (link)
It's been years since I saw it, but doesn't it include clicks? Maybe that's where the rumour came from: someone erroneously concluded from the premiss "clicks occur in some southern African languages" to "this is...".

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[info]jmkelly
2004-10-04 07:33 am UTC (link)
I recall a newpaper story decades ago saying that one of the generals' lines in "Return of the Jedi"--not Jabba the Hutt, but I think the Rebel general that looked like a walking fish--says something that cracked certain African audiences up because it was something like "Attention: come over here" in the local language.

I think the usual method with those lines was not to cop a whole pre-recorded phrase from an existing language, but to splice bits and pieces from phrases in many languages together to make something that sounded cool but totally alien and senseless. Now that I think of it, this probably explains why by 1980 people were ready to vote for Ronald Reagan and both George Bushes: they were accustomed to people on the screen saying things that made no sense but sounded good.

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[info]evil_genius
2004-10-04 03:38 pm UTC (link)
I thought that was mongolian???

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[info]tisoi
2004-10-04 12:35 pm UTC (link)
By the way, there is a scene where the Ewoks speak Tagalog.

This is what I wrote in my journal on November 2002.

I rented Return of the Jedi and yes, the Ewoks do speak Tagalog. Two actually.

Here is their conversation:

Ewok 1: Ayun! Puno daw 'to! (There! They say he's a leader!)
Ewok 2: Maganda! (He's beautiful!)

This conversations happens right after Luke, Chewbacca, and the rest fall from the net and C3PO raises his head from some plants. lol. That was hilarious.
Ya know what would've been cool? In the northern part of the Philippines, there is an ethnic group that speaks a language called Iwak. They should've used that in the movie instead of Tagalog. But then again, not many Filipinos know what Iwak is and it probably would've gone over their heads.

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(Anonymous)
2006-07-24 03:42 pm UTC (link)
This is really funny. Star Wars happened thousands of years ago supposedly right? So thousands of years ago... Filipinos used to be little fuzzy bears! xD Now, they morphed themselves into humans. That's funny!

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[info]daev
2004-10-04 01:45 pm UTC (link)
One of the voices you hear in the cantina scene of the first Star Wars movie is taken from a tape of someone speaking Cheyenne, played backwards. Lucas had real fun with languages.

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[info]zarriq
2004-10-04 04:37 pm UTC (link)
That's nifty. I love the way they handle language in the Star Wars movies. I thought it was fairly clever. Finally, a movie in which not everyone in the galaxy speaks English!

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[info]jessicasedal
2008-07-16 04:23 pm UTC (link)
The original Star Wars movies were cool because for most of the movie you had one Jedi—either Obi-Wan or Luke Skywalker—fighting a horde of random enemies with his light-saber, in a variety of novel situations.

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[info]juliettepizag
2008-07-16 03:47 am UTC (link)
At one time, more people had heard the voice of Bing Crosby than that of any other human being. Part of this was due to the times but much of it was due to the man himself.

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[info]rfk
2004-10-04 05:15 pm UTC (link)
I thought the language on Anakin's homeworld was kind of Spanish-y. When he was looking for his mother he asked "mi buscas shmee skywalker". which is like Spanish with the grammar all mixed up.

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An Answer
(Anonymous)
2004-10-12 03:50 am UTC (link)
This question is answered in the commentary on the new Star Wars DVD. I wrote a little post (http://tenser.typepad.com/tenser_said_the_tensor/2004/10/huttese.html) about it.

- The Tensor (http://tenser.typepad.com/tenser_said_the_tensor/)

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Jabba the Huts
(Anonymous)
2004-11-18 08:41 pm UTC (link)
I was told that Jabba the Hutt speaks a language from S. America called "Quechua". A friend went on a campus tour of Cornell University and it's one of the languages they teach - it was a fun fact they mentioned.

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Re: Jabba the Huts
(Anonymous)
2005-03-09 12:39 am UTC (link)
You must be thinking of the SW language of the Genosians...they spoke an African language...Including clicks and such.

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(Anonymous)
2006-06-30 10:58 am UTC (link)
The Hutts speak a form of Quechua, which was the language spoken by the Incas.

Just thought you'd like to know.

Love Kate xx

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star wars
(Anonymous)
2008-10-24 11:41 pm UTC (link)
I think that is cool, my dad can speak tagalog.

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