Indy's languages

Patrick

New member
Hello everybody.

The reference to the twelve languages also comes from the Infernal Machine, specifically the help file on 'characters'.

I was wondering if there had been any consistency, or if they just pulled that out because it looked neat. Perhaps he speaks 27 languages, and only 12 fluently? Perhaps he's a little rusty sometimes, or learns the language before his major expeditions. ...Or something.

And as far as Babylonian goes, there's no such language for starters. That would be Sumer. And as usual, read only probably. And Sumer was written in Cuniform, btw.
Which was the written alphabet of the Babylonians. I'm not sure, where their spoken word differed from other Mesopotamian languages, or even at all (probably did).

Thanks for thinking it was a good topic, That wasn't something I was particularly good at a few years ago.(off-topic) By the way, who has left? I don't seem to be called out as 'Paperboy' anymore.
 

Tennessee R

New member
"...where he learned to speak, read, and write 27 languages, including French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Greek, Arabic, Turkish, Vietnamese, Swahili, Latin and Chinese, as well as some Hindi, apart from English..."
According to wikipedia
 

Jay R. Zay

New member
Tennessee R said:
"...where he learned to speak, read, and write 27 languages, including French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Greek, Arabic, Turkish, Vietnamese, Swahili, Latin and Chinese, as well as some Hindi, apart from English..."
According to wikipedia

how about bavarian? ;)
 

NoCamels

New member
Arise! Dead thread!

After completing my full Indy-thon in preparation for KOTCS, here is my guess at the languages that Indy is known to speak. Please note that my sources for this list are only Young Indiana Jones episodes and the 4 films, as I was aiming for a comprehensive yet "official" list. (Plus, I haven't read very many of the books, and the only game I've played was Emperor's Tomb.)

During the timeframe of Young Indiana Jones, where it is stated he speaks 27 languages, Indy is known to speak (or can be strongly inferred to know) these languages:

1. English
2. Hungarian
3. Swedish
4. Greek
5. Ancient Greek
6. Arabic
7. French
8. Spanish
9. Italian
10. Russian
11. Latin
12. Hindi
13. Chinese
14. Swahili
15. Sign Language
16. German
17. Czech
18. Turkish
19. Vietnamese
20. Quechua

Also, by this point in time (circa 1917), he may know:
21. Hieroglyphics/Coptic (possibly "My First Adventure")
22. Romanian (see "Masks of Evil")
23. Singhalese (during the world tour)
24. Old English (based on his father's medieval studies)
? 25. Possibly another African language (various Africa episodes)
?? 26. Possibly an Australian Aboriginal language, based on references to traveling to Australia as a kid and extrapolating from what usually happens to little kid Indy in any given episode.)

He also knows Morse Code, if you wanted to count that as a language. At this point in time it is specifically shown that he does not speak Welsh, Icelandic, and Ubangi. He might have also learned some of the Indonesian language in "Treasure of the Peacock's Eye" as language #28.

Languages Indy is later known to speak that the timeframe of when he learned them is unclear include
A. Hieroglyphics (as a kid or in college)
B. Singhalese (as a kid or during his adventure just before TOD)
C. Mayan (my guess is he learned Mayan in college, since I find it hard to believe he learned both fluent Quechua and Mayan in the few weeks he was riding with Pancho Villa).

He does not speak Hovitos. ;)

Additional languages Indy could have logically learned later in college might include Phonecian and Norse Futhark Runes. He may have learned Mayan in college. Based on the later adventures, he may know some Nepalese (Raiders), possibly Sioux (a total guess based on the "Mystery of the Blues" bookends), and he should be able to figure out Portugese fairly easily since he knows Spanish, etc. (the ship is off the Portugese coast in Last Crusade; presumably he wound up there after his escape.)

So my guess is that by KOTCS, Indy may know close to 35 languages? Miss Seymour was right- a "special aptitude for languages", indeed!
 
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Crack that whip

New member
NoCamels said:
After completing my full Indy-thon in preparation for KOTCS, here is my guess at the languages that Indy is known to speak. Please note that my sources for this list are only Young Indiana Jones episodes and the 4 films, as I was aiming for a comprehensive yet "official" list. (Plus, I haven't read very many of the books, and the only game I've played was Emperor's Tomb.)

