Minions can also be frequently heard repeating words they hear, most notably names, during which they sometimes suffer from minor single-letter speech impediments such as 'Skärlet Pōpapjl' in place of ' Scarlet Overkill,' which is heard both from Kevin at the 1968 Villain-Con and from an unnamed Minion in the ice cave. All of the Minionese heard in the films was created and voiced by Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud, the directors of the Despicable Me movies. The Minions can also understand English although none of them have ever been heard to actually speak it. No non-Minion character has ever been heard to speak Minionese directly, although some characters (most notably Gru) can understand it anyway. Also, some words such as 'Papōy' (toy) and “Milado” (a method to try and get attention) are unique to Minionese. In Minions, new Minionese words were heard from the minions, such as “Trōpa' in Tagalog and Spanish which means a group of friends.

In addition, Minionese also contains words from other languages such as Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Filipino (Tagalog), French and Russian, including Spanish-sounding words like ' para tú' (roughly 'for you') and 'la bōda' ('the wedding'), French ( poulet tikka masala, et pis c'est tout,, and that's all'), Russian words such as 'да' (Dä, 'yes'), Italian (Gelato) Japanese ( kanpai / 乾杯, translating to 'cheers') Hindi, ('paneer tikka masala') and Korean words such as 'Hana (하나), Dúl (둘), Sae (From Set ' meaning 'One, Two, Three'), and many other languages. (Minions are, as has been shown many times, particularly obsessed with food.) Minionese contains some elements of English, with words like 'Banana', 'Bapple' (apple, basically 'Apple' with 'B'), and 'Potato'. Minionese appears to be a posteriori language, which borrows words and - such as they are - grammatical rules from many different languages.

List of minion names