CT Yoda’s Dialect

I’ve been thinking about Yoda’s curious dialect and had the idea that maybe that’s how Basic was spoken 850 years ago or so when Yoda learned to speak. Thinking of current languages and how they were spoken 800 years ago. Speaking to someone from that era, they might be able to make themselves understood, but it would probably sound funny.
Just a thought.

 

That's a fan theory that has a ring of truth to it - not surprisingly, since apparently they based Yoda's speech at least partly on old medieval English,

 

I wish I could find the source that confirms this, but I believe the explanation is that since Yoda was alive for so long while the language was developing, his speech reflects this.

 

Well, yeah, Oz said on that Neil DeGrasse Tyson show that the intention as per George at the time was that "that's how the original Jedi spoke". Whether that's people in general back then, or just the Jedi, guess is up in the air.

But seems the intention in discussions between George & Frank was that it was an attempt of Yoda to keep a dying tradition alive. Same as how Inuit people are desperately trying to keep dying languages/dialects alive among the youth and all. Futile maybe, but respectable.

Oz also said there was way less of the backwards talk to begin with, but he personally asked to do more of it.

Paraphrasing of course, this is some interview from a couple of years back.

 

That's right. In TESB, Yoda rarely uses the unusual speech pattern (and most of the instances in which he does so are when Yoda was pretending to be a mischievous little imp rather than a Jedi master). Someone should do an analysis and post the numbers. That someone might be me if I'm not too lazy.

 

Someone actually did do a through analysis apparently! Found this on a reddit post because I had just gone back and watched the movies and wondered about it. Now just as a disclaimer, I don't know the person who made this post nor am I obsessive enough to go back and check every claim in the movies so take it for what it is. Still pretty interesting nonetheless.

Taken directly from the post:

-An average of 48% of OT Yoda's lines have inverted elements in them, versus 66% for the PT.

-Of these, there are differences in what makes them "odd" sounding between the trilogies.

-OT Yoda uses OVS construction in equative clauses (sentences where the verb is "to be") in his inverted sentences. This is grammatically acceptable, if slighly archaic in style. This means most of his inverted sentences are inverted in a way which is still grammatically correct. This may have to do with Kasdan's desire to Medievalize the dialogue, rather than make it "backwards" as Lucas has in recent years described the character's speech.

-PT Yoda, on the other hand, while speaking in an inverted manner more frequently, also uses OSV rather than OVS construction in many of these instances. This is considered less grammatically acceptable, whether in archaic or contemporary forms of English.

-PT Yoda uses incorrect grammar in another way that OT Yoda does not in verb fronting and cleft construction. He uses this in the OT mainly when he is in the "crazy swamp creature persona", perhaps deliberately by the writers so as to make him seem more off-balance and unusual (there is one potential example in ROTJ, but it is not clear cut). "Crazy swamp creature Yoda" also speaks with more inverted lines, 57% compared to 41% for "serious Yoda" in the same film, again showing that the writers deliberately gave Yoda more incorrect grammer in this persona, while in the PT "serious Yoda" often speaks in this manner.

 

Cool stuff! I didn’t know about the Oz interview; now I kind of want to watch it.
Nice find of the Reddit analysis. Interesting.

 

Well, no, I think he was talking about ESB anyway. Like yeah, there's less of it in ESB than in stuff since, but sounds like when they were doing ESB there was less of it than we see in the final version of te first Yoda appearance, but Frank asked if he could do it more often.

So originally it might have just been a couple of lines total.

 

Even in "mischievous imp" mode, there's plenty of regularly phrased moments:

"I am wondering, why are you here?"
"You seek Yoda"
"But now, we must eat"

And so on.

There are several ways Yoda's speech is different from regular speech - it isn't just the reordering of words.

Leaving words out, and using words which don't perfectly match, also helps:


"Why wish you become Jedi" instead of "Why do you wish to become a Jedi."

"No different" instead of "Not different" or "No difference".

 

My understanding was that Larry Kasdan wanted Yoda to sound like he was speaking Old English. The way he talks is not too different from how people would speak in the old days: "This one a long time have I watched." But he actually speaks normally more than we remember. He says things like, "You must not go." I think he talks the other way simply because he likes it. It's how he was raised. Palpatine does the same thing sometimes: "Long have I waited." Yoda says, "Told you I did. Reckless is he. Now, matters are worse." But this backward speech is similar to how English once was. You'll hear similar phrases in The Lord of the Rings. People still spoke that way as late as the nineteenth century, and some people still do when they say things like, "It matters not."