During the timeframe of Young Indiana Jones, where it is stated he speaks 27 languages, Indy is known to speak (or can be strongly inferred to know) these languages:

1. English
2. Hungarian
3. Swedish
4. Greek
5. Ancient Greek
6. Arabic
7. French
8. Spanish
9. Italian
10. Russian
11. Latin
12. Hindi
13. Chinese
14. Swahili
15. Sign Language
16. German
17. Czech
18. Turkish
19. Vietnamese
20. Quechua

Also, by this point in time (circa 1917), he may know:
21. Hieroglyphics/Coptic (possibly "My First Adventure")
22. Romanian (see "Masks of Evil")
23. Singhalese (during the world tour)
24. Old English (based on his father's medieval studies)
? 25. Possibly another African language (various Africa episodes)
?? 26. Possibly an Australian Aboriginal language, based on references to traveling to Australia as a kid and extrapolating from what usually happens to little kid Indy in any given episode.)

He also knows Morse Code, if you wanted to count that as a language. At this point in time it is specifically shown that he does not speak Welsh, Icelandic, and Ubangi. He might have also learned some of the Indonesian language in "Treasure of the Peacock's Eye" as language #28.

Languages Indy is later known to speak that the timeframe of when he learned them is unclear include
A. Hieroglyphics (as a kid or in college)
B. Singhalese (as a kid or during his adventure just before TOD)
C. Mayan (my guess is he learned Mayan in college, since I find it hard to believe he learned both fluent Quechua and Mayan in the few weeks he was riding with Pancho Villa).

He does not speak Hovitos. ;)

Additional languages Indy could have logically learned later in college might include Phonecian and Norse Futhark Runes. He may have learned Mayan in college. Based on the later adventures, he may know some Nepalese (Raiders), possibly Sioux (a total guess based on the "Mystery of the Blues" bookends), and he should be able to figure out Portugese fairly easily since he knows Spanish, etc. (the ship is off the Portugese coast in Last Crusade; presumably he wound up there after his escape.)

So my guess is that by KOTCS, Indy may know close to 35 languages? Miss Seymour was right- a "special aptitude for languages", indeed!

Well, how about that - as it happened, I'd recently gotten a bit of an itch to sit down and log all we know about Indy's languages myself, and here you've gone and done it for me. On the one hand I ought to be irked at someone else here having usurped my designs on an Indy-fan-activity, :eek: but on the other, frankly, I'm pretty lazy, and glad I didn't have to type all this out myself. :p ;) Nice work! (y) :hat:

And nice also to know I'm not the only one who prepped for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull with a weeks-long, complete "My First Adventure"-to-Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade Indython. I just wish I'd had time to include the novels and comics.
 

NoCamels

New member
Thanks. Glad I could be of help! I started trying to do this from memory one day and then went, "hey, I'm doing the Indython anyway, so I may as well write it down as I go."

I must say, I found this 2+ week long marathon to be quite interesting- the longest movie marathon I've ever done was all 6 Star Wars. (Also glad to know I wasn't the only one!)
 

whipem

Member
This is slightly off-topic, but I was always bothered by the "No Ticket" scene in LC (I'm sure this has been mentioned before). Specifically, how Indy says the line in English to the (mostly, I'm assuming) German passengers, who react immediately. The American film staple of foreigners always having a fluent or near-fluent command of English always struck me as very imperialistic, for lack of a better word at the moment. I'm guessing the line was in English for comedic effect, but wouldn't subtitles do the same thing?
 

Crack that whip

New member
They would indeed, but I'm guessing someone decided at some point prior not to use subtitles in the Indy movies (though subtitles were used fairly frequently in the TV series, interestingly enough).

I've always interpreted the scene as having Indy "actually" speaking German, and it's merely presented to us, the audience, in English for our benefit. It's certainly not a new a convention in American movies to use English to represent other languages in scenes in which only a single, non-English language is "understood" to be the language the characters are "actually" speaking.

That said, I would have preferred subtitles for this, too.
 

Attila the Professor

Moderator
Staff member
Horchata said:
Where do we learn he speaks 27?

Stoo said:
In "Masks of Evil", it states that he knows 27, with one of them being sign language for the hearing impaired but he is stumped by Icelandic
in this episode.

This should help. "Masks of Evil" is one of the Young Indiana Jones films.
 

Stoo

Well-known member
NoCamels said:
Arise! Dead Thread!
Good one, NoCamels!(y)
Attila the Professor said:
This should help. "Masks of Evil" is one of the Young Indiana Jones films.
We must keep in mind that 27 is the total in January, 1918.

Indy's "young & inquisitive mind" (as Ms. Seymour wrote) was able to absorb almost 30 languages in the span of 10 years!
Quite a feat. One can only imagine how many he has learned by 1957. Most likely every major language on the planet!

