So...we watched the Caprica prequel on DVD last night & it looks like the series will be interesting. I'm still a little bit doubtful about setting everything so few generations before the events of Battlestar Galactica, but the story is good and promises to have the same thoughtful characterization and exploration of philosophical problems as the earlier series, so I'm willing to give it a chance.
What interested me the most, though, were some linguistic tidbits: a number of tantalizingly brief segments in the Tauron language, which meant I got to spend time trying to identify the words instead of paying attention to the plot. From what I could hear, I'm fairly certain that it was Greek -- or something remarkably close to it. "therapōn" = minister, "aner" = man, "dikē" = justice. Now, the fact that they would use Greek in particular is not terribly surprising, since the religion and a lot of the names come from classical mythology. But the question is: ancient or modern Greek? Or neither?
My ear isn't fast enough to catch it. I wish I had thought to ask Matt to see if the DVD had close-captioning before he returned it -- maybe I would have been able to get a transcription, at least.
None of the fan sites seem to have touched on this important issue (yet).Edit: Never mind. Apparently it would have helped if I spelled the language correctly when searching -- it's "Tauron" not "Tauran." The
BattlestarWiki confirms my intuition that the language is ancient Greek, although (frustratingly) they don't give any further details or sources.
