Talk:Language in the Twelve Colonies/Archive1

Valley Girl Accent[edit]

Day and I believe that Pythia likely spoke with High rising terminals, also known as a "valley girl accent". We have concluded this based on the fact that no less than 67% of the direct quotes from her book of prophecy begin with the coordinating conjunction "and", as in the following passage:

"And, like, the lords anointed a leader to like, guide the Caravan of the Heavens to their new homeland?, and, like, unto the leader they gave a vision of serpents numbering two and ten?, as like, a sign of things to come?, which is like, totally spooky. And then, like, the Arrow of Apollo will open the Tomb of Athena, which is totally boss, but Zeus like, got all uppity and warned the leaders of the twelve tribes that any return to Kobol would exact a price in blood, which is totally gross, 'cause blood is gross, y'know? And like, a real bummer, since Kobol is hot shit."

So say we all. --Peter Farago 20:19, 17 September 2005 (EDT)

NO, that was meant to sound religious, in the tone of "And the number shall be "three". "Four" be too many, and "two" be too few (unless though then proceedeth to "three"). "Five" is right out. ---Ricimer, 17 Sept, 2005

The effect is, as noted, somewhat different when you read them all out in a list. --Peter Farago 20:39, 17 September 2005 (EDT)

Damn both of you. My deykoard is ruimed from spittake effect with kola! Spencerian 18:03, 23 September 2005 (EDT)

You should read the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle sometime; half of the sentences begin with "and". The thought of dark-age Anglo-Saxon monks speaking with valley-girl accents is very jarring. --Saforrest 23:07, 10 February 2007 (CST)

Sanskrit to do[edit]

Link to credible text repository & audio recording.
Transliterate Sanskrit properly, using IAST. --Peter Farago 00:53, 14 November 2005 (EST)

Hopefully the Don Davis sources may be of help to others in further translation from his Matrix Revolutions tracks (noted in our article now). Enlightening stuff--I use the "Navras" track and its chant in my daily workouts--gets my heart rate up. I was wondering why Elosha's chant seemed so damned familiar, and now I know why. Wild how my favorite SF topics and music merge like this. Speaking of which, I think a music article on BSG will be due sometime... --Spencerian 10:09, 14 November 2005 (EST)

Am I the only one who finds this matrix stuff to be badly off-topic? Davis's transliteration isn't very good, either. --Peter Farago 14:04, 14 November 2005 (EST)

I'm going to strike this. If anyone wants to make a note of the coincidence on the references page, that would be fine. --Peter Farago 21:12, 14 November 2005 (EST)

Other Accents[edit]

What about all of the Canadian accents? I'm no linguist, but the way Tigh speaks sounds very different to the way Adama speaks. Besides, many characters on the show are played by Canadian actors like Aaron Douglas, Tricia Helfer, and Tahmoh Penikett, each with varying degrees of accent. --Drumstick 19:51, 17 January 2006 (EST)

Many Canadian accents are very similar to the Midwestern SAE used in Hollywood. If you can name a character with a particularly strong accent, I'd be happy to identify them here, but Hogan, Douglas, Helfer and Penikett don't seem to fit the bill.

Note that place of origin and accent do not necessarily coincide - nobody would claim that Lee Adama speaks with a British Accent, although Jamie Bamber certainly does. --Peter Farago 20:32, 17 January 2006 (EST)

I've always felt that Hogan's accent is somewhat obvious, but again, I'm not much experienced with Canadian-accented English. (I only know two or three Canadians myself.) Besides, you make a good point: even if Hogan's accent is strong enough to be considered noticable, it is no where near as different from SAE as, say, Baltar's. Drumstick 21:35, 17 January 2006 (EST)

For me, Tigh's just got a few words that stick out. Unfortunately, the only word that comes to mind off the top of my head is one that doesn't really exist: Kobol. Everyone else says it as if it were some American saying Co-Ball (['kou.'bol]) or something (equal stress on both syllables), whereas he seems to say ['kou.bl] (with the syllabic l at the end). That's hack-IPA, there, because I've yet to take the time to figure out the way the thingie for it works, here. --Day 23:51, 17 January 2006 (EST)

Michael Hogan may be Canadian, but his accent sounds to my ears more like American Irish. The Canadian accent at any rate owes a lot to Celtic influences (that "aboot" that Canadians say is straight from Scotland/Northern Ireland), so it's possible that it's Canadian but it doesn't sounds like Canadian accents that I'm familiar with. The name "Tigh" is Gaelic for "house". He's also a drinker. So my sense is that his character has been outfitted with a Scots/Irish-American persona. For what it's worth, I'm a Scot living in the States myself, and profoundly lacking in confidence in the average American's ability to recognize accents. I'd say 95% of Americans guess that I'm Irish, when no one from the UK or Ireland would make that mistake.--Haecceity

