Bello!

I know absolutely nothing about the Minions; it was only recently that I learned to associate the word with those images of cylindrical yellow creatures I occasionally saw around the internet. However, for obvious reasons I was absorbed by Eva Jaber’s Guardian story about their language and its influence on the slang of Youth Today: I was four years old when Despicable Me was released in cinemas and the banana-coloured, overall-clad Minions took the world by storm. By the time I was seven, my siblings and I were using The Official Minion Manual to teach ourselves Minionese. Minionese is, of course, the made-up language spoken by Kevin, Stuart, Bob and company, which consists of a combination of melodic gibberish and variations on genuine vocabulary from a diverse array of world languages. When the Minions shout “kanpai” (“cheers” in Japanese) or “para tú!” (a variation on the Spanish “para ti”), it might remind you of how gen Alpha slang, which primarily consists of nonsensical words…