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:
“I, who am speaking to you, if I had had the chance to choose my father, I would not have been born.”
—Albert Camus (19131960)
“I suggested to them also the great desirability of a general knowledge on the Island of the English language. They are under an English speaking government and are a part of the territory of an English speaking nation.... While I appreciated the desirability of maintaining their grasp on the Spanish language, the beauty of that language and the richness of its literature, that as a practical matter for them it was quite necessary to have a good comprehension of English.”
—Calvin Coolidge (18721933)
“The truth is always something that is told, not something that is known. If there were no speaking or writing, there would be no truth about anything. There would only be what is.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)