Demon tongue

[doppelgänger2]

I'm not sure if I'm missing something... But I was wondering something about "demon tounge" or demon language, whatever you wish.

In BtVS episode "A New Man" (season 4), Spike is the only one who knows Demon-Giles is Giles because he's the only one who can understand his demon tongue. However, in AtS episode "Bachelor Party" (season 1), Angel can't understand what those Ano-movic are saying to each other and needs Harry (Doyle's ex-wife) to translate for him.

Can Vampires (for being demons themselfs) automatically understand demon tungue (as is the impression I got from BtVS) or was Spike already familiar with the language that Demon-Giles spoke?

 

[buffetofsporks]

I think Spike mentioned that he had worked with the type of demon Giles turned into and could therefore understand their language. I'll have to go and rewatch it, though, cause I'm not entirely sure. Yeah, I'm no help. Sorry, hun. 🙁

 

[eponinethen]

I'm quite sure there are tons of different demon languages, and that Spike just happened to know the one demon-Giles spoke (I know they mentioned the name of the language but I just can't remember it). Come on, Spike had nothing to do, he was bored, he probably read lots of old demon-books and learnt all sorts of demon-languages. Angel on the other, sort of started to have a "life" at this point, he probably just spoke English, right..? (And that weird thing that was supposed to be Irish of course.)

EDIT: Yeah, it's probably what buffetofsporks said though, heh.

 

[The Arcane]

Yeah, what Buffet and Epo said, pretty much.

Most demons seen on the two shows tend to speak our language (by which i mean the universal tongue of English which seems to be the language of choice for all American/British shows, regardless of whether we are talking to aliens, demons or postal workers! What are the chances huh? 😀) but it has been shown various times that each species of demon has their own language too.

A vampire would naturally speak whatever language it spoke as a human but in the case of Spike, he had previously had reason to learn the language of the Fyarl demon. Just goes to show it's handy to have a second language! 😉

 

[Mr. Pointy]

This thread set me to wondering about whether they used real languages in Buffy/Angel for demon languages - like Lucas used obscure African dialects and such in Star Wars for alien languages...anyone know?

 

[The Arcane]

Well, just off the top of my head i can only think of the Fyarl, the Kungai and the Ano-movic demon languages that we have actually heard spoken on the shows. In the cases of the first two examples they were more noises and sounds than languages so i would imagine they just made them up.

In the case of the Ano-movic demons however there were actual spoken words, although they were not native to the species. The language was described as Aratuscan and included the following words ...

Ino platbrata iko iko retvan el shak

... which translated to something along the lines of ingesting past love. However, if that was ever used as a language in the real world in any way, shape or form, i have no idea! 😀

 

[Jules]

I just assumed it was like us learning another language such as French or German. Spike, having worked with a Fyarl demon knew the language, but Angel must not have learnt the Ano-movic tongue.