Although the only language he could speak at first was Mangani, by the time Jane encountered him in the first book, Tarzan had already taught himself to read multiple languages by studying the books he found in his deceased parents portable library, according to Flavorwire. (Tarzan even followed Jane to Wisconsin, though somehow, Tarzan of Wisconsin didnt make the cut when Burroughs was coming up with titles.) 4. For that reason, Tarzan actually spends quite a bit of time in America. According to Burroughs, Jane actually hailed from the exotic city of Baltimore, Maryland, according to an article in The Baltimore Sun.

Sorry to all the Maureen OSullivan and Minnie Driver fans out there. The Mangani have their own language, also called Mangani, meaning great ape (Tarzan is Mangani for white skin, according to ' Tarzan of the Apes'), and they beat on earthen drums during ritual dances, according to Chapter 7 of the book. In The Jungle Tales of Tarzan, Burroughs described them as great, manlike apes which the natives of the Gobi speak of in whispers, who unlike the chimpanzee and the gorilla walk without the aid of their hands quite as readily as with. Strikingly, though, the Mangani seem to have more in common with men than animals. Probably the biggest misconception of them all: the great apes who raised Tarzan, although almost always depicted as plain old gorillas, were in fact a distinct fictional species that referred to themselves as the Mangani and to their larger enemies/cousins, the gorillas, as the Bolgani. Tarzans parents werent shipwrecked they were marooned, according to Burroughs' first Tarzan book, ' Tarzan of the Apes.' After the crew mutinied, Lord Greystoke and Lady Alice, who was pregnant, were deposited on the African coast with supplies and guns to help them survive for as long as five to eight years. Its a dramatic scene, but also not at all how it happened in the book. The very first scene of Disneys 1999 Tarzan opens on a ship engulfed in flames as a man desperately lowers a lifeboat with his wife and newborn son onboard into the churning waves. In light of that, here are 11 things people think they know about Tarzan that are wrong.

Naturally, though, over more than a century, a few misconceptions about the character and his adventures have taken root. In 2012, he celebrated his 100th birthday, and with the recent The Legend of Tarzan hitting theaters, his total number of TV and movie appearances climbs to 119, according to IMDB, placing him just behind guys such as Dracula, Sherlock Holmes and Hamlet as one of the most adapted literary characters of all time. Theres no question, Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan is one of the most enduring characters around.

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