Re: Stargate Languages (was: Con-Names of Planets)

Hi all ;-)
The phrase, first used by Teal'c is "People of the Tauri" (It's
pronounced /taU-ri:/) and like most early goa'uld words in the story it
is
derived from an assumed form of ancient egyptian /taU/ is a word for
land or country (as in one of the ancient egyptian's names for egypt;
/taU m3ri:/ "The Beloved Land") and "ri" is the writer's assumed (the
egyptian language, like semetic languages is written without the vowels
which changed tense and mood) possesive form of the god Ra; the whole
meaning being "Land of Ra".

The film and the TV series' 1st season had a lot of "in-jokes" relevent
only to those who've studied egyptology and ancient egyptian;
eg; Jackson laments about the first 'translation' "This is all Budge, I
don't know why they still publish his stuff" yet repeats Budge's most
famous error of calling the Eye of Horus "the eye of Ra"; a book is seen
in his kit "Egypt Before the Pharaohs" - a real book which is the
opposite of all Jackson believes in; and in the series when the UASF are
trying to determine who the goa'uld was who came though the stargate;
General: "If it wasn't Ra then who was it?"
Kowalski "Maybe it was his brother, Re."
- mixing the old and modern transcriptions of the sun god's name. etc
and the "original" hosts for the goa'uld being called "Unas" - a famous
early pharaoh.

However, the "language" of the Jafa, from which most of the series'
later terms come from (eg; Kree! Sholfa, /.tSapa:-aI/, etc) is "related
to arabic" ie: made up as they go along ;-)

The thing I liked about the series was it turned the usual "The Gods
were Spacemen" idea on it's head: In ancient astronaut lore human
culture was founded by "space gods", but in Stargate lore it was the
"spacemen" who stole and aped human cultures being parasites by nature.

The thing I found least beliveable was their created writing systems and
the way they misused, or rather abused, real ancient writing systems.

Barbara