Author Topic: Galactic Basic Standard = English or not?
SuperWatto  5872 posts
Registered: Sep '00
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Date Posted: 4/29/07 2:05pm Subject: RE: Galactic Basic Standard = English or not?
^ nonsense

 

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SephyCloneNo15  6880 posts
Registered: Apr '05
8068_R5-D4
Date Posted: 4/29/07 2:18pm Subject: RE: Galactic Basic Standard = English or not?
Darth_Davi posted:
If galactic basic isn't English, and Earth doesn't exist in the Star Wars galaxy, how would anyone on Earth know how to translate the journal? If its not English, or, even an Earthly language, there is nobody on Earth that would have been able to decipher the linguistic nuances, nor would anyone from the SW galaxy have been able to pre-translate it for us, as they would have no clue what to translate it to. If its not English, there is simply no way that English, Spanish, French, Chinese, etc would be included among C3PO's six million forms of communication...They wouldn't have been able to translate their work into English, we wouldn't have been able to translate their work into English. We would have just a book, and nothing to compare it with, no other samples, nothing. Galactic Basic has to be rooted in an Earth language, otherwise it would be so completely foreign, we wouldn't have any way to translate it. Essentially, it would be gibberish with no way to decode it.


Perhaps the presence of both Latin and Aurubesh alphabets is a Rosetta Stone of sorts. George gave the Journal to a skilled linguist (or George is a skilled linguist) to figure it out.

A skilled linguist would work even better if the Whills gave it to George and his linguist in person.

Or perhaps the Whills communicate telepathically, and therefore independent of language. They heard the story in Basic (or perhaps binary, since it was dictated by Artoo), told it to George, and he 'heard' it in English.

 

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SuperWatto  5872 posts
Registered: Sep '00
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Date Posted: 4/29/07 2:22pm Subject: RE: Galactic Basic Standard = English or not?
Whichever the case, if there's enough information to fill a hundred books, a hundred comics, eight films and three cartoon series, I'm sure said skilled linguist can work it out.

 

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Darth_Davi  2030 posts
Registered: Jul '05
17804_Jedi
Date Posted: 4/29/07 3:32pm Subject: RE: Galactic Basic Standard = English or not?
Occam's razor.

Why does Galactic Basic so closely resemble English? Because it is English. The simplest, best answer is usually correct. Star Wars is a fictional work by a man born and raised in the US, speaking English. The language of Star Wars is going to be his language, because its his mind coming up with it. I have seen all these cockamamie theories about telepathic Whills, the thing being translated on our end or translated on their end, etc...and they all make something so simple far more complex than it has to be. Suggesting that Star Wars was somehow delivered to George Lucas, and he took it to an expert translator, etc makes as much sense as Jeff Goldblum using a MAC to write a virus program to infect a completely alien computer system, somehow miraculously getting his laptop to connect to the alien network, getting his laptop to then upload the virus, and having it work. PURE RUBBISH.

 

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dp4m  36462 posts
Registered: Nov '01
13878_Luke Skywalker Dark Empire
Date Posted: 4/29/07 3:45pm Subject: RE: Galactic Basic Standard = English or not?
Darth_Davi posted:
Occam's razor.

Why does Galactic Basic so closely resemble English? Because it is English. The simplest, best answer is usually correct. Star Wars is a fictional work by a man born and raised in the US, speaking English. The language of Star Wars is going to be his language, because its his mind coming up with it. I have seen all these cockamamie theories about telepathic Whills, the thing being translated on our end or translated on their end, etc...and they all make something so simple far more complex than it has to be. Suggesting that Star Wars was somehow delivered to George Lucas, and he took it to an expert translator, etc makes as much sense as Jeff Goldblum using a MAC to write a virus program to infect a completely alien computer system, somehow miraculously getting his laptop to connect to the alien network, getting his laptop to then upload the virus, and having it work. PURE RUBBISH.


Except... that's not how things work here.

Sure, you and I know that the people we see on the screen are speaking English. Much like I know that the Russians (speaking Russian) in THfRO and the Klingons (speaking Klingon) in STIII are speaking English. But we also know that the languages the characters are ACTUALLY speaking in those films are not English. Nor has LFL ever said that Basic == English.

 

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Dawud786  2654 posts
Registered: Dec '06
42320_Luke Skywalker
Date Posted: 4/29/07 3:48pm Subject: RE: Galactic Basic Standard = English or not? - Date Edited: 4/29/07 3:52pm (1 edits total) Edited By: Dawud786
Duh, it is simple to say.. well, dude's making it all up so in his mind it's English... but that doesn't change the fact that Galactic Basic has an entirely different alphabet and a different means to pronounce the letters there-in and as such, they are going to have some different nuances. It's like Tolkien, again, because there is no such language as "Westron" and Tolkien certainly didn't think his story out in Elvish or Westron and yet the story is that it's translated from a book that was written in Westron.

Star Wars, along similar lines, comes from the Journal of the Whills... we don't even know if that Journal is even in Galactic Basic, much less what Galactic Basic even sounds like.

Furthermore, no one is saying that George Lucas actually recieved the Star Wars stories as some for of telepathic revelation from these Whills, or that the source revelation is being passed onto other authors for the EU, but rather that the original idea is that the story comes from the Journal of the Whills that was told to them or recorded by them as they witnessed the history of the GFFA from whatever mode of existence they live. Again, it's exactly the same as Tolkien. There is no Westron Red Book of Westmarch that really exists, but that is part of the fiction of Middle-Earth is that it's an ancient story translated from Westron to English by Tolkien.

