Questions, questions, too many questions.
January 1, 2012 11:09 AM Subscribe
(Dark Crystal Filter): Can anything be said with certainty about the language of the Podlings?
Every time I see the Podling village scenes in Dark Crystal, I catch occasional words that seem to be both meaningful and contextually relevant to what's going on.
I'm hardly alone in hearing things during these scenes. This non-authoritative Dark Crystal wiki has something to say. Here is some guys's blog on the same topic. Here is a transcription of the video captions from the VHS, again not authoritative in any way.
These homebrewn guesses are pretty silly because they either make strong unsupported claims ("Clearly, the Podlings speak Slobbovian!"), or they turn into trivial nationalistic arguments ("It's Upper Slobbovian they speak!").
Has anyone connected to the movie ever actually said anything regarding what the Podlings say?
Every time I see the Podling village scenes in Dark Crystal, I catch occasional words that seem to be both meaningful and contextually relevant to what's going on.
I'm hardly alone in hearing things during these scenes. This non-authoritative Dark Crystal wiki has something to say. Here is some guys's blog on the same topic. Here is a transcription of the video captions from the VHS, again not authoritative in any way.
These homebrewn guesses are pretty silly because they either make strong unsupported claims ("Clearly, the Podlings speak Slobbovian!"), or they turn into trivial nationalistic arguments ("It's Upper Slobbovian they speak!").
Has anyone connected to the movie ever actually said anything regarding what the Podlings say?
If no one else has answered it by the time I can wrestle the PS3 away from my resident Fallout 3 addict, I can check out the blu-ray features for you to see if anything's there.
posted by lhall at 1:55 PM on January 1, 2012
posted by lhall at 1:55 PM on January 1, 2012
One of the podlings' voice actors, Miki Iveria, was a Russian speaker. I can't find anything official, but she may have contributed to the dialogue.
posted by Gordafarin at 2:37 PM on January 1, 2012
posted by Gordafarin at 2:37 PM on January 1, 2012
http://muppetdanny.fortunecity.com/dcscript.htm
Where is it in there?
posted by krisak at 8:00 PM on January 1, 2012
Where is it in there?
posted by krisak at 8:00 PM on January 1, 2012
Response by poster: Pages 32 through 35 in the linked script.
It looks like quite a few Slavic-like words were present in this revision of the script: "seer" for "cheese," "yabuka" for "fruit," "lyepa" for "beautiful," "Kirishka" as a hypocoristic for "Kira," "razabaratyee" for "scatter," "detsya" for "children," "pomosh" for "help," "nyepryeeyatyel" for "enemy," "bezumlyee" for "madness," "pa redu" for "one after the other," "begatyee" for "run," "sa mnyem" for "with me," "dalyeko" for "a long way," "pemerchyeena" for "it's dark," and "danasukreevyee" for "tribute of blood."
Some of these look like Russian, others like Polish or Czech.
posted by Nomyte at 9:43 PM on January 1, 2012
It looks like quite a few Slavic-like words were present in this revision of the script: "seer" for "cheese," "yabuka" for "fruit," "lyepa" for "beautiful," "Kirishka" as a hypocoristic for "Kira," "razabaratyee" for "scatter," "detsya" for "children," "pomosh" for "help," "nyepryeeyatyel" for "enemy," "bezumlyee" for "madness," "pa redu" for "one after the other," "begatyee" for "run," "sa mnyem" for "with me," "dalyeko" for "a long way," "pemerchyeena" for "it's dark," and "danasukreevyee" for "tribute of blood."
Some of these look like Russian, others like Polish or Czech.
posted by Nomyte at 9:43 PM on January 1, 2012
I've checked out the blu-ray special features that seemed relevant, and will have a deeper look at some point soon, but there wasn't anything mentioned specifically about the Podling language in what I saw.
During Brian Froud's commentary during the Podling village scenes as linked in the original question, he says that they have a bit of Bruegel about their design, as well as some Tibetan; could that be what Fleebnork was thinking of?
There's a bit about the development of the Skeksis language with David Odell, in which he says that originally the Gelflings were the only ones in the entire film with any English, and that all the other races spoke their own random mishmash of grunts or what have you, supplemented by music to inform the audience. When that didn't work in test screenings, they went through all the Skesis scenes and wrote dialogue based on the flapping of the puppets' mouths. (The original scenes show them just grunting, groaning and screeching.)
Will update if I discover anything else!
posted by lhall at 12:25 AM on January 2, 2012
During Brian Froud's commentary during the Podling village scenes as linked in the original question, he says that they have a bit of Bruegel about their design, as well as some Tibetan; could that be what Fleebnork was thinking of?
There's a bit about the development of the Skeksis language with David Odell, in which he says that originally the Gelflings were the only ones in the entire film with any English, and that all the other races spoke their own random mishmash of grunts or what have you, supplemented by music to inform the audience. When that didn't work in test screenings, they went through all the Skesis scenes and wrote dialogue based on the flapping of the puppets' mouths. (The original scenes show them just grunting, groaning and screeching.)
Will update if I discover anything else!
posted by lhall at 12:25 AM on January 2, 2012
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Fleebnork at 1:00 PM on January 1, 2012 [1 favorite]