Re: CHAT: Star Wars and its conlangs

Herman Miller writes:

>Huttese sounds almost like it's related to the standard "human" language of
>the series, with obvious similarities like the word for "now".
The last time we discussed Star Wars languages on this list, I expressed
the opinion that Huttese was a creole (or descended from a creole) in
which the Galactic Common Tongue - i.e. the language represented by
English in the movies - was the superstrate language.  As evidence, I
pointed to lines from Return of the Jedi such as "Nei Jabba no badda",
meaning "Jabba may not be disturbed".

I haven't seen the new movie yet (tomorrow, perhaps), so I'll be
interested to see how Huttese is developed there.

Matt.

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Matt Pearson
mpearson@ucla.edu
UCLA Linguistics Department
405 Hilgard Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1543
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