Who came up with Gabrielle's Greek?
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Xena: Warrior Princess
elliest_5 — 9 years ago(September 29, 2016 11:27 PM)
So there is this video from the series that is very popular among Greeks (and the source of ample laughter):
The reason is that, what is supposed to be a "Dorian chant" (mistakenly read in "Ionian rhythm", according to Gabrielle, despite the fact that "Dorian/Ionian rhythm" are architectural terms, mainly referring to pillar styles rather than the actual ancient Dorian and Ionian dialects) is actually in Modern Greek instead of Ancient Greek, and it goes like this (generally pronounced wrong):
Thank you very much
So and so
Hi good morning
Hi good night
Hi good "noches" [as in: the Spanish word for night]
and then, to send the giants/old gods back to sleep, it goes like:
Greetings greetings greetings
Hi greet
Good greet
Mupolita mupolita [gibberish]
Hania! [a town in Crete] Iraklion! [another town in Crete]
I doubt that the translation transmits how ridiculous this sounds to a Greek speaker, but yeh, it's hilarious.
So has anyone ever commented on this, say in a convention? I would love to find out the story behind this chant disaster (e.g. they only realised they forgot to research & write the chant while filming that scene, so they sent someone to the nearest bookstore to get a Greek phrasebook for tourists? some Greek guy in the production team decided to troll everyone?).
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andromache3 — 9 years ago(January 08, 2017 10:42 PM)
Yeah that's cringeworthy all right!! I take it there was some sort of inside joke going on or maybe someone who spoke Greek did decide to troll everyone, like you said OP. But let's be honest, this show wasn't meant to be taken seriously, despite some of its dark themes. After all, if you had Xena hanging out with Odysseus, then Julius Caesar, (who are both her boyfriends, despite her being a lesbian) and then ended up in the Kingdom of Chin in China (where no Westerner had been prior to Marco Polo in the tenth century AD), what did you expect??