From: "Davis, Iain E." <feaelin@...>
> From: Paul Bennett
> On 19 Sep 2002 at 15:38, Davis, Iain E. wrote:
> > > Talking about 'Earth', does anyone happen
to know why on the
> > > Stargate TV show all the aliens refer to
Earthlings (as a
> > > collective) as "the /ta:ri:/"?
> >
> > [...] it means "People of Ra" [...]
> > Somewhere, I have a Goa'uld / English
> > dictionary and phrasebook
> Hmmm. That'd be interesting to look at. Or even
> work on. :). Darnit, I wish I thought about it
> when Helen and I started re-watching the
> episodes. It'd be easy to watch with a notebook
> handy to note new words. Except I suck at
> determining what sounds are which from just
> hearing it. :)
It doesn't help that the actors don't seem to be
given any phonetic training on how to read the
language they're apparently speaking. Closed
Captions are the friend of the amateur
TV-language-degrungifier, although sometimes they
too are a bit random and tend to become
"(speaking alien language)" when the really good
bits are on. The captions on the DVDs (when I get
them) will likely be even more invaluable. At
least, I hope so.
Another minor annoyance is that the writers seem
to borrow indescriminatly from all sorts of
classical and ancient languages when coming up
with Goa'uld dialog, and then hide
inconsistencies under the phrase "it's a
different dialect", which is a huge cop-out IMO.
---
Pb