Demonic Letters

Mundane & Pointless Stuff I Must Share: The Off Topic Forum

Moderator: Moderators

Post Reply
Rob_Knotts
Apprentice
Posts: 67
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Demonic Letters

Post by Rob_Knotts »

Flipping through channels tonight I came across the film The Golden Child, and I remembered the one thing in the film that always stuck with me: the villain's inablity to pronounce the letter "J", an unavoidable "tell" revealing him to really be a demon in disguise. As a teenage scifi/fantasy fan in the late 80s this made perfect sense to me, but I've never really understood why, and still don't. Anybody familiar with any relatively well-known literary or myth/folklore source for this sort of demonic trait?
Username17
Serious Badass
Posts: 29894
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Re: Demonic Letters

Post by Username17 »

Demons in Asian sources have a tendency to use austerities, either on purpose or mandatorily. Basically as they grow in power, they collect more restrictions and do more painful things to themselves in addition to getting more power (in many versions they pick up the restrictions to get the power, and in others they getthe power and the restrictions come with it).

Anything which comes ultimately from the Hindu tradition is all over that stuff. And that means that it shows up in a lot of East Asia through Buddhism.

-Username17
User avatar
Maj
Prince
Posts: 4705
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Location: Shelton, Washington, USA

Re: Demonic Letters

Post by Maj »

RobK wrote:I remembered the one thing in the film that always stuck with me: the villain's inablity to pronounce the letter "J", an unavoidable "tell" revealing him to really be a demon in disguise.


Someone really liked the word shibboleth.

;)
My son makes me laugh. Maybe he'll make you laugh, too.
Rob_Knotts
Apprentice
Posts: 67
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Re: Demonic Letters

Post by Rob_Knotts »

Maj at [unixtime wrote:1185647716[/unixtime]]Someone really liked the word shibboleth.

;)
Ah, thank you. Can't believe I never heard of that before, must not have sunk in. Always something new to learn. *sigh*
Post Reply