Ewoks speak Tibetan?

[snopes]

Comment: Someone recently told me that the Ewoks in Return of the Jedi
aren't speaking jibberish, they're actually speaking Tibetan (but sped up
to be higher pitched). And furthermore, that it's actual recorded Tibetan
from the streets of some Tibetan city, so the Ewoks are saying things like
"Hi, how are you?" and "How much does that thing cost?"

Also discussed here:

http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/u...;f=75;t=000692

[erwins]

According to Wikipedia, this info comes from the DVD commentary to Return of the Jedi (I don't have the DVD, so I can't verify the cite):

An "Ewokese" language was created for the films by Return of the Jedi’s sound designer Ben Burtt. On the commentary track for the DVD of Return of the Jedi, Burtt explains that the language is based on Kalmyk, a language spoken by the Kalmyk people of Russia. Burtt heard the language in a documentary and liked its sound, which seems very alien to Western ears. After some research, he identified an 80-year old Kalmyk refugee. Burtt recorded her telling folk stories in her native language, and then used the recordings as a basis for sounds that became the Ewok language and were performed by voice actors who imitated the old woman's voice in different styles. For the scene in which C-3PO speaks Ewokese, actor Anthony Daniels worked with Burtt and invented words, based on the Kalmyk recordings.