The Golden Child

Cafe Society
1

In the movie The golden Child, (1986 w/ Eddie Murphy) The charactor Numspa, a demon in human form either can not or will not pronounce the letter “J”. No explaination is given, or as far as I could figure out even hinted at. The movie did go out of its way to show him blatantly substituting a “Y” for the “J” in a couple of scenes. Murphy’s charactor even directly questions him about it. As far as I can tell no clue was given.

Any one have the dope on this? How bout a WAG?

2

I assumed it was “J” as in “Jesus.”

3

That was my first thought too, but the story is centered around ancient tibetan (nepalese?) belief systems and just doesn’t seem to fit.

4

My WAG is that it was because some ancient languages don’t have the J sound (ancient Greek I believe) may be true of sanskrit (I don’t know). So this is a way to make the character seem ancient.