What language is Jeff speaking in episode 5 of Coupling?

July 11, 2006 2:15 AM

Episode 5 The girl with two breasts from the TV series Coupling features a sequence where Jeff is speaking in a foreign language. What language is it?

I thought it was Italian, but when I showed the episode to some Italians, they laughed at me.

posted by handee to media & arts (19 comments total)

It says on that page you link to that he shouts 'breasts' in Hebrew. The actor and the character he plays are Welsh, could it be that? Difficult without hearing it.
posted by biffa at 2:26 AM on July 11, 2006

According to imdb's trivia page for "Coupling," it's gibberish.
posted by rob511 at 2:28 AM on July 11, 2006

It's definitely not Welsh (or Hebrew). If it is gibberish he made up on the spot then he's very good at coming up with language-like noises!
posted by handee at 2:30 AM on July 11, 2006

haha! I always thought it was gibberish!

Such a hilarious episode. I'm laughing just thinking about it :)
posted by snarkle at 2:35 AM on July 11, 2006

The clip is on YouTube. I'd say that it's very cleverly made-up Russian-ish language too.
posted by ceri richard at 2:55 AM on July 11, 2006

The actor and the character he plays are Welsh, could it be that?

pedanticfilter: The actor Richard Coyle is not actually welsh. But he looks likes a welshman and does an dead-on accent, so I'll bet that you're not the first one to think it.
posted by Mayor Curley at 4:35 AM on July 11, 2006

As you might gather from my username, I'm a big fan of this particular episode.
posted by EarBucket at 4:38 AM on July 11, 2006

The girl was talking Hebrew, he was talking nonsense.
posted by Harry at 5:30 AM on July 11, 2006

Basically gibberish, with bits of Romanian and perhaps Italian mixed in. (Romanian, though a Romance language, has a lot of Slavic loanwords, which is why it sounds "Russian-ish.")
posted by languagehat at 7:19 AM on July 11, 2006

Babu is an Indian name -- formal and for affection. It probably was a mix of a lot of stuff.
posted by skepticallypleased at 7:49 AM on July 11, 2006

I always thought it was Hebrew, but as I don't speak it I can't back up my claim.
posted by ob at 9:02 AM on July 11, 2006

The woman is definitely speaking Hebrew, but Jeff clearly isn't.
posted by handee at 9:06 AM on July 11, 2006

Yeah, I meant I always thought she was speaking Hebrew...
posted by ob at 11:14 AM on July 11, 2006

Oh god, I loved this episode. Hippo!
posted by meerkatty at 12:27 PM on July 11, 2006

FWIW, when I was living in Sweden they had a guy on TV who could imitate languages. By that I mean he had the rythms, patterns, sounds and accents dead-on, plus a few minor words, but he never actually said anything (although a friend claimed to understand him perfectly). He would switch between English, Italian, German, French, etc. and it was very funny. Would love to see him perform again.
posted by trinity8-director at 1:09 PM on July 11, 2006

I caught bits of french in there. Mais, non, il y a, l'espace, etc., so I think the idea that he mixed a few languages together is sound.
posted by sixacross at 1:47 PM on July 11, 2006

Agreed with the not Hebrew.
posted by Astro Zombie at 4:35 PM on July 11, 2006

Cool, I never thought about it long enough to work out that it was gibberish. Now it's up there with Papa Lazarou's gibberish...
posted by robcorr at 5:39 AM on July 12, 2006

Gussets!
posted by onlyconnect at 12:25 PM on July 13, 2006