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| Tia Dalma's broken English | |
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| Topic Started: Dec 7 2009, 12:09 PM (115 Views) | |
| Ngfsd | Dec 7 2009, 12:09 PM Post #1 |
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Swabbie
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As you all know, Tia Dalma has a thick accent - but has anyone noticed that she speaks grammatically incorrect sentences? (such as: "him carve out him heart"). Since she's the goddess Callypso, I wonder about her speech patern. |
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| Monkey | Dec 8 2009, 04:17 AM Post #2 |
Smuggler
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It's my understanding that Naomi Harris' mother is Jamaican and coached her speech. I read about it somewhere, but I can't remember where. It's supposed to be a more authentic dialect than we are used to hearing in the United States. Now, if you're asking why Calypso would have chosen that dialect, it probably had to do with the region she was living in. It's probably the way the local people spoke, and if she wanted to be "one of them" and earn their trust, she had to speak like them. |
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| Ngfsd | Dec 9 2009, 01:26 PM Post #3 |
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Swabbie
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I don't only speak about the dialect, but about broken English as well. Her grammar is quite strange (see the post above). |
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| Alia Atreides | Dec 9 2009, 11:57 PM Post #4 |
Journeyman Craftswoman
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Hi Ngfsd, welcome to Parley!  So as a prefix to what I'm going to say, I'd like to point out that I'm a linguist and a lot of my work/experience is with dialects of English (primarily American English). I wouldn't say that what Tia Dalma is saying is incorrect grammatically. It may not be how one would say things in either RP or Standard American English, and is ungrammatical for either of those dialects, but like Monkey was saying, you have to look at it in the context of the dialect she is using. As far as I know (and I am not professing to be an expert on Jamaican English at all), saying something like "him heart" is perfectly fine. The pronouns used in Jamaican English differ in their distribution to other dialects. I didn't recall that that line started with "him", but I haven't seen the second film in a while (the horror!  ), but I would not say that I find that to be really surprising either. There are languages, like Mandarin, where there is one all purpose pronoun that will be used whether the subject of the sentence (ta ai ni -- "S/he loves you"), showing possession (ta de shu -- "His (or her) book"), or the object (Wo ai ta -- "I love him (or her)"). In fact, you might notice that in Standard English we use "her" before other things to show possession (like 'her sword') and as the object (I hugged her), so it's not improbable that "him" in this case means more than simply the object (or person) which receive the 'action' of the verb. Looking at this then, she should be using "him" for things that get marked with Nominative case (think 'subjects' for ease, I don't know your background in languages or linguistics, so please forgive me if I give too little/too much information), for possession, and presumably, accusative (objects of verbs). What would make this strange then, is if she used "he" in another sentence in the subject position. Was there any bit before she said that line at all? Like had she just said anything else? |
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| Ngfsd | Dec 10 2009, 01:30 PM Post #5 |
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Swabbie
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The exact phrase was: "It was not worth feeling what small, fleeting joy life brings…And so, him carve out him heart, lock it away in a chest, and hide the chest from the world" Maybe "him" is possible here, but as you can see, she has problems with verb tenses as well. |
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| Alia Atreides | Dec 10 2009, 04:11 PM Post #6 |
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Journeyman Craftswoman
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Pronouns and the Case they show is always tricky (that's the accusative, nominative, etc, that mark whether object, subject, or possession). Especially in English. The Accusative Case seems to be a default Case in English for lots of weird things. If you have any interest in that particular area, I'd be happy to discuss it, but I think that may be digressing from the purpose of the thread just a tad. I have to say though, that I'm a bit lost on what you mean problems with verb tense in there? The first two tensed verbs are exactly what I would expect to use for Standard English, the latter three, while not conforming to Standard, don't strike me as wrong. The key is those last three look like a past tense, a prefect sort of past, but they aren't maked with '-ed', which is something else I'd expect to differ between dialects, since tense is variable, and in many cases, other dialects of English make use of something called 'aspect' not only tense (Standard English doesn't use aspect). Those three can't be present tense, since there is really nothing indicating present tense for them--no agreement markers, though it would be possible that they might not be used. In terms of a linguistic analysis of how she speaks, one sentence isn't enough to actually say how her dialect is working. What you need is a larger number of sentences, so that once you look at something like this, you can make a hypothesis (like, "him" works as a possessive) and then you can go through the rest of what she said to verify if it always does that. If she does always do it, I would not at all call it a ungrammatical, it's grammatical for her dialect (sort of like it is grammatical for my dialect to say "graduated from college" and is ungrammatical to say "graduated college" and I'm in a minority of English dialects who force prepositions in that position). The issue become when these things are not being used consistently in the same situations. Like if she said, "he handed his heart to Jack Sparrow". Given that this isn't the actress' native dialect, I would expect to see some mistakes, because it is often quite difficult to get things exactly correct. For instance, there are many TV shows or films that are set in Boston, and unfortunately, people try to mimic the accent (Kevin Costner comes to mind, who has gained somewhat of a reputation for mangling accents now) but people never do the r-dropping correctly, or when they do drop in the appropriate places, they don't insert r in the right places (or bypass that all together). Sometimes they even use the wrong vowel system, and they sound like they're from NYC, not Boston. So keeping that in mind I would not be too surprised to see things not quite conforming to any particular dialect from actors, because not only may they not know the dialect, they might often change something around so that people watching it, who are not familiar with the dialect may understand what it being said. |
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| Ngfsd | Dec 14 2009, 09:56 AM Post #7 |
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Swabbie
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I also suppose it may be due to her seductive nature, since her way of speaking is rather attractive. |
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| Alia Atreides | Dec 15 2009, 03:21 AM Post #8 |
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Journeyman Craftswoman
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I don't know how a seductive nature would influence how one speaks unless perhaps you know what others find attractive, and then do that, or if you pitch your voice to try and purposefully be sultry. But I certainly won't disagree with her being attractive! |
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| Ngfsd | Dec 15 2009, 09:50 AM Post #9 |
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Swabbie
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Since she's a magical being, she certainly knows that
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| Suluna | Dec 17 2009, 11:55 PM Post #10 |
Cook
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I'd say that Alia has the answers, I'm not native English so I can't help with this discussion. But my hubby says that her way of speaking is there to make a character in the films more like Yoda. 
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| Ngfsd | Dec 18 2009, 10:40 AM Post #11 |
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Swabbie
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Yeah, I've heard such ideas (about Yoda)
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