Re: Info Needed: "Blade" and "Dark Skies" (longish)

Paul Bennett wrote:

> On 26 Jan 2001, 18:58,
> Paul Bennett writes:
>
> > Curses to me for not keeping up with the list like a good little
> > lurker.
>
> Much embarrasment also to me, for not reading all updates to a thread
> before jumping in.
>
> I had slightly different transcription and syllabification
> strategies, (i.e. I had {yachtu} as {ya'dzhda}) but I hadn't really
> done much of the actual deciphering, so I bow out completely to
> Matt's greater knowledge and determination...
Determination, perhaps.  Knowledge?  Hardly.  My analysis is complete
guesswork.  Anyhow, because the creator passed on without leaving behind
any notes, Vampiric as originally conceived has ceased to be, and my
version will have to do.  I regret your not having followed the thread,
though, since I would have valued your input during the decipherment
stage.

Incidentally, I think my initial evaluation of the sociolinguistic status
of Vampiric may have been incorrect.  Originally I said that I thought
vampires communicated with each other mostly in the local human language,
with Vampiric being a "tongue of lore", used in traditional
literature[*], and as a lingua franca among vampires who do not speak a
common human language.  I based this on the scene from the first movie in
which Deacon Frost is chastised at a council meeting for breaking the
vampire code:  Most of the conversation transpires in English, except for
a lengthy speech in Vampiric by an elderly South Asian vampire, who I
took to be a delegate from some foreign vampire community.  I figured he
was speaking in Vampiric (a) because he was an Elder of the Tribe, whose
use of the Old Tongue reflected his status and traditionalism, and/or (b)
because his knowledge of English was shaky.

[* In the first "Blade" movie we learn that there is a Vampire Bible,
written in Vampiric hieroglyphs.]

(Of course, this is all my attempt at a story-internal explanation.  In
reality, the reason the elderly vampire speaks in Vampiric is to set the
mood for the scene, after which the conversation reverts to English so
that the audience doesn't have to continue reading subtitles.)

Anyhow, I now believe that Vampiric has somewhat wider currency.  Tonight
I received a revised version of the script for "Blade II", containing a
new scene in which a bunch of young vampire bikers are chatting away with
each other in highly colloquial Vampiric.  This suggests to me that
Vampiric is very much a daily-use language (even among those who share a
common human language).  In fact, a close examination of the "Blade II"
script shows that there's a lot of code-switching going on, with vampires
switching from English (or Russian, or Czech) to Vampiric and back again.

Matt.