I am Canadian, and Hogan does have a distinctly Canadian accent. It's hard to pin it down specifically, but I would guess northern or eastern Ontario: if I'm right, the Irish comments were right on, as eastern Ontario was heavily settled by Irish immigrants, though the accent has evolved a bit since then. --Saforrest 22:58, 10 February 2007 (CST)

Ah, Michael Hogan is from Kirkland Lake! That explains the accent. --Saforrest 23:00, 10 February 2007 (CST)

Texas Accent[edit]

Y'know, Baltar's Six definitely refers to his "nucular device" in "Epiphanies". --Peter Farago 14:49, 21 January 2006 (EST)

Actually, that's not a Texas thing. We talked about that specifically in one of my classes, since that's such a common misconception due to G. W. Bush's hailing from our state and and pronouncing it thus. Apparently that's common in many Southern dialects (as in "The South" which includes states as far north as Virginia, but not, say, New Mexico). Not that Texas is really excluded from that list, I just thought I'd point out that it's more common than many city-dwellers think (including myself before I attended the afore mentioned lecture). Personally, I say it "NEW-clee-er" only slightly more often than "NEW-cue-ler". I feel like I"m rambling on, so I won't go into what factors contribute to a dialect switching the L and the following vowel in this word. --Day 23:57, 21 January 2006 (EST)

- - PREACH! Ramble on, my friend. The mispronunciation of "NEW - clee - ar" as "NUKE - yoo - lar" is quite possibly my biggest language-related pet peeve, and it warms my heart to learn that there are those out there whose minds are open to re-education on the matter of nit-picky pronunciation issues, and furthermore, who would spread the word after learning something new? Very refreshing. To be honest, I have something of a Six/Tricia Helfer wannabe complex, and it actually makes me cringe and hurt a little inside every time I her her utter those three errant syllables, as if the miniseries kickoff infanticide-genocide double-whammy wasn't enough to alert me that my heroine was, perhaps, less than perfect... ;) I think you're all pretty fabulous for noticing *and* for the informative commentary that followed (and even managed to get a few W jibes in - excellent!). --omg octagons!! 14:19, 16 November 2006 (CST)

Sounding off for a minute: the pronunciation is officially "New-clee-er", and Bush is yet again and embarrassment for pronouncing it wrong, then refusing to correct himself because he believes that he is infallible. --Ricimer

See, now you're gonna start arguing right and wrong with a descriptive linguist. We're not your prescriptive Highschool English teacher. *wink* --Day 15:29, 22 January 2006 (EST)

PREACH! Ramble on, my friend. The mispronunciation of "NEW - clee - ar" as "NUKE - yoo - lar" is quite possibly my biggest language-related pet peeve, and it warms my heart to learn that there are those out there whose minds are open to re-education on the matter of nit-picky pronunciation issues, and furthermore, who would spread the word after learning something new? Very refreshing. To be honest, I have something of a Six/Tricia Helfer wannabe complex, and it actually makes me cringe and hurt a little inside every time I her her utter those three errant syllables, as if the miniseries kickoff infanticide-genocide double-whammy wasn't enough to alert me that my heroine was, perhaps, less than perfect... ;) I think you're all pretty fabulous for noticing *and* for the informative commentary that followed (and even managed to get a few W jibes in - excellent!). --omg octagons!! 14:24, 16 November 2006 (CST)

It should be noted, to offset any non-germane commentary on the current president, that President Bush is not the only one who has difficulty in pronouncing "nuclear." I spent some minutes in childhood laughing at this. --Spencerian 15:38, 16 November 2006 (CST)

Names[edit]

I don't think its worthwhile to discuss the "meaning" of names that were borrowed from TOS here. --Peter Farago 23:17, 15 March 2006 (CST)

Not sure that's entirely true (obviously :-) ), since in several cases Larson clearly borrowed those names from Hebrew/Greek himself, deliberately, and RDM is following in his footsteps.--Uncle Mikey 23:20, 15 March 2006 (CST)

I think we need to edit down "Names" a lot for relevance/concision. --The Merovingian 23:58, 15 March 2006 (CST)

