The linguistics of Star Wars

[Lusankya]

Lately I've been pondering gunguans and Yoda. Namely the fact that neither speak basic "properly".

Why do gunguans, if they learn basic as a second languge, speak it so strangely? i don't think it's because they are physically incapable of producing the sounds properly - not only do they have very flexible lips and tongues (useful for imitating sounds), but the distinguishing charactristics of their speech are added syllables, modified pronouns and words unique to their own vocabulary - which point against it being an accent due their native tongue. They also use the same speech to communicate with each other, which also suggests that what we hear Jar Jar et al say is actually their own tongue.

Now, I refuse to believe that every gunguan is incapable of learning how to speak a standardised form of Basic, so I have developed an hypothesis as to why they speak so strangely:

Perhaps they're not speaking standard "Basic" at all. Perhaps what they are actually speaking is a pidgin variety of Basic, which is close enough to normal "basic" for the two languages to be mutually comprehensible. It would explain why Jar Jar never bothered to learn how to speak properly even after serving in the senate.


As for Yoda, I could never quite understand how he can be 900 years old, and have lived for most of that time on Coruscant, but still get his sentence order mixed up.

I think I figured it out today though: at some time he thought it might sound cool if he spoke backwards for a while, and then he got some positive reinforcement from somewhere and eventually it became his "schtick" sohe stuck with it.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Yoda speaks the way he does to be cryptic. It's sort of a Zen master thing. We also know that this manner of speech is probably intentional, since we occasionally do hear Yoda speak correctly in AotC and RotS.

[Jay]

As a child, I took Yoda's backwards speech patterns as a symptom of his issolation. He lived alone and had no-one ot correct him if he mixed up a sentence. (I imagined him talking ot himself a lot, too)

Its harder to rationalise now, due to the prequal trilogy. Maybe he finds learning new langages difficult. I'm a reasonable sharp minded-fellow, but I can't grasp more than a few basic words of any language other than English. perhaps Yoda has a similar struggle with sentence structure.

As for the Gungans. Who knows?

[Lusankya]

Its harder to rationalise now, due to the prequal trilogy. Maybe he finds learning new langages difficult. I'm a reasonable sharp minded-fellow, but I can't grasp more than a few basic words of any language other than English. perhaps Yoda has a similar struggle with sentence structure.

But he's 900 years old! And presumably the Jedi started training him when he was very young, although I guess the Jedi could have changed their intake practices a lot in that time.

[Jay]

But he's 900 years old! And presumably the Jedi started training him when he was very young, although I guess the Jedi could have changed their intake practices a lot in that time.

So. He becomes a master swordsman, has midchlorians up the wazzoo and can lift things many times his own weight by the power of the force . He can absorb and redirect force lightning and is wisest of all the jedi. I hardly think the Jedi Order would wash him out because he has trouble with foreign languages.

Some people just find foreign languages impossible.

[Lusankya]

But if he was taken into the temple at about the age when most Jedi were admitted into the temple, then he would have learnt Basic as a first language.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Bah, he does it on purpose, just likes I said it above!!

[NecronLord]

When Yoda a kid was, the way Basic was spoken was this!

[Jay]

ah, a subtly I missed.

In that case, I have no idea.

*Edit* this was aimed at Lusankya. damn you guys type fast.

[NecronLord]

Think about how fast language changes today. Now imagine 900 years of this same electronic society driving lingual change.

[Darth Mortis]

Well, look at Old English vs the current language. There's a large amount of differences.

He comes from 10 generations ago, and surely the language has evolved with the passing of centuries.

[Jay]

When Yoda a kid was, the way Basic was spoken was this!

*Edit* You were'nt joking were you?

Bah, he does it on purpose, just likes I said it above!!

When he tough-talks with Palpatine in ROTS he is all backwards. The same in AOTC when issues orders to the clone troopers.

"A perimeter around the survivors create." and "To the forward command centre take me."

I imagine in these situations, he would wish to be a concise as possible and would not needlessly mix his words if he could help it.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

And yet at other times he can speak perfectly normal. For example, when he greets Padme at the beginning of AotC.

And concerning an evolution of Basic over less than 1000 years: I doubt it. SW literature goes back 5000 years and it's all the same. More examples of general stagnation, I'd say.

[Jay]

And yet at other times he can speak perfectly normal. For example, when he greets Padme at the beginning of AotC.

Either due to random chance. Or extreme concentration on his part. Which is probably why in a formal situation he can say "Seeing you alive brings warm feelings to my heart." but under duress his orders to the clonetroopers come out backwards.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Additionally, the manner of speach employed by Yoda is known as "Object Subject Verb," which is the rarest form of linguistic typology (Subject Verb Object is the most common):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_Subject_Verb

It's not exactly backwards, which would be Object Verb Subject.

[HemlockGrey]

It could be that his home planet originally learned a pidgin or slightly modified form of Basic.

[Master of Ossus]

Well, look at Old English vs the current language. There's a large amount of differences.

He comes from 10 generations ago, and surely the language has evolved with the passing of centuries.

It's very unlikely that Basic would have evolved that much that quickly. We're talking about a complete change in grammar, here--not just changes in words. With the holonet and similar features, and with his life on Coruscant, the language should change the least there because of all of the standardizing forces.

[Glimmervoid]

Well I thought the consensus was that as a kid he took far too much crack (or many his body naturally secrets it) and this explains his fighting style (know as monkey on crack) and his strange speech.

Possible real explanation could be to show that he can. It could be a dominants thing. Yoda think that as the most powerful Jedi he can speak how he wants and that no one contradicting him means he is still in charge.

[Drooling Iguana]

Well, we know that he'd spent some time on Kashyyk. Perhaps he'd spent more of his life there than was implied by RotS, and had allowed the grammar of the Wookiee language to influence his Basic.

[Kuja]

As for the gungans, their manner of speech is deliberate. When humans first settled on Naboo, the gungans tried to throw them out and failed. Years passed with conflicts springing up again and again between the settlers and the natives. As more time passed, the gungans started to learn Basic to better communicate with their new neighbors, but some of them deliberately warped and twisted the language as a way to insult the Naboo. Ironically, this trend became so popular, lots of gungans bagen speaking the new Basic twist and by the time of TPM, it had virtually replaced original Gungan, which was kept only for important instances and ceremonies.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Is that actual or made up?

[Kuja]

Is that actual or made up?

It's from the Essential Guide to Alien Species.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

I see.

[Darth Mortis]

It's very unlikely that Basic would have evolved that much that quickly. We're talking about a complete change in grammar, here--not just changes in words. With the holonet and similar features, and with his life on Coruscant, the language should change the least there because of all of the standardizing forces.

I disagree, our language changes every day, new slang is created, old slang is lost. One must this galaxy is infinately more connected, both electronically and telepathically, than ours.

I believe the language would evolve at a faster pace. And 900 years is plenty of time for a reform in the grammar and sentence composure. Possible as the humans exerted more and more influence, their method of speach pattern slowly because the "normal" way to communicate.

Look at the older species in the movies, they all seem to have small grammar "ticks"

[Darth Garden Gnome]

There are many forms of Star Wars media (comics, games) that depict events taking place 1000, 5000, and 25000 years before ANH. They all speak the same.