A New Language for Baahubali

Baahubali said to be the most expensive Indian film, is all set to hit the screens on the 10th of July. The film directed by S S Rajamouli features Prabhas, Anushka, Rana Daggubati, Tamannaah and others. 

Madhan Karky, the popular lyricist has apparently created a new language called Kilikili which would be spoken by the Kalakeya tribes in the film. 

Talking exclusively to behindwoods, Madhan explains how he arrived at creating this unique language. 

“Rajamouli wanted a powerful and a raw language for the Kalakeya tribe and also mentioned that the sound of it should incite fear. I asked him if I could create a language and he was fine with it. 

When I was in Australia, I had actually attempted creating a language for just fun purposes to teach two kids Tamil. I created new words and named the language CLICK. I made few words like min meaning me and nim meaning you. I saw to it that there was no confusion in this language and even made songs. That was a fun attempt and after I got back to India, I totally forgot all about it. 

And when Rajamouli asked me to create a new language, I first remembered CLICK. I added a few elements and made it sound rough. I used CLICK’s vocabulary as the base and built around. I finally made 750 word and 40 grammar rules in the language KILIKI. I also made a proper documentation and made that ready. In the film, when the language is spoken, there would be interpreters to translate the meaning. In all the versions of Baahubali, Kiliki will sound the same with interpreters, translating it in the respective languages. 

It was a different experience and also was a difficult one to make the language sound very rude. There are quite a few new sounds in it. For example, the sounds that we make in normal speech like tch, tsk will sound very different in Kiliki. It is very tough to teach this language. Prabhakar & the artists who speak it in the film learnt it and performed very well. I used to record and send it to him. The sequence has come out so well and when you see it, it is very frightening. 

Many queries used to come to me from the shooting spot on the language and I used to refer to my dictionary of Kiliki and clarify their doubts. If words were not there, I used to create, and also its syntax”. 

As a tailpiece, Madhan adds that it was such an interesting coincidence that once he read an article that mentioned that the world’s first language was named CLICK, spoken by a tribe in Africa. Apparently, that language does not exist anymore. 

"I named it Click because I wanted it to be easy, simple, something like a click of a mouse button, but that was a serendipitous discovery later." 

Extremely interesting and in addition to Baahubali’s numerous other highlights, the language that Madhan Karky has created, KILIKI, also is sure to make a huge impact.
Credits : Behindwoods.com

Prabhas speaks Kilikili at Baahubali Audio Launch

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