A closer look
Universal Studios constructed the entire Minion language in the Despicable Me franchise out of completely random gibberish words stolen from various global languages, primarily focusing on food. Directors Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud voiced the little yellow pill-shaped monsters themselves, mashing together French, Spanish, Italian, and Japanese words with absolutely no grammatical structure whatsoever. If you listen closely, their dramatic emotional speeches are often just them yelling about chicken tikka masala, apples, and ice cream in a high-pitched, sped-up voice. It is genuinely baffling that a linguistic joke literally composed of a polyglot's grocery list managed to become a multi-billion dollar merchandising empire that successfully hijacked the Facebook feeds of every middle-aged aunt on the planet for an entire decade!
