No, your ears did not fool you, that is a Philippine language spoken in the Netflix Korean drama Arthdal Chronicles. Nash Ang, the Filipino actor who speaks it during the show’s ninth episode confirmed this in a Facebook post on Sunday.
“So some Arthdal Chronicles viewers just noticed that one of [the] indigenous languages from the Philippines is featured in this Korean drama. ‘TAUSUG’ is one of the languages spoken by Wahan tribe,” he said.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10156519775165678&set=a.415437725677&type=3&theater
For those who haven’t seen it, skip to the episode’s 4-minute mark. In it, Ang’s character — who was captured and enslaved — says a line in Tausug that translates into “Can I have something to eat, even just water?”
Arthdal Chronicles is an ongoing show aired on the South Korean network TVN and available internationally on Netflix. It’s a fantasy drama based on a Korean myth about the birth of civilization and stars Jang Dong-gun, Song Joong-ki, Kim Ji-won, and Kim Ok-vin. It reportedly had a huge budget of KRW54 billion (approx. US$46.2 million) and has drawn comparisons to Game of Thrones.
READ: Filipinos want Twitterverse to know how devastated they are over Song Hye Kyo-Song Joong Ki divorce
In an email to Coconuts Manila, Ang said that the idea for him to speak in Tausug came from the show’s production team who had asked him to translate dialogue into languages used in the southern parts of the Philippines. He said that apart from Tausug, which is spoken in Sulu province, he also translated some lines into Yakan, a language from Basilan.
“I had my mother and relatives translate the lines because the conversations were so deep,” Ang said in English in Filipino. “The Korean actors really memorized them.”
Ang does not know when the two Philippine languages will be featured on the show, saying that the production team is as secretive as Marvel’s, but he thinks it’s likely that they’ll be used more in the series because they’re the native language of two fictional tribes.
The actor has been living in South Korea since 2012, the year he said he received a scholarship from the Korea National University of Arts to study film. He previously worked in digital marketing among other industries while in the Philippines. Ang is also a film director.
For him, it’s important to diversify the Korean entertainment industry.
“One of the reasons that I stay here in Korea [is] because [of the] lack of strong Filipino representation on both Korean entertainment and social entrepreneurship,” Ang said.
He has worked in other dramas before including The Beauty Inside and The Undateables and loves being behind the scenes of popular shows.
“Not only [do] I represent the Philippines in Korean entertainment, I also have the privilege to mingle [with those in the entertainment industry] as friends off-screen. Eating lunch together, chilling out, and playing games at home. They are also humans with personal lives at the back of the camera,” Ang said.
Naori says
He isn’t from the wahan tribe but Probably a neighbouring tribe in Iark. Because the wahan tribe all spoke Korean.