(I've been doing a lot of travelling in Europe lately and have been picking up words/phrases. Just enough to get by.
For Indy to be as fluent as he is from all the global hop-skotching is quite a stretch. That's movie magic for ya!:D )

NoCamels said:
Also, by this point in time (circa 1917), he may know:
21. Hieroglyphics/Coptic (possibly "My First Adventure")
22. Romanian (see "Masks of Evil")
24. Old English (based on his father's medieval studies)
? 25. Possibly another African language (various Africa episodes)
?? 26. Possibly an Australian Aboriginal language, based on references to traveling to Australia as a kid and extrapolating from what usually happens to little kid Indy in any given episode.)
Your list is pretty thorough but here are my thoughts:
13. Chinese could be considered as 2 (Cantonese & Mandarin)
21. Can these languages be spoken?
22. Romanian (considering he's such a fast learner, it's a good bet)
23. Singhalese (I think this is similar/same as Sanskrit)
24. Medieval English (Absolutely! As seen in London)
25. Ubangi (possibly from Sgt. Barthelemy & askaris in German East Africa)
26. Aboriginie (sounds reasonable to me!)

And for fun:
Other Indian dialects (Benares + unmade "Bombay" episode)
Inuit? (unmade "Alaska")
Hebrew? (unmade "Jerusalem")
Yiddish?
Welsh? (conjecture - he probably learned it after being embarassed by Vicky)
Gaelic? (conjecture)

On the rope bridge, is Indy speaking Cantonese or Mandarin to Short Round?
What are they speaking in the Peking episode? Mandarin?
NoCamels said:
He does not speak Hovitos.;)
Very funny!;) No, he does not. (At least in 1936.)
 
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tupogirl

New member
(I've been doing a lot of travelling in Europe lately and have been picking up words/phrases. Just enough to get by.
For Indy to be as fluent as he is from all the global hop-skotching is quite a stretch. That's movie magic for ya! )

*coughcoughmyAsperger'stheorycoughcough* LOL.

And all I have to say is mmmmm Morse code. Not spoken, lol.
 

IndyBr

Member
Here's another one:

"Well... I've always been good with languages. When I was in Kenya with Dr. Ravensworth a few summers ago, I learned a little ape. Sort of picked it up naturally, you might say." :eek:

From Indiana Jones and the Ape Slaves of the Howling Island... One of the Find you Fate books.
 

Stoo

Well-known member
@IndyBr: Thanks for posting that nugget of information here. Instead of Dr. Ravensworth, Indy should have said, Dr. Dolittle!:p

If I could talk to the animals.
Just imagine it,
Chatting to a chimp in chimpanzee.
If I spoke slang to orangutans,
The advantages,
Any fool on earth could plainly see.

If I could walk with the animals,
Talk with the animals,
Grunt and squeak and squawk
With the animals,
And they could talk...to me!
 

Crack that whip

New member
In retrospect it's kind of remarkable - on the one hand, it's completely goofy (that Indy would learn the "ape" language - and that there'd be just one for all apes, when our own primate species has thousands of them :p ), yet at the same time, the part preceding that ("Well... I've always been good with languages") seems remarkably prescient. Granted, by the time this book came out it had already been established that Indy knew some decidedly non-English languages, and Last Crusade would add to that, but it wasn't until the Chronicles that it would become clear Indy had some sort of special gift for them, and the show premiered years after this book was published.

So often in the really early licensed fiction Indy's characterization seems so strange to us now, but on just this one detail (Indy having a knack for languages, not learning an ape one), R. L. Stine got something really right :eek: (even if the idea of this particular language acquisition of Indy's is so much hokier than anything seen yet in the series involving mine cars or refrigerators).:p
 

Stoo

Well-known member
Crack that whip said:
...yet at the same time, the part preceding that ("Well... I've always been good with languages") seems remarkably prescient. Granted, by the time this book came out it had already been established that Indy knew some decidedly non-English languages,
Agreed, Crack. Even though Indy doesn't seem to know German in the "Raiders" submarine bay, in "Doom" he knows Mandarin, Hindi (& apparently Sinhala).

R.L. Stine's foreward-thinking frame of mind ended up proving correct in the long run when the "Chronicles" and "Skull" (Quecha) are taken into account.
dr.jones1986 said:
What are you talking ABOOT!
Heh heh!:D:D DITTENT you 'Mericans know that only eastern, maritime Canajuns talk that way? ACKS anyone.;):cool:
 
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