Vin Deisel wants ancient languages in Hannibal

Vin Diesel is following Mel Gibson's example and employing ancient and little-known languages for his upcoming Hannibal The Conqueror epic.

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He explains, "I'm going to make it a non-English multi-lingual film that represents the many languages that Hannibal employed in his army. "So it will be Aramaic for Rome, Iberian for Spain, there will be some Carthaginian or some Maltese and it will represent all these different languages. "Hannibal's whole point is uniting people of no common culture, language or religion and proving that united they can defy tyranny."

http://www.imdb.com/news/wenn/2005-03-13/#celeb9

While the idea is cool, Vin Diesel needs to do a little more research. First of all, he would learn the Romans spoke Latin, not Aramaic. Our knowledge of Punic is kind of wanting, but I think it could be recontructed. But we know next to nothing about Iberian, so I don't think he'd be able to use it. Either way it sounds like a gimmick to me.

Not much knowledge of Punic, you're right.

Celto-Iberian was a lot like Gallic, the language spoken by the Gauls, including warrior-king Vercingetorix, who came close to defeating Rome -- it was Julius Caesar's closest-fought victory.

There was another "Iberian" langage, but Roman historians testify that it was unlike Aquitanian, the Roman-era dialect of what became Basque. It is thought to have been related to Etruscan.

Basque is a true language isolate. It doesn't even have the "standard" grammar of Indo-European, Altaic, Finnic, Ugric, or Semitic languages. I speak a few (a very few) words of it myself.

It is thought that about half of the core Basque language is autochthonous -- originating in-place, after the ice age retreated, and the other half is from immigrants from Africa who fled a Saharan culture when the Sahara changed from a plain to a desert around 8000 BCE. (Interesting trivia: The word Zahar -- the Z is pronounced like an S -- means "old" in both modern Basque and Roman-era Aquitanian).

And of course, there are plenty of Greek, Latin, and Spanish loan words. But it is unlikely that Hannibal will have much Basque in it -- they were pretty content to stay at home, tend their sheep, and throw parties.

--p!

:)

Btw, I love Basque food! I can't remember the Basque name for the dish, but in Castellano it's called "pulpitos bravos" - little angry octopi. :D

Click here for Buber's Basque Recipe Collection page. And here you'll find the recipe for Nancy Trevino's Chipirones en su Tinta (Squid in its own ink).

Basque Cuisine WikiBook.

Cuisine in Biscay. Biscay is called Bizkaia in Basque; this page is from Bizkaianet.

Recetas del Pais Vasco - Euskal Erretzetak. If you read Spanish or can use Babelfish, this website has dozens of recipes, including several recipes that even I find edible! There's even a recipe for Basque Ketchup.

Yep, the Euskaldunak eat a lot of seafood, but then again, they've been fishermen and sailors since the first contacts by the Phoenicians and Egyptians. They also have a long friendship with the Irish and Icelanders whom they met on the sea. There's also been a lot of culinary exchange with ancient Italy and Greece across the Pyrenees and Alpine highlands.

So, where did I get my affinity for things Basque? An old friend who's a schoolteacher, and a girlfriend I had in college. I liked the language, was interested that John Adams traveled to Bilbao and studied the Biscayan Fuero (their form of democratic-republican statehood, which greatly influenced Adams), and was surprised by Basque culture's exoticism in an increasingly homogenized world.

Except that for the most part I don't really like all that fish.

--p!

Aquí está:

http://www.paisvasco.net/recetas/pulpitosajillo.html

My favorite tapa, "pulpo a la gallega," goes great with a cerveza Voll Damm:

http://www.paisvasco.net/recetas/pulpogallega.htm

I saw a movie that was made entirely in Basque.

I've seen a LOT of foreign films, and since I've studied a number of European languages, I can usually understand SOMETHING of the dialogue and the street signs, even if it's only a word here and there.

The Basque film was a bizarre experience in that the setting was obviously European, as were the people. Yet I didn't understand a word that anyone said. Not one word.

I expect not to understand a word when I see a Thai or Korean or Burkina Faso film, but in a European film, I expect to understand at least a few words.

The only comparable experience was when I saw the Canadian film The Decline of the American Empire, which looks as if it takes place in Anywhere, North America, and definitely not in Europe, only...everyone is speaking French.