I can accept that—some days I'm good at concision, other days, not so much. I'd actually originally intended to merely provide a couple of key examples, and I kinda got carried away :-)--Uncle Mikey 10:14, 16 March 2006 (CST)

By the way, Merv—thank you for your additions/clarifications to the names. And you may be right about the Roslin entry not really being highly relevant. I'll admit I just thought it was an amusing coincidence. And it may be more relevant than you think. The Cylons are clones, of a sort (albeit not clones of real human beings, but of 12 synthesized templates), and a Cylon-hybrid child saved Roslin's life... OK. It's a stretch :-) I can be convinced to remove the Roslin entry without much arm-twisting.--Uncle Mikey 13:21, 16 March 2006 (CST)

Well RDM saying he deliberatley chose Dualla and Gaeta's names knowing their meaning is from the podcast of "Final Cut"; I think the Zarek thing is from the companion book. --The Merovingian 17:08, 16 March 2006 (CST)

French in the Colonies[edit]

I wanted to point out that we recently realized that french is a spoken language in at least some of the Colonies. This is the first real language, other than english, that we see as present beyond accentuation. I guess you'll want proof? Here it is.

On the Very top of the chalk board are the words :

Aller ("to go")

Avoir ("to have")

Etres ("to be")

Three verbs of the French Language. Just Thought I'd mention it, since as far as I remember there is no other Earth Based Language which is seen beyond certain accents. --Sauron18 04:37 June 06 2006

Nice catch, Sauron. Actually, the prayer chant sung by Elosha at the end of the miniseries is a Sanskrit prayer, so that's two possible languages in the Colonies outside the accented suggestions. Your discovery should be an interesting one to add. Also, we see "NaOH", which I think is the chemical name for ammonia...curious that the Colonials use our chemical naming process, too... --Spencerian 13:22, 6 June 2006 (CDT)

sodium hydroxide ^_^ --Mercifull 13:33, 6 June 2006 (CDT)

It looks like it's part of an equation. X + NaOH yields -> Y. This does appear to be the first written instance of foreign language. --Steelviper 13:36, 6 June 2006 (CDT)

Ugh...stereochemistry (shudder). Oh, well the only other "french" thing we've got in BSG is when Stinger says "esprit de corps" in "Pegasus", but I think that and the LDYB II blackboard thing are just mistakes. --The Merovingian ^{(C - E)} 15:59, 6 June 2006 (CDT)

I don't think they're any more mistakes then talking of dogs horses and such. There's no reason why languages other than english can exist within the Colonies. Might even be a second language to them since they're teaching it to preschoolers--Sauron18 17:05 June 06 2006

Very nice find, Sauron. --Peter Farago 20:39, 6 June 2006 (CDT)

Clean-Up[edit]

Anything in particular, or just in general? I always look at an article's talk page when I see a delete or clean-up tag and I'm often annoyed because the tagger hasn't posted about why they tagged. I'm not looking for an exhaustive list, just maybe the direction you think the article should be headed or something. --Day ^{(Talk - Admin - SotS)} 02:28, 19 July 2006 (CDT)

Sorry, I thought I'd be able to get to this myself but I'm juggling 5 projects; I just meant it as a reminder tag for myself like 2 hours later. Basically a few new edits (the most recent ones) specifically in the "name origin" section sounded like too much speculation; I mean "well, Adama could stem from the Greek "Adamas"..." when we know that Glen Larson originated "Adama" as it sounds like "Adam". I'll get to this in a minute. --The Merovingian ^{(C - E)} 10:12, 19 July 2006 (CDT)

Done. Finished cleanup. --The Merovingian ^{(C - E)} 12:17, 19 July 2006 (CDT)

I accept what you say about my "speculation" on the derivation of the name "Adama" but you've pretty much removed all the others, including my observation on the the name "Helena." As it happens, I happen to think that my reference to the Emperor Constantine's mother is more apt than Helen of Troy, because (according to the admittedely apocryphal Golden Legend of Jacopo da Varagine) Helena was a ruthless proselyte who wasn't remotely concerned who or how many people she had killed in her religious and political zeal for Imperial Christianity, especially if they weren't Christians (and for her bloodthirsty piety she was later made a Saint of the Orthodox Church) Helen of Troy however was (in all probability) nothing more than an archaic-period poetic device for a casus belli. The character traits of Empress Helena seem far more appropriate to Admiral Cain's personality than do those of the adulterous Face that launched a Thousand Ships. Of course, it could be just a coincidence, but in a show loaded with mythological and historical references, without asking the writers, we'd never know for sure, and sometimes even they might not really know why they use a reference; artistic works are often full of imagery and symbolism that even the work's creator isn't fully aware of the meaning of. That's why there are art historians. - Tawakalna Q'ubt ut-Allah.

