Jim Henson is called Henson (duh) do I guess he hails from Swedish stock. The melody of the chef's intro song sounds eerily authentic to me. Perhaps a suedophone relative tried to imbibe little Jimmy with some heritage by singing traditional children's song to him and the melody and overall prosody stuck.
The nonce words (English with Scandiacritics) are a bit grating, but the sing-song quality of the Swedish chef is much appreciated by Swedish speakers.
Once in our fellowship meeting, the pastor had a game where one was supposed to pronounce RSVP correctly. Naturally, he had not done any prior research and thus merely asked the audience, "Does this sound French to you?" to decide the winner, leading to the guy who actually pronounced it right not winning due to unpopularity.
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It is something like airr-ess-vay-pay.
But RSVP is part of the standard English vocabulary and it is therefore quite alright to say arr-ess-vee-pee like everybody else. If you are going to say it in full, then a good accent does become a pressing matter.
- Most of the Wesen names in Grimm are in Faux-German, usually two Real Life words smashed together in an illogical manner. For example, Monroe is a Blutbad. By itself, the word is nonsensical. By breaking it down, you get "Blut" ("blood") and "Bad" ("bath"), which is supposed to mean "bloodbath". Additionally, Monroe insists that the correct pronunciation of the plural form is Blutbaden not Blutbads.
Blutbad is an actual German word, and the correct translation of bloodbath. There are probably valid examples from that show but this isn't one of them. (Also, the plural form would be 'Blutbäder'.)
The Thinker and The Thunker
The "Japanese" villain in the 1940s Batman serial is named Tito Daka. Except the ti sound does not exist in Japanese phonetics (the closest is "ち/チ", usually romanized as chi).
Japanese do have "Ti", pronounced like English "tea" rather than "chee" as in "cheetah". It's written with normal sized "te" and a small "i". Using katakana it's ティ
It's perfectly possible this Tito person choose that name just to sound cool. Even if it's gibberish. Just like my friend chooses the name "Hayanaka Tomorashii" once while playing RPG.
So what should I do? Delete it?
I am I, the ninth alphabet Hide / Show Replies
That is a possible explanation for why that name is used, but unless there is proof it's not a good reason to remove the example. Plus, you could have a Watsonian versus Doylist debate over the name being chosen in universe for coolness and by the author for this trope.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
I gotta say, the "Idol Talk" entry's been bugging me for a time. Maybe it's because the liner notes for the CD it's on have the lyrics not only in French, but in Japanese (though written in katakana for some reason) on the facing page. It may be random phrases ("a little bit of blue" and such), but I don't get what apparently makes it "French-ish".
I'm no Arabic-speaker but the frantic yelling in the background of the Alpha Protocol intro (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SBqT0TBHQ4)
sounded rather suspicious to me. Can any speakers of the language confirm whether those were real lines or if Obsidian was just cutting corners?
Cleric of Banjo
Thanks to whoever added the Swedish Chef as the page picture. Great choice.
Edit, edit, edit, edit the wiki
Could someone tell me more about the supposed Egyptian in The Mummy movies being mangled Arabic? Apparently there was a real-world professional Egyptologist involved in the movie, Dr. Stuart Tyson Smith, who reconstructed spoken ancient Egyptian language.
Exactly. I've got a few semesters of Egyptology under my belt - and I could pretty much understand what they said. I was quite amazed. With all due respect, this entry is rubbish and needs to be deleted.
To elaborate on this - we've got a pretty good idea what Ancient Egyptian once sounded like, partly because of the Coptic language, which is simply the latest version of the same basic language. The only trouble is, like with most semitic languages and their native alphabets, that the Ancient Egyptians didn't write down vowels. The Copts use what is basically the Greek alphabet plus seven new letters that are needed because Coptic has sounds Greek doesn't.
MagBas
- Also, Ladd Russo might be an example of this. Lad wouldn't be that odd of a nickname, especially for a guy whose kind of a Psychopathic Manchild, but not only is it spelled Ladd here, it is actually his proper name.
Regarding Star Trek IV and the Finnish-speaking whalers, there are some two to eight thousand speakers of local Finnish dialects in northern Norway, so a whaler speaking "bad Finnish" would not be out of the question. (The numbers are unreliable, from Wikipedia, which quotes the Norwegian 2005 census; exact number depends on what level of proficiency is accepted.)
About Fay's language in Tsubasa manga; He's native words are written *mostly* in cyrillic and makes absolutely no sense. He's first "native" sentence in manga can be transcribed as:
Yu(square)chyueip(is less than)u ktsph!! shef(dolar sing) i
Also, all acute sings are on nonsensical positions.
Edited by 11wizards
@/MoonChild02
Removed the following: There's also the town of Laguna Wood, located nowhere near a lagoon. ...Or woods, for that matter. Apparently they can't even get their own language right.
Reason for removal: The above is not true. Laguna Wood might seem like this, but it actually used to be part of Laguna Hills, which used to be part of Laguna Canyon, part of Laguna Beach. The region was originally known to the Spanish as "La Cañada de Las Lagunas" which means "The Canyon of the Small Lakes", in reference to two lakes found near the head of Laguna Canyon. The "woods" part comes from the nearby Aliso/Wood Canyons Regional Park and Crystal Cove State Park, both of which were also part of that same La Cañada de Las Lagunas, and both of which include woodland.
Edited by MoonChild02
•His Dark Materials: Tartar mercenaries speak a language that sounds like Russian. Justified: 1) Most movie audiences have an idea what Russian sounds like. Few know what Tartar sounds like. 2) It is common for mercenaries to learn standard military commands. 3) There are bound to be border areas where people speak Tartar with a Russian accent or Russian with a Tartar accent.
The Wall Banger is making the Tartars LOOK like Russians. Don't they have a warddrobe department?
I've actually figured out how they got the nonsensical gibberish on the "MOTO" sign featured as the page image. And it's utterly ridiculous how they ended up with this.
If you take "MOTO", add 128 to each byte, and then decode that as Shift-JIS, you end up with "ﾍﾏﾔﾏ". And I'm sure there's some kana font out there that puts the kana at x-128 so they're accessible via ASCII keyboard.
Still doesn't explain why it's backwards, though...
Edited by CodeMan38
On the subject of the German "Handy", I heard somewhere that in California, people are actually starting to use that word, too. Any Californians care to falsify?
This one (under Literature) looks bogus to me:
- In The Phantom Of The Opera (yes, it was originally a novel), Christine is said to be Swedish. While Swedish girls named Christine are not unheard of (though "Christina" is the more common form), her last name, "Daae", is definitely Danish.
So a character has a name which is half Swedish, half Danish; so what? This kind of thing happens all the time in Real Life; I have a pair of nephews called Stuart and Duncan McCormick, first names Scottish, last name Irish (the Scottish branch of the clan is called McCormack) — and they're both English, and to my knowledge have never been anywhere near Scotland or Ireland.
Edited by 92.40.199.22
It would've been funny if the folders' names were in Mock Swedish. Like if they were accented. Also, actual Swedes think Swedish Chef actually sounds more Norwegian than Swedish.
Edited by MrStranger616