Where are the Asians?
POSTED BY: mojoeca
UPDATED: Tuesday, December 8, 2009 12:36
VIEWED: 18913
PAGE 2 of 6
Wow! Knowledge guy! Cool! It's like a history lesson on the internet!
Cheers, I'd only heard that Inuit was the politically correct term.... Good thing I didn't call any of my Eskimo friends Inuit! ;)
Phil
"I'm not ashamed. It's the computer age. Nerds are in. They're still in, right?" -Willow
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Quote:Actually, "Inuit" is just about mandatory in Canada.
Originally posted by Guantes:
Wow! Knowledge guy! Cool! It's like a history lesson on the internet!
Cheers, I'd only heard that Inuit was the politically correct term.... Good thing I didn't call any of my Eskimo friends Inuit! ;)
Phil
"I'm not ashamed. It's the computer age. Nerds are in. They're still in, right?" -Willow
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Quote:
Originally posted by TinyTimm:
But after 400 years of Linguistic drift what would it mean? If I take my 1602 English dictionary and my 2002 English dictionary..humm one hand's a bit empty here....
Yes and no. I suspect that they'll be using 20th/21st century English as well.
They're using the Chinese as a way of representing a particular type of cultural melding. Unless the idea is that Mal speaks bad Chinese then they need to get it right.
Shug
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Quote:
Originally posted by Shuggie:
They're using the Chinese as a way of representing a particular type of cultural melding. Unless the idea is that Mal speaks bad Chinese then they need to get it right.
Serenity has about 3 to 4 lines of dialog in Mandarin, two of which has "Aiyah" in it, one where Mal swears and mumbles something (it's that bad), and one where Wash tells Zoe something, which doesn't even come close to sounding like Mandarin (not that I know Mandarin, but I've heard it enough to know that the pronounciation is all wrong).
"Aiyah", by the way, isn't really a word. It's sort of like "oh" in English, but has the same meaning as "damn" as in "damn, they're coming."
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I'm sure their Mandarin will get better as the show progresses.
--- Joe
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Quote:
Originally posted by Zicsoft:
Broadcasting was the biggie, but even before radio was invented, language change was slowing down. Which is why the Declaration of Independence is still readable, more than two centuries after it was written.
We will have to add the effect of the diaspora and survival on strange new worlds to the mix. The species could end up with one or two written languages and may dialects.
Jeff Timm
Who remembers linqistic drift. "He will be here presently." "He is here at present."
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Quote:
Originally posted by Haken:
Except, well, they happen to drift back to the Old West in Firefly as far as the English language goes. One then wonders what the Chinese language sounds like.
But pioneering is not a drift it's a survival mechanism.
Jeff
Who can't tell Cantonese from Mandarin.
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Besides their bad accents, it is a nice and easy way for the serenity crew to express displeasure without displeasing the censors.... As a way of getting round the rules its quite clever and neat.
It leaves those of us who don't know chinese to watch what the character is doing, to see what they mean and not listen to them say it. Its all very clever stuff really.
Phil
"I'm not ashamed. It's the computer age. Nerds are in. They're still in, right?" -Willow
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Quote:
Originally posted by Zicsoft:
Actually, "Inuit" is just about mandatory in Canada.
Isn't it enshrined in their new constitution?
Jeff
Who notes the last "Indian" war in North America was fought on a golf course in Canada.
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Hello, everyone, I'm new. 
For those of you who want to know, the Mandarin is actually spelled out in Closed Captioning. I'd give you all the Mandarin here, but I didn't get to tape the episode! 
So just turn on closed captioning next time you watch if you want to see.
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