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Samuel L. Jackson teaches insults in catalán and Basque to get US citizens to register to vote
27/09/2020
PULP Fiction star Samuel L. Jackson has shown the world on video how to insult someone in catalán and the Basque regional language euskera, holding up flashcards and reading them out.
The US actor, 71, is urging citizens to vote in the forthcoming national elections in the country on November 3, stressing this is the only way they can be free of another four years of Donald Trump's government.
And in a bid to get the public to take action and use their right of suffrage, Jackson promised his fans that if a specific number of people registered to vote, he would tell them how to insult Trump in 15 languages.
The two-word imperative Jackson uses is unprintable, but the cleaned-up version more or less tells the Republican president to 'go away'.
Fans rose to the challenge and, as promised, the actor taught them a choice phrase, with pronunciation examples included, in 15 languages – mostly, but not all, minority tongues only spoken in one country or one region within a country.
Catalán and euskera were two of these; others were Icelandic, Czech, Nepalese, Swahili, Esperanto, Thai, Maori, Vietnamese, Ukrainian, Jamaican patois, Haïtian patois, and Bemba.
The only global language he used was Portuguese – the Brazilian version, although this is not greatly different to those spoken in Portugal and its former colonies of Cape Verde, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Timor-Leste, São Tomé e Príncipe, Goa (India) and Macau (China), bar a few idiomatic expressions and verb conjugations.
“Now I'm going to keep to my side of the bargain,” said the star of Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight, prior to showing off the cards he had written out.
“Let's start cussin'!”
Staunchly anti-Trump, the BAFTA-winner and Oscar nominee thanked fans for joining in and reminded them, once again, to cast their vote on November 3.
As this is a family site, we have opted not to print the contents of Jackson's flashcards in catalán and euskera, although if you're curious, you can find his video on YouTube and, if you don't speak either language, look up the meaning on Google Translate.
But whatever his fans or second-language speakers of the 15 tongues he quoted think of naughty words and strong insults, and whether his US-based followers support Republicans or Democrats, the actor from The Avengers has made a major contribution to his country's future with his stunt: Convincing hundreds of thousands of its citizens to register and pledge to vote in a month and a half's time.
And he has also helped raise awareness of two of Spain's co-official regional languages, which residents in Catalunya, the Basque Country and parts of neighbouring Navarra will thank him for and which may well have gathered him new fans in the north of the country.
More Spanish 'minority' languages Samuel L. Jackson could have used
Other co-official tongues from Spain Jackson could have used are gallego, from north-western Galicia (spelled as galego in the language itself), asturianu, or 'Asturian', from Galicia's neighbouring region immediately to the east, or the tongues believed to be based upon, or at least part of the same family as, catalán, namely valenciano (spelled as valencià in the language itself, and spoken in the east-coast region of the Comunidad Valenciana), and the Balearic languages of ibicuenco (from Ibiza), menorquín (from Menorca) and mallorquín (from Mallorca).
Catalán, thought to have originated in Provence, south-eastern France, is the sole official language of the tiny principality of Andorra, a separate country, and is also spoken on the Italian island of Sardinia, where it is said to be much closer to valenciano than to the catalán of Catalunya.
Another regional language in Spain which has not yet gained the same level of recognition is aranés, from the Aran Valley in Catalunya's only land-locked province, Lleida, bordering the Pyrénées.
Over a decade ago, the Vall d'Aran, or Valle de Aran, made tentative steps towards calling for its independence from Catalunya, which would have made it Spain's 18th autonomously-governed region – or 20th, counting the north-African coastal outposts of Ceuta and Melilla – but the idea has not progressed any further than a polite request.
And if Jackson had been seeking an extreme challenge, he could even have given Trump his 'marching orders' using the native 'language' of the Canarian island of La Gomera, but would have been hard-put to make a flashcard of it, since it comprises 100% whistling with no spoken words.
This said, given that El Silbo, or 'The Whistle', has mostly died out – despite still being UNESCO Intangible Heritage – it may not have been in use recently enough for Jackson's multi-lingual insult to be translated into it.
The second photograph, from the blog Saber o Jugar Lengua, shows Spain's official languages – including castellano, or Spanish – and some of its other regional tongues which are not yet recognised as 'official', but which may well be one day in the future.
