rsterling78 posted:

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If I hear someone speak Chinese, a language I don't understand, I won't know what is being said.

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TwiLekJedi posted:

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There is no such thing as "the British accent" either, and yet people say it all the time. English-speaking people, no less. Let Westerners (if ^he is one ) refer to one of the Chinese languages as "Chinese" and/or assume they meant "a Chinese language".
After all, it doesn't matter which one he doesn't understand - he understands none of them.

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rsterling78 posted:

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If I hear someone speak Chinese, a language I don't understand, I won't know what is being said. But I will be able to recognize syllabification. I may not understand the content of what is being said, but I will recognize that a sequence of different and distinct sounds are forming words and sentences.

When Chewbacca speaks, I don't hear anything that sounds like a coherent language:

Han Solo: ”Chewie? Chewie, is that you?”
Chewbacca: "Grrrwwwrr!"
Han Solo: ”Ch-Chewie! I can’t see, pal. What’s going on?”
Chewbacca: "Grrrwwwrr!"
Han Solo: ”Luke? Luke’s crazy! He can’t even take care of himself, much less rescue anybody.”
Chewbacca: "Grrrwwwrr!"
Han Solo: ”A Jedi Knight? Jeez, I’m out of it for a little while, everyone gets delusions of grandeur!”

Sorry, Han, I'm not buying that you're understanding one word of what Chewie is saying. In fact, I'm not buying that Chewie is saying anything at all. By the way, where did you get the word "Jeez"? That's a somewhat politer form of the exclamation "Jesus!". How would you know that? But I digress...

Allegedly, the wookie language is called "Shyriiwook". Hey, I wonder what the wookie word for "Shyriiwook" is? I'm guessing it's "Grrrwwwrr!". According to the link, here's a Basic sentence and the Shyriiwook translation:

He says he's a Jedi Knight now.
Rowr ahragh awf ahraroww rowh rohngr grgrff rf rf.

Whatever.

I guess I'm just a skeptic. Or as a wookie would phrase it, "Grrrwwwrr!".

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