Advice on Jar Jar's speech patterns

I'm working on a story with Jar Jar as a character. However, I'm running into a problem with his dialogue. Other than "meesa" and "yousa" I have no idea how to write his speech. Even now I'm not really sure what he's saying in TPM. So could someone give me some pointers on how to write Jar Jar's speech?

 

I would watch the movies with the captions on to get a better idea of what he's actually saying. I do remember "hot" was sort of his version of "cool." I haven't written Jar Jar yet but I would tend to say that like Yoda it's probably best to not overdo it and keep the majority of his dialogue kinda brief. Seems to me a lot of Jar Jar dialogue could get annoying to most readers fast (just as a lot of backwards Yoda talk could if overdone).

sg

 

This Gungan Dialect site has a number of tips for writing "Gunganese" (the Gungan version of Basic we hear Jar Jar speak). When I write Gungan dialogue, I cheat -- my Gungans speak "High Gungan" amongst themselves, and I translate it directly into English. However, when speaking to a human or other Basic-speaker, my Gungans use Gunganese. (I once had a storyteller do an entire legend in Gunganese -- that was a challenging two pages to write!)

You're welcome to skim any of my stories for my attempts at Gungan dialogue. No Good Deed probably has the most and best examples.

 

I haven't tried writing Jar Jar myself, but some of the best Gungan speech patterns I've read were by Whiskey in the Jar Jar. He has some Gungan main characters in his stories and it's amazing how well he writes the Gungan dialect.

 

Thanks for the link, Seldes.

 

Noooooo! I know where this is going you see... might be a bit strong but oh dear....*

Actually, I haven't read that much of Whiskey's work adds to to do list but I can definitely recommend Seldes' No Good Deed for having both a lot of Gungun's speaking basic and a lot of well thought out info on Gungun's in general and iirc some discussion on why they sound the way they do in what is also a darn fine tale as well.


KD

*This is just plain evil you know, brain. And I take my hat off to you. Wish I had thought of it first! And <sing_song>I know who you are </sing-song> I think - it is possible I just know who you want me to think you are... Those readers who are confused might want to investigate the current challenge on the Obi-Wan character discussion thread.