Picture one, of Samuel L. Jackson, is from IMDb.
Related Topics
PULP Fiction star Samuel L. Jackson has shown the world on video how to insult someone in catalán and the Basque regional language euskera, holding up flashcards and reading them out.
The US actor, 71, is urging citizens to vote in the forthcoming national elections in the country on November 3, stressing this is the only way they can be free of another four years of Donald Trump's government.
And in a bid to get the public to take action and use their right of suffrage, Jackson promised his fans that if a specific number of people registered to vote, he would tell them how to insult Trump in 15 languages.
The two-word imperative Jackson uses is unprintable, but the cleaned-up version more or less tells the Republican president to 'go away'.
Fans rose to the challenge and, as promised, the actor taught them a choice phrase, with pronunciation examples included, in 15 languages – mostly, but not all, minority tongues only spoken in one country or one region within a country.
Catalán and euskera were two of these; others were Icelandic, Czech, Nepalese, Swahili, Esperanto, Thai, Maori, Vietnamese, Ukrainian, Jamaican patois, Haïtian patois, and Bemba.
The only global language he used was Portuguese – the Brazilian version, although this is not greatly different to those spoken in Portugal and its former colonies of Cape Verde, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Timor-Leste, São Tomé e Príncipe, Goa (India) and Macau (China), bar a few idiomatic expressions and verb conjugations.
“Now I'm going to keep to my side of the bargain,” said the star of Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight, prior to showing off the cards he had written out.
“Let's start cussin'!”
Staunchly anti-Trump, the BAFTA-winner and Oscar nominee thanked fans for joining in and reminded them, once again, to cast their vote on November 3.
As this is a family site, we have opted not to print the contents of Jackson's flashcards in catalán and euskera, although if you're curious, you can find his video on YouTube and, if you don't speak either language, look up the meaning on Google Translate.
But whatever his fans or second-language speakers of the 15 tongues he quoted think of naughty words and strong insults, and whether his US-based followers support Republicans or Democrats, the actor from The Avengers has made a major contribution to his country's future with his stunt: Convincing hundreds of thousands of its citizens to register and pledge to vote in a month and a half's time.
And he has also helped raise awareness of two of Spain's co-official regional languages, which residents in Catalunya, the Basque Country and parts of neighbouring Navarra will thank him for and which may well have gathered him new fans in the north of the country.
More Spanish 'minority' languages Samuel L. Jackson could have used
Other co-official tongues from Spain Jackson could have used are gallego, from north-western Galicia (spelled as galego in the language itself), asturianu, or 'Asturian', from Galicia's neighbouring region immediately to the east, or the tongues believed to be based upon, or at least part of the same family as, catalán, namely valenciano (spelled as valencià in the language itself, and spoken in the east-coast region of the Comunidad Valenciana), and the Balearic languages of ibicuenco (from Ibiza), menorquín (from Menorca) and mallorquín (from Mallorca).
Catalán, thought to have originated in Provence, south-eastern France, is the sole official language of the tiny principality of Andorra, a separate country, and is also spoken on the Italian island of Sardinia, where it is said to be much closer to valenciano than to the catalán of Catalunya.
Another regional language in Spain which has not yet gained the same level of recognition is aranés, from the Aran Valley in Catalunya's only land-locked province, Lleida, bordering the Pyrénées.
Over a decade ago, the Vall d'Aran, or Valle de Aran, made tentative steps towards calling for its independence from Catalunya, which would have made it Spain's 18th autonomously-governed region – or 20th, counting the north-African coastal outposts of Ceuta and Melilla – but the idea has not progressed any further than a polite request.
And if Jackson had been seeking an extreme challenge, he could even have given Trump his 'marching orders' using the native 'language' of the Canarian island of La Gomera, but would have been hard-put to make a flashcard of it, since it comprises 100% whistling with no spoken words.
This said, given that El Silbo, or 'The Whistle', has mostly died out – despite still being UNESCO Intangible Heritage – it may not have been in use recently enough for Jackson's multi-lingual insult to be translated into it.
The second photograph, from the blog Saber o Jugar Lengua, shows Spain's official languages – including castellano, or Spanish – and some of its other regional tongues which are not yet recognised as 'official', but which may well be one day in the future.
Picture one, of Samuel L. Jackson, is from IMDb.
Related Topics
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