You definitely saw it in The Avengers.
Marvel Studios, releasing films and series about superheroes, always tries to work out its own universe in detail. At the same time, the guys bother so much that sometimes they adapt films for a specific country in which the film is planned to be distributed. So, for example, it was with the film about Captain America, which, in the version for Russia, was supposed to study the songs of Vladimir Vysotsky and watch the film “Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears”.
But Marvel has fictional locations. The most famous is the country of Wakanda in Africa, which is hidden from the rest of the world. A slightly less popular country is Sokovia. It unfolds the battle with the final boss in the movie “Avengers: Age of Ultron”. And the first thing that catches the eye of our viewer is the inscriptions in Cyrillic and, in general, the interface is close to the Soviet one.
Shot from the movie “Avengers: Age of Ultron”
And now the questions – what kind of Sokovia is, where is it located and why is everything in Cyrillic there? What language do they speak there?
Shooting locations will not give us anything. The final scenes of the film were filmed in northern Italy near Turin. But in those parts there are clearly no typical Soviet monuments and our alphabet.
The answer is given to us in the next film of the saga – “Captain America: Civil War” (in the Russian adaptation – “The First Avenger: Confrontation”). In one scene, when the superhero team is sitting on a table, they are shown a map of Europe with Sokovia on it.
Frame from the movie “Captain America: Civil War”
It turns out that it is somewhere on the border of Italy, Austria and Slovenia. The closest, of course, is Slovenia. After all, the former Yugoslavia. So, the Cyrillic alphabet is not alien to them. Plus, Slovenia is quite consonant with Sokovia.
Now the question is with the language. If you take a freeze frame and read the signs, it may seem that this is the Serbian language. Many words are actually written on it.
Shot from the movie “Avengers: Age of Ultron” Shot from the movie “Avengers: Age of Ultron” Shot from the movie “Avengers: Age of Ultron”
But the closer the final is, the more questions there are for the Sokovian language. For example, in one of the frames we see a kiosk with a sign “Printed products”.
Shot from the movie “Avengers: Age of Ultron”
But the letter “I” is simply not in the Serbian alphabet. This sound is indicated by the combination of letters ja. And we’ve seen it before. For example, on “police” patches. And then we see an ambulance representative. On the back of which is written “Ambulance”.
Shot from the movie “Avengers: Age of Ultron”
Firstly, we recall the letter “I”, and secondly, “ambulance” in Serbian is “hitna help”. That is, here the creators are already deliberately switching to Russian.
Another way to reveal the Sokovian language was in the Vandavision series, which was released by Marvel Studios. It shows, among other things, the childhood of the Scarlet Witch, she is also Wanda Maximoff, she is also a native juicer. And in this childhood, Wanda speaks with her brother Pietro in her native language. It turned out to be some kind of hellish mixture of Serbian, Polish and fictional.
At the same time, the lullaby that Wanda sang to her children in Sokovian definitely has nothing to do with any of the Eastern European languages.
In general, Marvel wanted realism. But if you mix everything together, it will not become more real from this.
