Speaking
Though Sunny cannot speak fluently, her short sentences and baby babble can often be translated without help, however her siblings can always understand her and are usually quick to translate if someone cannot understand. Generally, when she uses nouns, it is clear what she is referring to. In the later books, such as The Slippery Slope, her baby noises are often allusions or subtextual meanings that relate to the plot as a whole, such as "Busheney!" which means "You're an evil man with no concern whatsoever for other people!"
In The Reptile Room, she says Ackroyd, meaning Roger in reference to a novel written by Agatha Christie.
The words she uses usually come from historical or cultural origins: in The Slippery Slope she uses the term "Rosebud" to suggest using a sled to escape, in reference to the sled in Citizen Kane. In The End (chapter 6) she uses the term "Dreyfus" in reference to Alfred Dreyfus when accused of a crime. (Dreyfus was himself held on an island for a long period of time and his case caused a schism in French society.)
However, in the later books, Sunny begins to improve her speaking skills. In The Hostile Hospital, she says, "Sheer terror", and in The Slippery Slope she says, "I'm not a baby". However, her speaking skills never fully develop in the books, except in the mini-book chapter 14 in The End (A Series of Unfortunate Events) and in Book the Twelfth, she rarely responded to the people around her because she was afraid that her way of speaking was going to give away her true identity.
From time to time, she also still speaks in her "baby language", but the words or phrases she uses tend to come from other languages such as "quid pro quo" which said in The End. In Latin, it means this for that, or equal trade. In the sort of epilogue The End called "Chapter 14" It is shown that Sunny seems to be speaking fluently in English in full sentences and actual words.
In the film, Sunny does speak her baby language, but speaks more in a wise-cracking and insulting way instead of an intelligent way, like calling Aunt Josephine the "mayor of Crazy Town", calling Count Olaf a "shmuck", and calling Mr. Poe dumb.
Read more about this topic: Sunny Baudelaire
Famous quotes containing the word speaking:
“To stand up on the stage is to say to many people: “Look at me.” How can you do that without speaking the only truth you know? There is no such thing as an uncommitted actor.”
—Judith Malina (b. 1926)
“This unlettered man’s speaking and writing are standard English. Some words and phrases deemed vulgarisms and Americanisms before, he has made standard American; such as “It will pay.” It suggests that the one great rule of composition—and if I were a professor of rhetoric I should insist on this—is, to speak the truth. This first, this second, this third; pebbles in your mouth or not. This demands earnestness and manhood chiefly.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is the vice of our public speaking that it has not abandonment. Somewhere, not only every orator but every man should let out all the length of all the reins; should find or make a frank and hearty expression of what force and meaning is in him.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)