Lit Constructed languages in Star Wars

I'm a cloudcuckoolander, so I just don't make that type of difference. You see, learning the principles of a language is mostly an intellectual exercise for me. (It seems you've studied Latin, so I guess you can understand that.) In that regard, a conlang that's developed intelligently is no different than a natural language.

 

Now, I didn't learn Latin just for the pleasure of my brain either. Etiam civis romanus sum. (But let's not start a real conversation in Latin; I'm afraid my skills are too rusty for that. Reading is fine, talking/writing not so much.)

 

Pardon me? What words I can isolate in the dialogue (or guess from context) seem to be present in a proper Tolkein Elvish Dictionary

 

I distinctly remember seeing the book in one of Helsinki's biggest book shops a few years back. And the Nordic online bookstore Adlibris, which operates in Finland too, is selling it for only 6,40 €. So yeah, you should definitely go north.

 

As much as I adore the Galactic Phrase Book, the linguistic information in it is one big joke. There's no discernible grammar in any of the phrases, the spelling systems are inconsistent and ambiguous, and most of the entries for Bocce and Huttese are straight-up jokes. Neimoidian and Gungan forms of Basic are treated as full languages .
There are some interesting word lists, but absolutely no mechanics of language.

I'm usually on board with the sillier aspects of Star Wars, but the lack of constructed languages drives me bonkers. It pains me to go from Greedo's elegant, exotic sounding Huttese to SE Jabba's "wanta dah moolee-rah", in the same movie no less.
As for explaining the inconsistencies of Huttese, my fanon is that it's an extremely diglossic language, with a "Classical" variety spoken mainly by Hutts grading into a myriad of mutually unintelligible dialects spread out among the various species and communities in Huttspace. Of course you still have to ignore that even Jabba's speech is inconsistent between films, but the general idea works for me.

 

I would actually say that Gungan count as a creole language

So it is like English?

 

I agree that Gungan counts as a creole, however, the entire concept of creolization is absent from the book. But you're right: the treatment of Neimoidian pronunciation is the real offender.

You could say that. I was thinking more like Arabic, but both work.

 

Well, ancient Greek has a bunch of different words that can mean "with." Just off the top of my head, there's meta, para, sun, sometimes pros. Greek prepositions are kind of a mess, though, and I don't know of any other language quite like it.

Tolkien famously said that modern constructed languages were far deader than ancient unused languages, because their authors never invented any legends or literature in that language.
Really, the entire point of his Middle Earth legendarium was to provide the literature, history, and culture required for his own constructed languages to make sense and be worth learning. His whole approach to language was that it was inextricably bound up with history, culture, literature, and myth, and he couldn't conceive of creating a language without also creating those things as well. Middle Earth exists because of Elvish, and not vice versa.

I don't know if that approach could ever work for Star Wars, though. Generally, I agree with Jello; I love learning languages, but I don't think I would ever spend the time to learn a constructed language--and if I did, it would be Elvish, which actually does have a legendarium, and not some Star Wars language.

 

I hope someday they expand on Cheunh, the Chiss language. We have a few words in it, and character names. But that's not enough for me.

Evil.

 

Something I am a bit irritate about is that durese is supposed to be this second language for most spacers but what little we know of it comes from the list in WotC's Hero's Guide that explains what the duros name means. We have no idea about things like syntax and grammar

 

Did we see any new constructed languages in TFA? Or new words for any of the old once?

 

I remember back when Vector Prime came out, I made a list of all the Yuuzhan Vong words in it, with translations as given or inferred, and was looking forward to more data so I could have a go at "re"constructing the grammar. (I'm the guy who tried to infer Khuzdul grammar from the dozen-or-so Dwarvish words Tolkien came up with.)
I think I even posted the list in this forum (under a previous username, I suppose) and someone told me I had way too much time on my hands. Which I then didn't, so that project was never finished

Another SW language I'd always dreamed of deciphering in my youth was that of the Dha Werda Verda. But then I saw Monty Python's "Best Joke in the World" sketch and thought better of it.

Oh and I made up a mostly-complete conlang for my first-ever Star Wars fanfic. It sounded a lot like Russian, and there were more than ten different words for rain. I think I still have the dictionary and grammar guide on a floppy disk somewhere

 

Language nerds like us are even weirder than many other nerds. I remember sighing when I heard new Huttese phrases developed for The Clone Wars. Obviously, there was no linguist in the house.

 

Tolkien succeeded because he was a professional linguist, Star Trek I dunno-maybe the fans were more into that.

Sith and Yuuzhan Vong however I would want to see expanded

It is certainly a niche thing though-something that while always in interesting part of fictional universes I just don't feel Star Wars needs to get worked up over it.

 

I'll never be able to get over the atrocity that is Stuka Crispo for "Death Watch". Never. When stuka was first used, it meant "[it] looks like", and crispo meant "kill" in an informal way ("fry", to be exact). "Looks like to fry" makes for a very mediocre approximation of "Death Watch".

 

A problem with made up languages in SW is how do you work with loanwords

Mando'a is one that I find lacking and would like to see expanded.

That could easily be explained with linguistic evolution - StukaCrispo isan old way of saying it and the separate meaning of thewordshaveintimechangetomeansomethingabitelse - and that all languages are full of things that don't follow the rules

I have a fanfic where the main characters all speak heavy slang that I have based on nadsat from A Clockwork Orange with some Russian based slangword from GURPS Cyberworld and some other stuff. If you find that floppy disk, please share it

 

You can always find excuses, but the real reason Huttese doesn't work is that it was only designed to sound exotic, but not to be an actual, usable conlang.

 

Speaking of Huttese, for the cantina song in TFA, are the supposedly-Huttese lyrics in it consistent with any prior usage of Huttese?

The only other alien dialogue I recall in TFA is whatever Quiggold says to Finn.

 

More or less. No bata tutu muni, muni ("It wasn't me, lover, lover") uses the word muni, which is originally fan-created, and an approximate version of something Watto said in AOTC (No bata no tutu, meaning "Whatever it is, I didn't do it.")