But I think it was hilarious in Labyrinth of Evil to hear Palpatine talk like Yoda. Count Dooku arrives on Coruscant, and Sidious says, "And took a great risk you did." Lol, It's almost like he's mocking him by comparing himself to his former master. But Palpatine has a really sadistic, twisted sense of humor. In the novelization of ROTJ, he senses that Yoda has died in Luke's thoughts. Initially, he asks, "This Yoda? Lives he still?" to mock Yoda's way of speaking. He then sensed the truth and said, "Ah, he lives not. Very good." It's one of those scenes that makes you disgusted with Sidious. I think many of us see Yoda as a cute old man and we find his way of speaking endearing. I always thought he had some sort of East Asian accent when I was growing up. I'm not sure now. I can actually do a very good imitation of Yoda, I'm told. To me, he was always a Zen master, and I thought of him as though he came from Thailand, China, India, or Nepal. My Mom likes his character a lot due to his grandfatherly traits.

But, yeah. Kasdan intended his speech to be like Old English. Irvin Kirshner was the one who compared him to a Zen master, but I already thought him that way before I heard the director's commentary.

 

I don't even know if "dialect" is the correct word. Yoda has a strange way of word order or sentence structure. Otherwise he doesn't really have an accent or speak a dialect. I'm not a linguist though.

 

Everyone has an accent, but his accent is basically like a deep-voiced humanoid alien of some sort. It's basically an older form of English in which words are arranged differently. Also, Kasdan does write it much better than George Lucas. Lucas doesn't write Yoda's lines grammatically correctly in the prequels, and he only had help in AOTC, where Yoda speaks more correctly than in TPM and ROTS.

 

Yoda sounded much more natural in ESB. Begun, this Clone War has just sounds so clunky.

 

"Around the survivors a perimeter create!" is so obviously done that way as a wink-and-nod to the audience. I think many PT lines of Yoda's were done more for entertaining fans like this.

 

Maybe there was some influence from German. In German comes the verb always second in the principal clause, although it in subordinate clauses at the end instead comes.

 

Sometimes the simplest explanations work the best:

YODA IS WEIRD AND MUST BE PUT TO DEATH

 

In many cases it seems that Yoda will intentionally use language so that people will pay attention to what he considers to be important or relevant information.

 

Absolutely. The grammar was terrible in the prequels and even sometimes in TCW. He sometimes spoke normally in TESB. For example, "Now, matters are worse." He clearly just speaks the other way because he likes it. I don't know why people analyze it so much.

Also, members of Yoda's species in the EU were depicted as speaking normally, whereas some were shown to speak the same manner as he would. It's clearly some sort of a cultural thing. But I don't blame them. English can be kinda repetitive, and the way we talk hasn't changed that much since the 19th century. So, I wouldn't mind speaking backwards like them occasionally if I could.

 

Even in the prequels, he sometimes spoke normally:

"Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering".
"An old friend has learned the path to immortality"

 

True dat. But Yoda was fun in the prequels. Some people say that his character was assassinated. But I don't agree. I think they gave him an arc, and I'm fine with it.

 

But is it actually a bad thing that his grammar is less "correct" in the prequels? He's supposed to be a funny little alien who talks strangely. I can't say I ever noticed a difference until people started doing in-depth spreadsheet analyses to prove--once and for all, objectively, indisputably--that Lucas was a hack.

I don't know if it was a wink-and-nod, but it's a fun line. I don't get what's supposed to be "bad' about it. It's just...fun.

 

He's only funny, though, when he's pretending to be crazy in his first appearance in TESB. Otherwise, he's very stern and harsh in TESB. I suppose he is funny in TCW. But I think he was too serious in the prequels. His seriousness made sense in CT. He was in exile, and he had to get Luke to learn. However, in the PT, he was almost wooden at times. I will say, however, he got better at the end of AOTC and throughout ROTS. TESB shows him being emotional, though, almost like he's in love with the Force. His love for it is genuine.