Minions speak Indonesian

JAKARTA. Planning a trip to the cinema to watch the newly released Minions movie? Don’t forget your Indonesian dictionary.

The movie’s cute little yellow creatures speak a gibberish language – but it is dotted with Bahasa Indonesia.

Utterances including terima kasih (thank you), kemari (come here) and Paduka Raja (Your Highness) can be heard throughout the movie, which was released on Wednesday.

Metrotvnews.com reported recently that the use of Indonesian in the movie was down to one of the directors, Pierre Coffin, having emotional and blood ties to Indonesia.

Coffin, the director of Despicable Me (2010) and Despicable Me 2 (2013), is the son of Indonesian novelist Nurhayati Sriharini Siti Nukatin, better known by her pen name NH Dini.

Coffin is a child of NH Dini’s marriage to French diplomat Yves Coffin; the couple separated in 1984.

In another interview, Coffin confessed that he had used Indonesian in minion speech since Despicable Me.

“I find the Indonesian language very beautiful. It is like music,” he said.

Apart from Indonesian, the movie’s animated stars’ dialogue contains languages including Spanish, Italian, English and Greek. (ika)