I was already pretty set on my topic, of do minions speak a real language. Doing the pitch did however solidify my confidence in my topic selection because before presenting I was not sure how the audience would take my idea, whether they would be interested or think I was ridiculous for choosing such an offbeat and nonacademic feeling topic. I was pleased to get a good response were people chuckled and seemed engaged and did not seem to be on their phones, like most of us usually are during presentations that bore us.
My idea is to talk about whether the Despicable Me minions speak a real language, i will also be attempting to translate a passage into english using the words that have been translated so far
My transcript is:
Hi Mignion and Panel,
I would just like to speak to you today about improving upon your already fantastic grammar girl post about the Despicable Me, Minions.
Has everyone watched Despicable me? Well I’ll ruin a bit of it for those of you who have not. Despicable Me is a children’s movie about a super villain who ends up adopting three sisters from an orphanage for an evil scheme, to steal the moon, but falls in love with them and ends up giving up his evil ways. To focus on being a father to them Does everyone know what a minion is? Well minions are these little yellow creatures that work for the villain, his name is Gru, these guys are somewhat like Willy Wonka’s Oompa Loompas, except they don’t speak english, they speak their own language called Minionese. Here why don’t I just show you. (take out minion from bag) this is Stewart, and no I did not name him, he’s a replica of a character in the movie. The podcast I am emulating is Grammar Girl’s “do minions speak a real language?” the reason I chose this podcast is because I love the Despicable Me movies, my friends and I were actually minions and Gru for Halloween. These movies have both been really popular for children and adults with toys, like Stewart here selling out very quickly (trust me I tried to buy one when the movie first came out, this is my friends)
I found Grammar Girl’s findings about their language very interesting and I will be attempting to translate a passage from the movie using whichever words have been translated so far.
Some examples of words that have been translated are (as grammar girl stated) :
· Ba-boy" means ''toy."
· "Bi-do" means ''I'm sorry.''
· "Para tú" means roughly "for you." (Google Translate tells me this also means "for you" in Spanish.)
· "La boda"means "marriage." (Google Translate tells me this means "wedding" in Spanish.)
These are just some of the words we know so far.
The Minions also mix in English words including "OK," "potato," “banana” "idiot." and "What?" in with their other words which some people believe is just gibberish with a few words from different languages inserted to make it sound real. However, there is no way that the Minionese words are all gibberish because there are certain words, for example Ba-boy which are repeated over and over in both movies, solidifying it as an actual word with a specific meaning, i.e. Part of a language.
Although some people would find it unlikely that the movie directors Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud could build a whole new language in such a short time, I think we have an opportunity to build on Grammar Girl’s research and actually try to prove once and for all the Minionese is a real language.
I think this is a really interesting topic because I have wondered this myself, while watching both movies, Do the Minions speak a real language?
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