What language do the Despicable Me minions speak?

Who loves the Despicable Me minions? For most people I know the highlight of Despicable Me 2 was the increased presence of the minions throughout the movie.

I loved Despicable Me when I first saw it and definitely enjoyed the second movie. And we all know I love language, so I'd be just the kind of person to find interest in this post by Grammar Girl: "Do the Minions Speak a Real Language?"

I actually don't think I would have thought about this on my own. But turns out, it's quite common to form an actual language for movies (Avatar, Star Trek, Land of the Lost).

Apparently the firm's directors call the "language" Minionese and while most of what the minions say is gibberish, the directors did include real words from a variety of languages to give it a real-sounding edge.

Have you heard these English words in the movies? OK, potato, idiot, or what? Grammar Girl also shares that "ba-boy" means "toy," "bi-do" means "I'm sorry," and "la boda" means "marriage."

Perhaps the best part of Grammar Girl's article is the link to this translation of the Minion's dialogue in the closing credits. Here are some highlights:

"Plunger power!" 

"I'm gonna reach the back row with this baby." 

"I can hear Twilight in the next theater. Team Jacob rules!"  

"I am Gru. I have male pattern baldness."

Wordy Wednesday: Expletive Sentences

What? Karianne is going to talk about expletives?? This seems so out of character. 

No folks, I am not referring to the kind of expletives you are most likely thinking of. I'm talking about the type of sentences that begin with "there is" or "there are."

For example, let's look at the following sentence: "There is a water bottle on my desk." This sentences portrays an example of expletive construction.

Believe me, you will see people using this type of sentence construction all. the. time. And while these sentences are not technically "wrong," they do reflect poor, lazy, and ambiguous writing.

You see, "there" is acting as a subject but doesn't have a clear antecedent and is essential just a filler work. A more clear way of writing the previous example sentence is to write "I keep a water bottle on my desk."

This diagrammed example is from mrclements.com (another great post).

Where did "there is" go?

Away.

Do we miss it?

No. 

Is the sentence more clear?

Yes, although the above example is not a great example. 

Do we have to figure out whether "there is" or "there are" is the correct usage? (Based on subject-verb agreement)

No. We've eliminated the poor usage, made the sentence stronger, and avoided the issue. 


So why do we keep using those darn expletives?!?! :)

Go ahead and take a look at Grammar Girl's well-researched explanation of the usage. She has some great examples and dives in a bit deeper than I do here.

P.S. The topic of expletive sentence construction was one that I first learned about in my business communications class in college. Sigh, that was one of my favorite classes. Good times, good times.