Mando'a/Legends

Mando'a, sometimes referred to simply as Mandalorian, was the primary language spoken by the Mandalorian culture. Elements of Mando'a were taken from the language of the ancient Taungs of Coruscant, from which the culture stemmed, evolving over time to become something unique.
==Overview==
The origins of Mando'a were believed to have lain with the language of the Taungs, an ancient race of Humanoid simians that originated on Coruscant in the time before the Galactic Republic's formation. The Taungs were driven from Coruscant by the Human Battalions of Zhell after a lengthy war, and under the leadership of Mandalore the First, conquered a new planet they named Mandalore in their leader's honor, becoming the first Mandalorians—or Mando'ade, "Children of Mandalore" in Mando'a.The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia
Despite this direct lineage, and the fact that the Taungs spoke an archaic dialect that evolved into the later Mando'a,Galaxy at War contemporary Mando'a contained unique elements unlike any found in other galactic languages. Mando'a had no grammatical cases, only two forms for a verb to take, a tense prefix system, and simplistic rules for forming adjectives from nouns and verb stems. Spelling and punctuation forms were optional, decided upon by the preference of the individual speaker—"jagyc" and "jagla", for instance, were both correct ways of saying "masculine."
To understand and be able to speak Mando'a was one of the Resol'nare, the six central tenets that an individual had to observe in their daily life should they wish to be a Mandalorian. This respect for the language, along with Mando'a natural flexibility, meant that words drawn from other languages were a rarity, and Mando'a changed very little throughout the centuries in spite of the many languages the Mandalorians learned to speak, and the vast influence from alien cultures.
If a new word for a thing or concept was needed, Mandalorians would typically draw upon the existing Mando'a vocabulary to form an appropriate term. Mando'a was an agglutinative language, meaning that many words were formed by combining two or more others, without changing their form, to create a new word with a new meaning. An example of this was the term dar'jetii, which is a combination of the Mando'a words dar, meaning "no longer", and jetii, the Mandalorian word for Jedi.
Literally translated, dar'jetii meant "no longer a Jedi", but was mostly used contextually to mean "Sith." However, hut'tuun—the Mandalorian word for "coward"—found its roots in the common Mandalorian dislike for Hutts, specifically their tendency to hire others to handle their martial needs in their stead.
Concordian, the language spoken on both the planet Concord Dawn and Mandalore's moon, Concordia, was a dialect of Mando'a. As such, though they differed in certain aspects, the two languages were mutually intelligible, meaning that they were similar enough that an individual speaking one could easily converse with someone speaking the other. The dialect spoken by the Human child Sasha ot Sulem in 3956 BBY, following the girl's kidnapping and her time living among the Mandalorians on Dantooine, was believed by the Jedi Knight Revan to be a jumbled off-shoot of Mando'a.Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
==Grammar==
Word order indicates meaning, as in English.
Mando'a was a primarily spoken language, rather than a written one, and was thus an expressive language that was often thought of as easy to learn, a trait highly desirable in a culture that regularly adopted adults from numerous races and species.
The language's grammar was relatively uncomplicated, but there were elements that necessitated adjustments for a speaker of Basic, including Mando'a expression of tense, and its gender-neutrality.
Because Mandalorians believed in living their history, along with the idea that a tomorrow was not always a certainty, past and future tense were colloquially done away with.
Instead, the prefixes ru for "past", and ven for "future", were used in place of the more widely-used tense forms.
There was also no passive verb form in Mando'a; a verb was either active or simply absent from the statement.
Nouns
Nouns have no gender and ending vowels or consonants.
Plurals
Plurals for the Nouns.
When forming a plural, -e was added to the end of words ending in consonants, while -se was added to the end of words ending in a vowel.
As with most languages, there were exceptions to the rule, such as in the case of gett becoming gett'se.
Originally, the indication of a plural was done with an -a suffix rather than an -e, a practice that went away over time.
