a note from the Bone reread

[castiron]

In volume 6 of Bone, Old Man's Cave, there's a bit where the rat creatures are speaking their ancient battle language.

I would like to report that when I plug their statement "Ik garen spek nessen!" into Google Translate, GT detects it as Frisian and translates it as "I cook yarn bacon!"

(This actually kinda fits with the one rat creature's obsession with quiche....)

Comments

[castiron]

Heh, I'm not surprised that GT came up with a mess, and thanks for putting your finger on why "ik garen" feels wrong.

In story context, Nessen is the name of the rat creature language, and the sentence is probably supposed to translate as something along the lines of "I'm going to speak Nessen" or "I have to speak Nessen". The previous panel has the rat creature saying "Shoss! Nessen! Nessen!" which in contacts looks like it's meant to translate as "Shush! Nessen! Nessen!"

[eller]

Ah, thanks for that explanation - looks like it doesn't have anything to do with any German dialects, then. XD I'm still amazed that GT knows Frisian.