Mystery Language

[STEPHEN PEARL]

Dear SEELANGERS,
   
       In one of his books, "Over My Dead Body", Rex Stout, the creator 
of the master detective, Nero Wolfe, has a bogus Yugoslav Princess 
utter the following : "Teega mee Bornie Roosa". This expression is a 
phonetic representation of her words transcribed by Wolfe's assistant and 
amanuensis, Archie Goodwin, a notorious and unrepentant monoglot. The 
meaning of the words was: "Over my dead body" and were understood by Nero 
Wolfe, a native Montenegrin and speaker of what was then Serbo-Croatian, 
as well as six or seven other languages.
   
      The reader is clearly intended to assume that the language in 
which these words were uttered was some kind of "Yugoslav"/ Balkan/Slavic 
language. Over the years I have asked speakers of pretty well every 
European language I can think of [ except for Romany, a language of which 
I have never been able to find a speaker]  if they could identify the 
language in question, but have come up empty.
   
      It is possible that Rex Stout was fooling us all and simply 
concocted a non-existent language for the purpose, except that it is hard to 
imagine what his motive could have been, since nearly all his readers 
would simply have assumed that it was "Yugoslavian" and the joke, if 
any, would have been lost on them.
   
     My quality of life would be minutely, but distinctly, improved if 
anyone out there could remove the fly from my ointment by recognising 
and identifying for me the language in which these words were uttered. 
Thank you.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------