There is a level of permissable speculation, but these other things you were saying were so obscure I don't think they are relevant, or worth including. --The Merovingian ^{(C - E)} 13:58, 19 July 2006 (CDT)

I don't see the significance of most of these edit reversions of Tawakalna's contributions, Merv. The Adama speculation is no less interesting than what can be found in "The Matrix" character name studies (given that no explanations have been, or probably will be forthcoming about them). Speculative: yes. Factual or interesting: (as far as all name and word origins go): Yes. While "Helena" might have been picked out of a hat by the writers, it nonetheless has an interesting comparison to history and/or mythology. Tawakalna obviously has a good grasp of this history, so unless you have a better source, I recommend restoration of the Adama, Tigh, Cain and Agathon edits. --Spencerian 15:05, 19 July 2006 (CDT)

Well if you feel it was okay, yeah, add it back. --The Merovingian ^{(C - E)} 16:40, 19 July 2006 (CDT)

My two cents: I find practically none of this speculation interesting or insightful. The Matrix comparison is a bad one, since I don't find that line of inquiry interesting, either. --Peter Farago 14:47, 20 July 2006 (CDT)

Well, that's two to one against, so let's just leave it shall we? It was only an observation after all; if people really find such speculation useless to the point of being offensive, then it's hardly worth my time to carry on with something that's clearly creating hostility. - Tawakalna

Well it wasn't offensive, and you could put it back if you want. --The Merovingian ^{(C - E)} 09:26, 21 July 2006 (CDT)

Starbuck's Tattoos[edit]

Kattee Sackhoff has two tattoos with a non-English language. One is the Latin "bona fiscalia" (public property). That fits nicely with the other Latin names on the show. Another is the Japanese Kanji for "choice" on the back of her neck. Maybe those should be added? There could be a new title like "non-English languages" with that, the French noted above and also the Sanskrit in Elosha's prayer --Serenity 12:28, 26 September 2006 (CDT)

Those are noted on Tattoo at present (though I thought that article might be disappearing... I could be wrong). I'm guessing that those aren't intended to be visible onscreen, given the efforts they seem to take to conceal them, but they are visible at times. That's a tough one. --Steelviper 12:33, 26 September 2006 (CDT)

I know that they are on both Kattee's page and the tattoo one. They might try to hide them now and then, but they are clearly visible several times. The only one they really cover up is the crucifix. I found the Japanese one to be actually more visible once she switched to the ponytail. It's not just one or two times and I for one, don't try to explain them away as production errors or something --Serenity 12:45, 26 September 2006 (CDT)

How many accents does D'anna Biers use?[edit]

Well, I just finished indulging a random little craving I had for "Final Cut," and all I heard was Kiwi, Kiwi, Kiwi. I'm not at all sure who this 'second' copy of D'anna who uses the Americanish voice is - does the sentence refer to whoever we see in the theatre watching the movie at the very end, or is there something I'm spacing on? As far as I know, there's never any mention of another copy who, as the section states, lives on Cylon-Occupied Caprica, and it never occurred to me that the D'anna at the Cylon film festival was actually an additional version. I guess it's conceivable that the movie premiere was on Caprica, but do we ever hear anyone say that? If memory serves me, the next time we see D'anna isn't until "Downloaded," and the article states that all post-DL'ed D'anna's only speak with a NZ accent. So, even if I'm a space cadet and missed the part where we learned about another D'anna on Caprica in FC, I still don't really notice a noticeable change in her accent during the few words the "other" copy says right before the episode ends. So, if I'm just missing something obvious here and everyone else knows which "Second" D'anna is being described in this subsection, would anyone mind either "translating" for me so I can catch up with reality? Or perhaps rephrase the first few sentences so that an episode title is used as a reference point? And maybe substitute names for "her" and "she," etc.? Because I'm starting to wonder if I'm crazy like Gaius, here, and I can't figure out how to put all the pieces together on my own! And if nobody else hears another accent or remembers two D'anna models in FC, should we just delete the Kiwi section or reduce it to one sentence? --omg octagons!! 06:47, 17 November 2006 (CST)

She is a different Three, she is in Caprica, as the place is labelled as "Cylon-Occupied Caprica". Also, the Three we see in Caprica in "Downloaded" is not D'Anna Biers. --Sauron18 07:07, 17 November 2006 (CST)