Verbs
Furthermore, infinitive verbs ended in -ir, -ar, -ur, -or, or -er. To produce the stem, removing the "r" at the end was all that was required
Ni vorer was incorrect, but Ni vore—meaning "I accept" and using the inflected form—was correct.
Oftentimes, an apostrophe—known in Mando'a as a beten, or "sigh"—was used to separate the terminal vowel, indicating the slight glottal pause of some Mandalorian accents.
Other uses for the beten were as an indication of a breath, for pronunciation, or a sign of a dropped letter or letters in a contraction. For instance, the sentence "I carry a saber" could be translated in Mando'a as the formal ni juri kad, or the pronunciation-marked ni jur'i kad, since the emphasis was placed on the second syllable in the word juri, and even the more commonly contracted ni jur'kad.
Dropping a terminal vowel when conjugating was quite common, especially in Mandalorian poetry and song.
Occasionally, certain verbs would be left out all together, and instead implied via word order. While this tendency to forgo certain words could be confusing to Basic speakers, and make the language appear abrupt, the militaristic Mandalorians had largely assumed the concise speech common in military orders. Whereas the literal translation for "It's good" would be bic cuyi jate, a Mandalorian was much more likely to just say jate, or "good", instead.
Gender and Pronouns
Due to Mando'a nature as a gender-neutral language, gender was implied by context.
Buir meant both "mother" and "father", just as "son" and "daughter" were both represented by the word ad. When it was necessary to specify gender, the adjectives of jagyc or dalyc—male and female, respectively—would be added.
This grammatical system was a rarity for a language spoken by beings who reproduced sexually.
Personal Pronouns
Singular 	Singular	Singular 	Plural	Plural
1st Person	Ni 	I, Me 	Mhi 	We, Us
2nd Person	Gar 	You 	Gar 	Yous
3rd Person	Kaysh 	He, Him, She, Her, They, Them	Val 	They, Them
Alternatively Vi also meant We (rare - archaic)
Possessive Pronouns
Singular 	Singular	Singular 	Plural	Plural
1st Person	Ner 	My, Mine 	Cuun 	Our
2nd Person	Gar 	Your 	Gar 	Yours
3rd Person	Kaysh 	His, Hers, Their	Val 	Theirs
Alternatively Mhor also meant Ours (rare - archaic)
Interrogative (Questions) and Imperative (Commands) and Negation
To form a question, the interrogative prefix tion was placed at the beginning of a sentence.
While Gar verborad'ni meant "You are hiring me", the addition of the tion prefix placed before gar would turn the previous statement into the question, Tion Gar verborad'ni? - "Are you hiring me?"
Examples:
*Tion gar gai? - What's your name?
*Tion'ad - Who? (Lit: what person?)
*Tion'ad hukaat'kama? -Who's watching your back?
*Tion'cuy? - Who's that? (often used as a challenge to identify someone - like *Halt! Who goes there?*
*Tion'jor -Why?
*Tion'meh -What if?
*Tion'solet? - How many? How much?
*Tion'tuur -When? (lit. which day)
Another example of a meaningful prefix was ke and also shortened to k', which was drawn from the Mando'a word for "order", or ke'gyce, and was placed at the start of a sentence to indicate a command. 
*Ke narir haar'ke'gyce rol'eta resol! - Execute Order 66!
*Ke serim - Take aim!
In order to create the negative form in Mando'a, the prefix n', nu, nu', or ne was added before either the sentence or the individual word. Ne'briikase meant "unhappy", while Nu'ni juri kad meant "I don't carry a saber". And the song Naasad'guur mhi – Mhi n'ulu title meaning "No one likes us - We don't care." with the negation on the Verb ulur
Naasad is not negation but a word meaning "none, not any" Similar to Dar meaning "gone, temporary, no longer" used in the words: darasuum meaning "Eternity", dar'tome "seperated" and dar'buirno longer a parent (legal term - parental divorce by child).
Adjectives and Adverbs
Adjectives and Adverbs were formed by adding the suffixes -la or -yc to the end of pre-existing Nouns, -la or -yc are interchangable -shy'a and -ne have no other forms .
