Gungan è Bello!

[oniecoioni]

ungan language I return after nearly a month to do a Star Wars rant. Based on preliminary results to fialleril 's Jar Jar poll I have felt the need to do a rant on the subject of Jar Jar's accent. Last I checked the leading reason for not liking Jar Jar was his accent, generally combined with other factors.

First of all, what Jar Jar speaks is not, in fact, a regional dialect of Star Wars English (what is generally called "Basic" in SW EU and fandom, but for the purposes of this linguistic examination of Star Wars and the Gungan language it shall be hereby known as SWE). Jar Jar and the Gungans are actually speaking a creole.

Time for a little linguistics background. When two languages come in contact with each other they generally develop a pidgin, a simple mixing of the two languages consisting mainly of nouns and verbs used primarily for communication and trade between native speakers of different languages. Speakers of pidgin are native speakers of another language. When a pidgin evolves and children use the pidgin as their native language those children create a grammar and the language becomes a creole. (Yes, grammar is invented by children. Grammar is always invented by children. Put enough children in a room and they will create a language.)

Now a creole has its own grammar and complex sentence structure, but we don't distinguish it as a completely different language because it still exhibits most of features of the parent languages. Over time the creole will become a language separate from its parent languages.

Back to SW, I am labeling the language the Gungans speak in TPM as a creole because it obviously has native speakers and is therefor not a pidgin and because it exhibits signs of the mixing of two separate parent languages, such as the substitution of [d] sounds for [th] sounds (ex: [dis] instead of [this]) and the use of nonstandard pronouns (mesa, yousa, wesa)and verb tenses. It also bears a number of similarities to the creole spoken in Jamaica, and I would argue that the Gungans are construed as Caribbean islanders.

The Gungan creole is not a butchering or mangling of SWE just as the Jamaica creole and African American English are not a butchering or mangling of the so called Standard American English. Nor is it a sign of stupidity. In our own world we sadly have a tendency to make judgments on a person's intelligence and trustworthiness based on the the way they talk. There are a number of stereotypes of different regional accents and dialects.

The same is true in SW, because Jar Jar does not speak SWE characters such as Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, and Captain Panaka believe him to be stupid and treat him as if he were. But Jar Jar is not stupid. He is clumsy and unfamiliar with the situations he finds himself in. In fact, he adapts extremely quickly to the completely new levels of technology and cultures he encounters.

I'm going to stop here and not go into the colonial implications of the Gungans speaking a creole who's main parent language is SWE with influences from the original Gungan language becuase I know fialleril was planing on doing a rant on Jar Jar and the Gungans and that colonialism was going to be involved and I don't want to steal all her steam. However, if she isn't, in fact, going to talk about the Gungan creole and colonialism I will probably go into it latter.


Traduco la parte più importante:


Tornando a SW , ho etichettato il linguaggio che i Gungan parlano in tpm come Creolo perchè viene parlato come madre lingua e per tal ragione non un dialetto e perchè mostra i segni della mescolanza di due diversi linguaggi progenitrici, come la sostituzione del d a sostituzione del th (dis invece di this) e l'uso di pronomi non standard (mesa, yousa, wesa) e tempi verbali.
Ha anche molte similitudini con il creolo parlato in Jamaica, e vorrei ippotizzare che i Gungan sono stati di fatto costruiti con in mente gli indigeni caraibici.