Huttese

There was a thread a while ago over on Linguaphiles that started with this question:

I heard a rumor that in the Star Wars movies Jabba the Hutt is actually speaking in some obscure African language. Does anybody know if that's true?

The recently-released DVD of Star Wars has a commentary track that includes the sound designer, Ben Burtt, and he supplies the answer.

In the much-discussed scene with Han Solo and Greedo (who shot first!) in the cantina, Burtt discusses the origins of Huttese, which is the language Greedo is speaking (not Rodian, apparently). Burtt was always on the lookout for interesting-sounding real languages to use, and he came across Quechuan (which is actually a family of related languages). He obtained a tape of it, and played it for a linguist he brought onto the movie named Larry Ward. Ward didn't speak the language, but he was apparently very good at listening to and imitating the sound of an unfamiliar language. He did this with Quechua and made up some "double-talk" dialog for Greedo, which they recorded and then tweaked a bit so it would sound alien.

So, according to Burtt, Huttese is made-up nonsense words that sound sort of like Quechua. I think Ward was pretty free in his interpretation of Quechua phonetics, though, because it sounds to me like Greedo pronounces a few clicks, which Quechua does not have. However, I may be mishearing the ejective stops (which Quechua does have).

It's interesting to poke around the Internet and read the various versions of this story that are floating around. This page claims that Huttese "is actually the real, human language: Quechua", which isn't exactly true if Burtt's description of Ward's performance is correct. This page claims that "Huttese was derived from an ancient Peruvian language called 'Quechua'"—I think the several million speakers of various modern varieties might disagree about how "ancient" Quechua is.

One of these days I'll get around to watching Return of the Jedi with the commentary—it's possible that Burtt discusses Huttese some more during the scenes with Jabba and Bib Fortuna. I'll update this post if I find anything. I have to say, I hadn't thought Greedo and Jabba were speaking the same language, so it'll be interesting to listen with a critical ear and see if they did a good job keeping the phonetics consistent. I won't get my hopes up.

[Now playing: "This Fire" by Franz Ferdinand]