“Star” “Wars.”

Here is a supercut of every time someone says “Star” or “Wars” in any of the Star Wars movies: “there’s barely more than a minute of total screen time across 9 films in which anyone even says the words,” but as rozele, who sent me the link, said, it’s “some kinda child’s garden of non/rhoticity”!

Comments

  1. Good! Now what I’d like to see is a similar exercise for the name Liu across all Putonghua films. Even in the same film one hears it from some speakers as /ljoʊ/ (“officially” correct) and from others as /ljuː/. No one seems to notice.

  2. John Cowan says

    Actually, the child (at least the first one) is rhotic. Then he grows up to be non-rhotic. That’s quite a trick: Industrial Light, Magic, and Sociolinguistics.

  3. Boingboing?! Now that’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time. A long time.

  4. Stu Clayton says

    The Gerald McBoing-Boing of Saturday morning cartoon programs !

  5. David Marjanović says

    No one seems to notice.

    I’ve heard [lɪʊ̯] pretty often!

    (But not in a film – I understand far too little to watch one.)

  6. But not in a film – I understand far too little to watch one.

    Same here. But having travelled seven times in China (and gained scandalously little explicit knowledge of Putonghua), when I watch with subtitles I sometimes catch enough audible nuance to appreciate the quality of the delivery. A strange feeling (or absence of feeling), like a sort of blindsight transferred to audition.

  7. I can sometime appreciate the delivery of sign language interpreters of theatre and such, despite knowing no sign language.

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