A few days ago viral on social media with Minions using a few words that sounded like Bahasa Malaysia in a teaser trailer video for the movie Minions: The Rise of Gru was shared.
The Bahasa Malaysia words that appear and were heard in the short video are ‘Nasi Goreng Kicap Manis’.
Did Bob just ask for “Nasi Goreng Kicap Manis”? Said TGV on their Facebook page.
Although it only lasted less than a minute and only three words from what the Minions said was understood, it was enough to make netizens especially Malaysians excited about the matter.
Not only that, but many people might be interested in the use of those words and finally decided to Google and learn more about the language used by these Minions.
The main question is, whether Bahasa Malaysia is included in the language used by Minions in their previous conversations and communication with each other? Or just used as a gimmick for this latest movie?
Our search for an answer to this question was finally answered after we came across an article written by an overseas entertainment portal, Loopers. The article explains in detail what language these Minions use. First of all, the language used by Minions is known as ‘constructed language’ or if translated into Bahasa Malaysia it is literally a built language. Or maybe even a designed language.
The language used by Minions was first produced by the two co-directors of the film, Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud – specifically to use characters that are synonymous with this yellow color.
“Minionese, or sometimes called Banana Language because of Minion’s interest in the fruit, comes from several real languages including English, French, Spanish, Japanese, Italian, Indian and several other languages,” the article explained.
Not wanting to be satisfied with one source, we then searched for a few more articles and articles by this Vox portal confirming it is a spontaneously generated language and borrowing a few words from the real languages of the world.
“Coffin has said the Minions speak a gibberish language that he spontaneously invents (albeit one that is infused with the occasional real word or phrase borrowed from a real language),” explained Vox.
So, if you listen and read the explanations given where they borrow the major languages of this world, then it is not something extraordinary if our language is also used.
In fact, this is not the first time the name of food from the real world has been mentioned by the Minions and they have mentioned the Indian dish ‘poulet tikka masala’ in Despicable Me 2 before.
And if it has already made an appearance in the trailer, the question now is whether this word will remain in use for the upcoming film?
Or there will be more languages borrowed besides Bahasa Malaysia. That question may have been answered when the sequel was released in July 2021.
Sources: Looper.com, Netflix Film Club, Vox