Language help

[brainofck]

I need some help with foreign language dialog for Skeletal Remains.



I want their baby to be speaking baby talk in many languages. Like how in English babies say "ba" when they mean ball, or bottle, or bye, depending on the baby. That kind of thing.

I'm thinking Daniel would enjoy playing around with languages at least two of the adults spoke, so that would be Ancient, Spanish, English (obviously), Arabic, possibly French, possibly Abydonian/Egyptian/goa'uld. And Chinese, since that is the language source for the local language Daniel is studying.

Anybody know Latin well enough to suggest something in "Ancient?" Or Spanish? Or Chinese? Any suggestions welcomed. I already have a wonderful person who has volunteered to research some Arabic ideas for me.

And if you have your own ideas about other languages I haven't mentioned, toss 'em out. Maybe I'll go that route after all, if I get something good.



Oi. Doing research for porn.

Comments

[angiepen.livejournal.com]

"Ball" in Latin is "pila," the kind of ball you play with, anyway. Although note that Latin is heavily inflected and that's only the nominative form. If you threw the ball it would be "pilam," etc. If you're taking the first syllable, though, as the baby talk version then that won't make much difference. :)

Any particular words you want? It's been a while since I studied Latin but I still have my dictionary handy.

Angie

[brainofck.livejournal.com]

Cool! Thanks! And that's plenty, actually, and a good word, too, since Jack might be talking to the baby about a ball, so it would fit.

Unless you know the Latin word for pacifier? :D

[angiepen.livejournal.com]

LOL! Umm, the problem is they probably didn't call it a "pacifier." Heck, not even everyone who speaks English calls it that. Don't the Brits call the "dummies" or something?

The verb "to pacify" is "placare," which is where words like "placate" come from. I don't know what they called the thing they gave babies to suck on when there wasn't an actual milk-bearing teat available, though. [duck]

Angie

[melayneseahawk.livejournal.com]

I can probably help with the Spanish. What do you need? (It's been a while, though, so I'll probably have more luck with individual words than more complex ideas.)

[brainofck.livejournal.com]

I got some help from the Spanish speakers in the office. Like one woman's daughter used to say upa! and ma (for mas) and tete (for tetero - bottle) and popon (for chupon - pacifier) and titi (for tia). That's the kind of thing that interests me. Baby talk for baby words. Nothing complicated at all. At the moment I am just looking for ideas, as I don't have any specific anything planned yet. I thought I would probably build the scene around the results of my research. Though in the end I will probably only end up using a couple of words.

It was just an idea I had that I really wanted to do, but definitely couldn't execute on my own. You know?

[melayneseahawk.livejournal.com]

Mmhmm. And it looks like fun. I've always suspected that any baby of Daniel's would speak some sort of multi-lingual gibberish for the first few years. :D

[green-grrl.livejournal.com]

Spanish (and Latin) would also use mami and papi for mama and papa -- I believe most languages do that, as ma, pa and da are some of the earliest sounds babies make. Asking for water would be agua, almost the same as wawa. If both the guys are papi, there's no difference. But if one of them decides to be Uncle, then the baby would call him Tio, or Tee in baby talk. Juice is jugo (hoo-go). Ball is pelota.

[brainofck.livejournal.com]

Cool. I can see the raging debate now - When the baby says "Pe!!" is he speaking Spanish or Ancient? :D

[green-grrl.livejournal.com]

Ha ha ha ha! And will Sam feel left out, if they're teaching the baby languages she doesn't know?

[brainofck.livejournal.com]

Sam could insist that he just has a pee pee diaper. *snickers* Maybe I'll even let her be right. :)

I'm probably going to randomly assign Sam a language like Spanish or possibly French. Otherwise, I'm just going to have her be tolerantly amused by it all, and possibly keeping her ears open to learn along with the baby.

[angiepen.livejournal.com]

The Latin is "mater" and "pater," though, so I'd think it'd be "mati" and "pati" if you're going to go that direction. [ponder] Although if you shorten it even more it's still "ma" and "pa" so that works. [nod]

Angie