March 15, 2003

CITYSPEAK.

This page from the FAQ of a site devoted to the movie Blade Runner has a detailed analysis of the multilingual "Cityspeak" ("a mixture of words and expressions from Spanish, French, Chinese, German, Hungarian and Japanese") used in the movie. Sample:

Gaff: Monsieur, azonnal kövessen engem bitte. [French-Hungarian-German: "Sir, follow me immediately please!" (Thanks to eMU for translating the Hungarian part:- "azonnal" - means immediately; "kövessen" - means follow imperative; "engem" - means me. And of course "Monsieur" is French for Sir and "bitte" is German for please.)]

Posted by languagehat at March 15, 2003 01:31 PM
Comments

Wow! I'd read that Olmos had come up with most of the Cityspeak in my "Future Noir: The Making of Bladerunner" book, but it had no translations. ((falls in love with Olmos))

Mr Olmos has some Hungarian Jewish background

I KNEW it!

Posted by: M o I r A at March 15, 2003 09:45 PM

I saw Blade Runner before I started learning Hungarian, and an American friend has been telling me for years there is some Hung in it. So he's right!

Posted by: mark at March 16, 2003 08:54 AM

Big happy smile.

Posted by: Gideon Strauss at March 16, 2003 08:59 AM

There's supposed to be a new Blade Runner DVD on its way (the release date has not been announced), which will most likely include both a new, "real" director's cut and the original work print. I thought you lot might be as interested as I am :)

Posted by: Songdog at March 16, 2003 12:57 PM