A break down of the Inflections:
*-la or -yc ( Example: Fast) (Positive)
*-shy'a ( Example: Faster) (Comparative)
*-ne ( Example: Fastest) (Superlative)
However not all Adjectives and Adverbs contain -la or -yc
*Di'kut, meaning "idiot" in Mando'a, could easily become di'kutla, meaning "idiotic".
Comparatives and Superlatives were formed in much the same way.
When creating a Comparative, the suffix -shy'a was added to the end of the standard adjective.
For a Superlative, the -ne suffix was added.
*An example would be the word dral, meaning "bright", becoming dralshy'a, or "brighter", and the word jate, meaning "good", jate'shya "more better" and becoming jatne, or "best".
No distinction between Adjectives and Adverbs was made in Mando'a, and although a non-Mando'a speaker might make out a Mandalorian to be uneducated should he say in Basic, "The boys done good", it was much more likely that they were simply unfamiliar with Basic's past tense and adverbial forms.
Mando'a also made less use of articles such as "the" and "an" than Basic, generally adding them only for emphasis.
==Phonology and Orthography==
Mando'a had a similar pronunciation to Basic, with a few notable exceptions.
The letters "f", "x", or "z" were not used for Mando'a own words, although the Mandalorian alphabet included the letters for greater ease in transliterating foreign words.
In the absence of the letter "f", Mando'a substituted the similar-sounding "vh" combination, and the Mandalorian "s" could be pronounced in the same way as a common "z". Ts was pronounced as "ts" ,"z" and "s" sounds
Occasionally, the pronunciation of "d" was swapped with the more modern "t". Kote "Glory" was given as [KOH-day, KOH-tay] by Karen Traviss
Certain Mandalorian communities still preferred to pronounce the letter "j" as in "fjord", instead of the more commonly heard hard "j" as in "joy".
When speaking, the first "h" present in a word was typically aspirated—aside from its archaic form used in traditional songs and poems—and always pronounced when found in the middle of a word.
Mando'a possessed no silent letters, though the opposite was often true of Mandalorian songs: terminal consonants could become extra syllables in order to better maintain rhythm and meter. For example, tor could easily become to-rah, and tang could just as easily become tan-gah. kom'rk acquired an "o" sound - KOHM-or-rohk and kar'ta - kah-ROH-ta
==Vocabulary==
===Verbs===
===Adjectives and Adverbs===
*adenn - merciless
*aruetyc - foreign, or even traitorous, but generally "not Mandalorian"
*atin - stubborn or persistent
*briikase - happy
*bantov - nevertheless
*dar - no longer
*darasuum - eternal or eternally, forever
*di'kutla - foolish, idiotic
*dral - bright
*dralshy'a - stronger, brighter
*ge'tal - red
*hettyc - burning
*hut'uunla - cowardly
*iviin'yc - fast, quickly
*jate - good
*jatne - best
*kandosii - indomitable, ruthless; used colloquially as noble or classy as well; awesome
*mesh'la - beautiful
*mirdala - clever
*naast - destroyer
*ne'tra - black
*nuhunla or nuh'la - funny
*ori - big, extreme, very
*pakod - easy
*racin - pale
*shabla - screwed up
*shuk'la - crushed or broken
*solus - one, alone, individual, vulnerable
*sol'yc - first
*talyc - bloody or bloodstained; can also be used to refer to meat cooked rare
*teroch - pitiless
*tome - together
*troch - certainly (archaic)
*ures - without, lacking
===Nouns===
===Phrases===
===Other words===
*a, a', or al - but
*an - all
*ashi - other
*ast - itself
*bah - to
*bal - and
*be - of
*cuun - our
*elek - yes
*'lek - yeah
*gar - you, your
*haar - the; used rarely
*ibic - this
*juaan - beside, next to
*kaysh - him/her/them, his/hers/theirs, he/she/they (singular)
*lo - into
*meg - which, what, that, who
*meh - if
*mhi - we
*nayc - no
*ner - my
*ni - I
*o'r - in
*par - for
*ra - or
*ru - past-tense prefix
*sa - as, like
*slanar - go
*te - the
*teh - from
*ti - with
*tion'ad - who?
