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NUMBER ONE, ENGAGE.
In the scene David is learning the building blocks of language and we see him taking a lesson in Proto-Indo-European (PIE) Linguistics, where a holographic professor, takes him through the ABC’s and recites Schleicher’s Fable. An artificial text composed in the reconstructed PIE, in 1868, to demonstrate the language’s use.
hjewɪs jasmə hwælnə nahəst akʷunsəz dadʳkta (Translated as: a sheep that had no wool saw horses) – Excerpt from Schleicher’s Fable – The Sheep and the Horses
The ‘Professor’ in the clip is in fact the real-life linguistics consultant used for the film and taught Michael Fassbender (David) the dialogue. I managed to track down the consultant, a Dr. Anil Biltoo of the SOAS Language Centre in London, to see if he could shed some light on the mysterious final scene. He was most helpful and provided the following:
BWAHAHAHA, “DR. ANIL!” HIS NAME IS DR. ANAL! Oh, man. I don’t know if “Dr. Anal” is the right person to teach me about PIE, ifyouknowwhatahmsayin.
/ida hmanəm aɪ kja namṛtuh zdɛ:taha/…/ghʷɪvah-pjorn-ɪttham sas da:tṛ kredah/
A serviceable translation into English is:
‘This man is here because he does not want to die. He believes you can give him more life’.
I’m not a linguistics professor, but I never understand when people take a language that has a different alphabet or no alphabet and translate it to English using weird characters and unpronounceable combinations of letters. Can’t you even try to make that sh*t phonetic? I feel like I’m trying to read a teenager’s MySpace headline from 2006 up there.
On a more serious note… TELL ME MORE ABOUT DR. ANAL AND MICHAEL F. ASSBENDER! Doctor, doctor, gimme the news, I gotta – bad case, of buggerin’ youuuuu….
[cool story Brometheus via Iruntheinternet]