Jyrki21
Thanks for your answer.
Here are some data and comments about the languages heard the original versions:
- Chinese is mostly written and seems to have mainly a rather passive, decorative role and is sort of neutralized (Chinese = Japanese in
The Crab with the Golden Claws p8, C1)...
- Arabic is kind of neutralized too in
The Black Gold (p18, C2) & in
The Red Sea Sharks (p26, A1), and is mostly as fake as in the English versions...
The most common
uttered languages (a few dozens of words each, including dialogues) are:
- Arumbayan (mainly in
The Broken Ear)
- Syldavian (mainly in
King's Ottokar Sceptre)
- English & Spanish (phrases scattered in various albums)
- Sondonesian (in Flight 714 only)
If Arumbayan and Syldavian stand for distorted
marollien (Herge's childhood's language, see 'Ketje' book), the real-life linguistic area hinted by the other languages might also be related to the author's youth's 'terrible' time, all the more as some
internal data match together, after they are confronted with
external data...
Black Island's or
internal data:
This story is marked by the only two dramatic barrier's crossings seen in the Tintinverse:
- in England (p30, B1)...
- in Scotland (p38, D3)...
These barriers are narrowly linked to obscure (p31, D1) or invisible passages (p39, B3) and most likely stand for language barriers, because of the ...
...British Isles' or
external data:
- the Scottish word 'Iles'* refer to Gaelic islands such as Craigh Dhui (
The Black Island, p42)...
- in those islands, the 'Isles'** are rendered by 'Innseachan', a synonymous with the 'Indies'...
These latent language distortions match with
The Black Island scenario:
- the story is entirely dedicated to counterfeiters who work with a strange invisible ink (see 'magic Archipelago' thread)...
- Tintin's route is limited to regions the languages of which can transform
L'Ile Noire (the album's original title) into
East Indies**, namely Sondonesia, a country which appears much later in the corpus (
Flight 714)...
Such remote isles*** announced with so much secrecy should most likely possess the
'unseen' transmission system used by Herge 'to say what he had to say' (see 'Tintin et Moi' DVD), all the more as:
- Sondonesian is quoted and thus disclosed by the end of the corpus only...
- Sondonesian natives are
Indians, and thus match with the many threads about their omnipresence, which is systematically linked with
obscure or unseen passages...
If English & England & the scenario lead to Scottish regions that possess unseen languages able to transform words and match them, Spanish & Spain might have the same properties...
Tintin never travels to Spain in the books, but Spain is intimately linked to his encounter with Haddock, for both heroes often do mention it in
The Golden Claws before they crash in a place which isn't Spain any more, but has turned into Sahara...
Just like
The Black Island, 'Spain' & the 'Sahara' might be kind of 'passwords' (please search for 'passwords' thread) related to Tintin & Haddock's reunion, i.e. the first four 'virtual' syllables of the author's announced message (please search for 'hieroglyphs' thread)...
*
- 'Iles' without a circumflex, namely spelled as shown on the cover to the
Ile Noire ultimate version
(please see both covers here
http://modelbox.free.fr/dossiers/tintin/Tintin_P/page3.html )...
Such an 'invisible' title's duplication (1938/43's version versus 1966's) implies 'Ile' is kind of a plural...
- the 'Iles' = the 'Hebrides' (Scots Dictionary, ISBN 1-902930-01-0, p308)...
**
(1) Isles = Gaelic 'Innseachan' = Indies (Gaelic Dictionary, ISBN 1-874644-11-6, p197)...
(2) Gaelic 'noir' = East (Gaelic Dictionary, ISBN 1-874644-11-6, p247)...
***
L'Archipel Tintin (2004) would thus not just be a casual book's title, but reflect
Tintin, Haddock & Co's unseen and so-called 'unconscious' motherland, namely Pulau Pulau (= the Iles) Bompa, a Sondonesian islet linguistically as
plural as
L'Ile Noire*...