With the animation film Minions: The Rise of Gru in cinemas last week, fans of the Despicable Me franchise, rumors have surfaced that the sweet, yellow troublemakers are in fact of Mexican descent.
The idea that the minions are Mexican is a theory that has been around for years. If you haven’t kept up with the series, the original Despicable Me film debuted in 2010. They returned to the big screen four more times – in 2013 Despicable Me 22015’s minions2017’s terrible not 3, and this year’s Minions: The Rise of Gru†
One of the main reasons some fans declare the Minions Mexican is because of the unique language they speak, known as “Minionese.” It seems that the language is a mix of several languages, including Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Hindi, French, Russian, and of course English (they only say the word “banana” about a million times).
Latin people are usually focused on the Spanish words that the Minions seem to speak from time to time. For example, in the past they have used ‘para tú’ to mean ‘for you’, although it should really be ‘para ti’. They have also used the phrase “la boda” to describe “marriage,” although “la boda” in Spanish is “marriage.” Other Spanish words in their lexicon include “bella”, “bomba”, “la piñata” and “te amo”.
Minionese was developed by the original directors of the franchise, Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud. In the past InterviewsCoffin has said that in the beginning, “it’s not necessarily the” [Minions’] words that were important, but rather the way they were said, and the melodic quality — the music, actually — of their language.” It wasn’t until the third film when screenwriter Brian Lynch “got the idea that … their language ” [should] encompass all the languages of the world.”
during a interview with NPR in 2016, Coffin explained what he likes most about making the Minions speak Spanish. “What’s super cool about the Spanish language is that it ends with a [or] Oh. All these words, for some reason in my head, that’s the Minion language.”