 

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Darth_Davi  2030 posts
Registered: Jul '05
17804_Jedi
Date Posted: 4/29/07 4:10pm Subject: RE: Galactic Basic Standard = English or not?
George Lucas is the god of the Star Wars universe. Everything in the SW movies happened as he willed it to happen. The will of the Force is HIS will. Therefore, basic is also English because the SW god created his universe in his own image. Most of the main characters are human, because their god is human. Their common language is English, because their god speaks English.

 

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Havac  14251 posts
Title: Lit Mod of War
Registered: Sep '05
23735_Obi-Wan Kenobi
Date Posted: 4/29/07 4:13pm Subject: RE: Galactic Basic Standard = English or not?
dp4m posted:
Rogue_Follower posted:
SuperWatto posted:
See, the moment any link between the GFFA and Earth becomes canon, is the moment I'm throwing in the towel. No matter how many of the Big 3 die, no matter how often Palpatine or dead heroes come back - this is the one and only thing that can drive me away.


QFT x2.

The moment LFL gets that stupid, it all goes down hill from there. plain


Well, see you guys then. happy

Since the E.T. aliens are senators and E.T. landed on Earth, there must be a link. tongue Which is why E.T. recognizes Yoda as a Halloween character and says "hooooome" as well.

The Brodo Asogians are canon. E.T., however, has yet to be canonized. So that's no more canon than the various sci-fi ships showing up as easter eggs in art and CG make those sci-fi universes canon. Besides, E.T. doesn't seem to recognize the Rodian and Ithorian action figures . . . mischief

 

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Rogue_Follower  8535 posts
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Registered: Nov '03
6468_Blackhole
Date Posted: 4/29/07 5:29pm Subject: RE: Galactic Basic Standard = English or not?
Easter Eggs, even large ones, don't count. tongue

I mean stories---explicitly canon Star Wars stories---which involve some sort of interaction between Earth and the GFFA. As in, someone from Earth meets someone from the GFFA, or vice versa. Or there being some discussion of Earth as an ancient homeworld or colony world (a la BSG.) It has "bad fanfic" written over it, and its just something I'd hate to see in the SW universe.

 

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LtNOWIS  2473 posts
Registered: May '05
16494_Clone Assault
Date Posted: 4/29/07 6:12pm Subject: RE: Galactic Basic Standard = English or not?
Protocal droids like 3PO can eventually figure out alien languages. And the Rakatan computer systems were able to do that in KOTOR. I wouldn't be surpised if holocrons can as well. The technology exists or existed in Star Wars.

So, Lucas finds a holocron or a big Rakatan style knowledge thing somewhere in the woods, it translates itself automatically, and Lucas decides that he should make films about it. Of course, stuff gets distorted when he actually makes the films (SFX limitations, casting etc.), but we get most of it. There's your explanation.

Oh man... what if the Holcron continuity database was an actual holocron?

 

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Ulicus  7359 posts
Registered: Jul '05
41990_Duron Qel-Droma
Date Posted: 4/29/07 6:41pm Subject: RE: Galactic Basic Standard = English or not?
LtNOWIS posted:

So, Lucas finds a holocron or a big Rakatan style knowledge thing somewhere in the woods, it translates itself automatically, and Lucas decides that he should make films about it. Of course, stuff gets distorted when he actually makes the films (SFX limitations, casting etc.), but we get most of it. There's your explanation.

Oh man... what if the Holcron continuity database was an actual holocron?

laugh

I love the thought of Lucas, one day, turning to the prequel bashers and saying:

"Hey, it's not my fault, that's just the way things went down!"

 

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SephyCloneNo15  6880 posts
Registered: Apr '05
8068_R5-D4
Date Posted: 4/29/07 10:45pm Subject: RE: Galactic Basic Standard = English or not?
Ulicus posted:
LtNOWIS posted:

So, Lucas finds a holocron or a big Rakatan style knowledge thing somewhere in the woods, it translates itself automatically, and Lucas decides that he should make films about it. Of course, stuff gets distorted when he actually makes the films (SFX limitations, casting etc.), but we get most of it. There's your explanation.

Oh man... what if the Holcron continuity database was an actual holocron?

laugh

I love the thought of Lucas, one day, turning to the prequel bashers and saying:

"Hey, it's not my fault, that's just the way things went down!"


"Look guys, you wanna keep complaining? I got the effing Holocron in my closet right now! It's all there, Jar Jar and all."

 

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SuperWatto  5872 posts
Registered: Sep '00
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Date Posted: 4/30/07 2:26am Subject: RE: Galactic Basic Standard = English or not?
You know, Darth_Davi does have a point.
In some weird, deeply philosophical way.

What if George Lucas doesn't have a brain, and where his brain is supposed to be, there's the GFFA? Where time goes real fast?

In '74 the Death Star in his head was blown up. By '77 he was already dealing with Roan Fel. The stuff from KOTOR happened in his early teens. This would explain both the stagnation of language change as the 'long time ago, far, far away' line. Actually... It even explains 'faster, more intense'.

Man... This thread shouldn't last much longer!

 

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Thrawn McEwok  13601 posts
Title: TFN EU Staff
Registered: May '00
43231_Chiss Ewok
Date Posted: 5/2/07 5:21pm Subject: RE: Galactic Basic Standard = English or not?
Isn't it obvious, guys? The Monolith programmed all the apes to evolve into Galactic-Basic-speaking humans...

tongue

- The Imperial Ewok

 

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SephyCloneNo15  6880 posts
Registered: Apr '05
8068_R5-D4
Date Posted: 5/2/07 5:49pm Subject: RE: Galactic Basic Standard = English or not?
Not bad, McEwok, but I still prefer my theory that after Doc Manhattan discovers the value of human life at the end of Watchmen and tells Ozymandias that he thinks he'll go create some of his own, he ends up going to the GFFA and, via his karked up impression of time, ends up creating the humans of the GFFA a long time ago in that famous galaxy far far away.

 

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