Meet the cast
The central character of today’s offshoot is Yoda, described by the fandom as follows:
A Force-sensitive male being belonging to a mysterious species, Yoda was a legendary Jedi Master who witnessed the rise and fall of the Galactic Republic, followed by the rise of the Galactic Empire.
A less colourful origin story from Wikipedia goes like this:
Yoda makes his first film appearance in The Empire Strikes Back. Luke Skywalker arrives on Dagobah to seek his guidance, having been instructed to do so by the Force ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi, who describes him as "the Jedi Master who instructed me".
I shall stay away from the lore (primarily because I am not too well-versed in it myself and get my kicks from emulating Spock’s Vulcan salute in front of Star Wars fans).
For our purposes, all you need to know is that Yoda is the wise green Grand Master (and if the prequels are to be believed, also a war criminal) who uttered the following sentences (to maximize your fun, turn the following section into a drinking game, “Who said this – Yoda or Shakespeare?”):
o Do or do not. There is no try.
o Named must be your fear before banish it you can.
o When nine hundred years old you reach, look as good you will not
o Near Birnam Wood shall we meet them; that way are they coming.
o To be or not to be, that is the question.
The last two of these, Shakespeare can be credited with. If you were right, congratulations but please stop with the Star Wars marathons. You won’t find your Princess Leia on the big screen (you’ll find her in your house, Luke: go apologize to your sister).
Second things second
What language is Yoda speaking? Did he not go to school?
Yoda is claimed to be speaking a special dialect of the most common language in the fictional galaxy – Galactic Basic (basically, the name given to English in the Star Wars universe).
Why does it sound funny?
Some of us never spent hours diagramming sentences and it shows. Yoda is one of us. Essentially, syntax is ignored when Yoda talks.
What is syntax?
syntax /ˈsɪntaks/: In linguistics, syntax is the set of rules, principles, and processes that govern the structure of sentences in a given language, usually including word order.
In English, the most common word order has to be subject-verb followed by an adjective, complement, adverb, or phrase (think: He drives like the wind or He failed the driving test). Yoda inverts this and says things like: Into the mist sadly go I. Inverted syntax is not new and can be traced back to Homer’s Iliad (Proud is the spirit of Zeus-fostered kings) and the Bible (Of their flesh shall ye not eat).
The short sentences and a distant alien stare give the character of Yoda an air of mystery and ancient wisdom, further enhanced by the riddle-like sentences he spins. Perhaps it helps distract from the fact that the essence of these sentences is not so deep. “Hard to see, the dark side is,” says Yoda. Obviously, it’s hard to see. It’s dark, isn’t it?
The silver lining
If someone has benefited from this way of speaking, it must be the prince of Denmark, Hamlet. Yes, Yoda’s dialect is good news for Shakespeare as it helps people, especially children, move past one of the most daunting aspects of reading the bard’s plays - the syntax.
Since Yoda is a couple hundred years old, who copied whom might be a mystery. Maybe there’s some truth behind those conspiracy theories that propose our boy, Will, did not write those plays at all. Instead, it must’ve been a wiser, more sophisticated fellow. I can imagine Yoda penning down gems like “This above all: to thine own self be true”. Can’t you?
Other Earthly languages
Languages like Japanese and Albanian use the subject-object-verb (SOV) order: He the test failed. David Adger, of Queen Mary University of London, used linguistic detective work to establish Earthly precedents for Yoda’s native language. Adger found that the practice of putting the predicate before the subject (verb-subject-object: Failed he the test) is normal in Hawaiian, some Celtic languages, and perhaps in Yoda’s native language (named Yodish).
Yoda employs an even rarer form: object-subject-verb or OSV (The test he failed or Much to learn, you still have.) It might be normal in Yodish but it sounds odd when he transfers and applies the same features to his second language (Galactic Basic) through a process that linguists call ‘language transfer’. As Geoff Pullum, a professor of linguistics at the University of Edinburgh, told the Atlantic:
Surprisingly, there are a very few languages—it seems to be in single digits—that use OSV as their basic or normal order. As far as I know, they occur only in the area of Amazonia in Brazil: they are South American Indian languages. One well-described case is a language called Nadëb.
Lost in translation
Does Yoda sound equally odd in non-English versions of Star Wars?
Though we’ve all seen some wildly off-script dubbed Hollywood movies, as Reddit users reported on an amusing thread, mostly the Star Wars translations try to stick to his pattern of speech. Whether it sounds weird or not depends on the language - if it’s an SVO/SOV language (Italian/Japanese), OSV sounds out of place, but for a free word order language (Hungarian/Czech), it’s more commonplace to have your Os all over the place.
Will Baby Yoda’s first words be in Yodish or Basic?
This brings us into the more contentious territory of learning a language. It is safe to assume that unless their species is somehow neurologically hard-wired to construct sentences in OSV, and if Baby Yoda grows up surrounded by other Basic speakers, then he would lose the Shakespearean touch and speak in the same manner as Han Solo and most of the other galaxy residents.
Until next offshoot, enjoy talking in screwed syntax. And as the master would say, It if you liked, remember to share this offshoot. Yes, hmmm.