*vaii - where
*val - they, theirs (plural)
*ven - future-tense prefix
===Numbers===
*solus - one
*t'ad - two
*ehn - three
*cuir - four
*rayshe'a - five
*resol - six
*e'tad - seven
*sh'ehn - eight
*she'cu - nine
*ta'raysh - ten
*olan - hundred
*ta'raysholan - thousand
===Colors===
*sal - color
*ge'tal - red
*kebiin- blue
*shi'yayc - yellow
*vorpan- green
*ve'vut - gold
*saviin - violet
*daryc - brown
*ne'tra - black
*cin - white
*genet - gray
==Songs==
*Dha Werda Verda
*Kote Darasuum
*Ka'rta Tor
*Gra'tua Cuun
*Vode An
*Buy'ce gal, buy'ce tal
*Naasad'guur mhi – Mhi n'ulu
==Written Form==
The Mandalorian alphabet consisted of twenty-six characters. The New Mandalorians used written Mandalorian quite frequently in their everyday lives. The True Mandalorians traditionally used it to provide information on personal datapads and ship-board display screens.
==Behind the scenes==
The first hints of a Mandalorian language was a dialect that Revan learns from Sasha ot Sulem in the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic video game. This was followed by Mandalorian words being used in the novel The Cestus Deception. However, the creation of Mando'a as an individual language began with the introduction song to Star Wars: Republic Commando, known as "Vode An" (Brothers All).
Sasha ot Sulem's language is a mix of Mandalorian and Galactic Basic Standard, and is therefore unrelated to this one. It is not known if it is a different canonical dialect or if it becomes non-canon.
It should be noted that Mando'ade are a garrulous people, and Karen Traviss is British, and as such, the list above includes both obscenities and British slang.
Karen Traviss, though developing the majority of the language, has since removed all pages and documents concerning Mandalorian from her website. Development of the language has been left to the fans.
A glossary of many different words and phrases are located in the back of Traviss's book Republic Commando: Triple Zero as well as in Star Wars Insider 86; other official language resources are online. For this article, an unofficial list has been culled from various Internet and literary sources.
Prior to 2002, a typeface consisting of narrow vertical characters was developed to represent the written form of the Mandalorian language. It was developed by Philip Metschan at the request of George Lucas to be used throughout Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones. This typeface, erroneously named "Mandelorian" by Metschan, can be seen on Jango Fett's Slave I ship-board display screens throughout the film. The full official type-face can finally be seen on his website.
==Appearances==
==Sources==
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*Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic: Prima's Official Strategy Guide 
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*Star Wars Insider 86
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*Knights of the Old Republic Campaign Guide
*The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia
*The Clone Wars Campaign Guide
*Legacy Era Campaign Guide
*Galaxy at War
*Galaxy of Intrigue
*The Jedi Path: A Manual for Students of the Force
*Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Incredible Vehicles
**The Mando'a Language Glossary PDF was removed before the Wayback Machine made any back-ups; see "External links" for images from the original version from the Hyperspace Fan Club and an updated version from Karen Traviss' website
==Notes and references==
==External links==
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*Revised and Expanded Fanon (Including Canon) Annotated Dictionary Dictionary and Grammar guide at Mandoa.ru
*Revised and Expanded Fanon (Including Canon) Annotated Dictionary at MandoCreator.com
*Karen Traviss's Mando'a page on the Wayback Machine —Features downloadable Mando'a word lists and a grammar guide originally published on the Hyperspace fan club feature "Inside Mando'a Culture and Language". (Last update of the Mando'a dictionary: April 2009; removed from the author's website in July 2014.)
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Category:Languages
Category:Mandalorian culture