# Dead Places language question **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** tv-shows-scripted, netflix\ **Created:** [May 14, 2021, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-places-language-question/942106 "2021-05-14T19:44:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2021, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-places-language-question/942106/1 "2021-05-14T19:44:39Z")
I have been watching the Netflix series _Dead Places_. > **[Dead Places](https://netflix.fandom.com/wiki/Dead_Places)** > > Dead Places is a South African horror series created by Gareth Crocker. The first season of the series was released in South American, Asian, African, Central American countries and Mexico. It was released on April 16, 2021. Anthony Oseyemi as Will... Filmed and set in South Africa, it has been almost entirely in English, and what I would describe as “American English”, pretty much no non-American terms or difficult to comprehend accents (as happens with shows in “UK English.”) But rarely there are lines in some other language. For instance, in episode six the main character says something subtitled as “You’ve got to be shitting me” but what he actually said sounded sort of like “Mis musse benny mage.” I’m kind of curious what a more literal translation of that would be. ---
**Author:** ![mordecaiB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mordecaib/32/7725_2.png) [@mordecaiB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mordecaiB)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2021, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-places-language-question/942106/2 "2021-05-15T05:29:03Z")
This looks good, I’d like to watch it but Netflix tells me it’s not available in the US. I wonder how… I’ll ping @MrDibble for you, he’s good at all things South African. Maybe he’ll pop in and help you out. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2021, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-places-language-question/942106/3 "2021-05-15T06:08:50Z")
Haven’t seen the series, it didn’t look like my cup of tea, but if you tell me at what time in the episode it occurs, I can have a look - in that episode specifically, the other languages include Zulu and the very non-South African Yoruba, neither of which I speak. But I can probably do a better transcription of at least the Zulu, to look it up on Google Translate :). ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2021, 7:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-places-language-question/942106/4 "2021-05-15T07:51:38Z")
Put the sentence “You must be kidding me” into an online translator and tell it to translate it from English to Afrikaans. You can do this just by putting it into Google. It will not only give you the written version of it, but it will allow you to listen to a spoken version of it. Afrikaans is a version of Dutch that’s spoken in South Africa. The Dutch colonized South Africa, and there are still speakers of Afrikaans there. For instance, do you know that Charlize Theron speaks Afrikaans as her native language (along with English now)? ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2021, 9:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-places-language-question/942106/5 "2021-05-15T09:30:35Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Put the sentence “You must be kidding me” into an online translator and tell it to translate it from English to Afrikaans. What the OP transliterated doesn’t sound like Afrikaans at all. Probably Zulu, based on the sounds transliterated. eg “musa” is “don’t”, “manje” is “now”, etc. > [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > there are still speakers of Afrikaans there. This phrasing makes it sound like Afrikaans is some rare language even here. It’s not at all. 7 million speak it natively and another 10 million as a second language, and it’s also spoken in Namibia. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2021, 9:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-places-language-question/942106/6 "2021-05-15T09:54:58Z")
In fact that transcript sounds like a little like “Musa mesabeni manje” which would be “Don’t be afraid now” in Zulu. If so, that’s hardly a literal translation. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2021, 11:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-places-language-question/942106/7 "2021-05-15T11:13:01Z")
Looks like you’ve already got it covered, but it is at 27min 34sec of episode 6, _Something in the Tree_. (And [these subs](https://subscene.com/subtitles/dead-places-first-season/english/2450201) say it is Zulu.) ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2021, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-places-language-question/942106/8 "2021-05-15T13:25:33Z")
You’re right, MrDibble. I was just guessing. If I had been able to actually listen to the phrase that Darren\_Garrison had transcribed as “Mis musse benny mage" I could have been able to tell that it wasn’t Afrikaans. I know, of course, that there are millions of speakers of Afrikaans. I was just vaguely trying to tell Darren\_Garrison that there was another language that he might consider for what he heard. Yes, all my guesses in this thread have been wrong. Sorry about that. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2021, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dead-places-language-question/942106/9 "2021-05-15T13:43:28Z")
Oh, no, listening to that bit, I’m pretty sure it’s _misa masimbeni manje_ that he says. Which would literally be “I’m standing In the shit now”,(the word isimba is shit - literally cowdung) “You’ve got to be shitting me” is close enough idiomatically. Google translate is useless for this, it bowdlerizes it horribly as “it’s on the line now” or “in the fields now”, but [emasimbeni](https://isizulu.net/?emasimbeni) is definitely “in the shit”