Did you know that Ewoks from ‘Star Wars’ speak Kalmyk!?
The funny, furry forest inhabitants on the satellite of Endor, who look like gnomes and teddy bears at the same time, actually speak the Kalmyk language! When sound designer Ben Burtt heard it, he thought it sounded alien enough to be spoken by one of the races of a far far away galaxy.
Bart created dialects for numerous ‘Star Wars’ characters based on existing Earth languages, but, at the same time, incomprehensible to most viewers. For example, the bulk of ‘Star Wars’ heroes speak mainly galactic - English. Inhabitants of different planets have either their own dialects or entirely separate languages.
The person who gave voice to the Ewoks was an elderly lamyk woman named Kosi Unkova. She was born in 1899 in the village of Batlaev in the Russian Empire, then first emigrated to Europe and then to the United States where she settled in California: Once, an acquaintance of one of her sons told that ‘Lucas Film’ was looking for unusual languages to use in the movie.
Kalmyk turned out to be one of them. So, grandma Kosi recorded folk legends, fairy tales and songs from which the Ewok “language” was born. So, when these forest dwellers say “Yov-yov!”, they literally say: “Go, go!”
Sadly, according to UNESCO, the Kalmyk language is on the verge of extinction - in Russia, according to the 2021 census, it is spoken by just over 107,000 people.
