Traviss quits SW

[Darth Yoshi]

Well, I, Jedi is in 1st person, so the Corran wank can be waved away as personal bias on his part. Summarizing the entire JAT in <300 pgs was hilarious, though.

Outcast has some interesting parts but not enough action. Abyss has Luke Spoiler

take out several sith warriors who are armed to the teeth with weapons while he's exhausted. And we see Jacen and Anakin Solo as ghosts. That should please the fanboys

.

Do they actually do or say anything worthwhile?

[Darth Yan]

If by relevent you mean move the plot along then yes.

[Havok]

Outcast has some interesting parts but not enough action. Abyss has Luke Spoiler

take out several sith warriors who are armed to the teeth with weapons while he's exhausted. And we see Jacen and Anakin Solo as ghosts. That should please the fanboys

.

Man, what the fuck. Don't these idiots fucking realize that that was a ability/skill that Qui-Gon spent actual time learning, and that Yoda and Obi-Wan spent 20 fucking years perfecting. Why do they think that because 2 of the most powerful Jedi in history and the fucking Chosen One can do something, that every single douchebag with a lightsaber can do it, without any fucking knowledge of how it is done.

Fuck I hate the EU.

[Elfdart]

Fuck I hate the EU.

Join the club. This kind of thing is even worse than the Wankdalor'ians.

[Crazedwraith]

Oh noes! Force sensitive people get to use... force powers. Oh the humanity!

[Havok]

Oh noes! Force sensitive people get to use... force powers. Oh the humanity!

You are a fucking idiot.

[Crazedwraith]

What a cunning argument. All the Solos are described as being pretty much as powerful as Anakin ever was. If he can figure it out just by being leet, so can they. They've got a tremendous advantage in that Luke's told them all about seeing/hearing Obi-Wan so they actually know its possible.

The better question is how he fuck did Anakin manage it if it took Obi-Wan and Yoda twenty years of training?

Fuck, I hate movies!!!!!

[Havok]

What a cunning argument. All the Solos are described as being pretty much as powerful as Anakin ever was. If he can figure it out just by being leet, so can they. They've got a tremendous advantage in that Luke's told them all about seeing/hearing Obi-Wan so they actually know its possible.

The better question is how he fuck did Anakin manage it if it took Obi-Wan and Yoda twenty years of training?

Fuck, I hate movies!!!!!

Please provide the relevant quotes that the Solo kids 'as powerful as Anakin ever was'. And the general consensus is not that HE figured it out, but that Obi-Wan, Yoda and Qui-Gon either showed him how, or reached out and basically did it for him.

And what a stupid fucking argument. Someone told me how about how they heard and saw a jet, hey now I can go fly it because I know it is possible.

Aside from the fact that the point of my little rant is that once more, the idiot retards that run the EU lessen EVERYTHING done in the movies.

[Darth Yan]

Perhaps I should have been more specific. Luke and Ben use this technique that allows them to travel to the netherworld of the force (where Obi wan went to after he visited Luke for the final time) at the cost of their physical body slowly decaying (like in the Bartimaeus Trilogy). They weren't the glowly ghosts we see in ROTJ. I guess I didn't explain it properly.

[Crazedwraith]

Please provide the relevant quotes that the Solo kids 'as powerful as Anakin ever was'.

Ok. You got me there I can't provide quotes beyond. "The Force is strong in my familly" but just about any book with the Solo kids in will go on about how strong there all are. Especially Anakin.

And the general consensus is not that HE figured it out, but that Obi-Wan, Yoda and Qui-Gon either showed him how, or reached out and basically did it for him.

So you're backpedalling from your initial arguemnt of 'its because he's the fucking chosen one' then? Can you provide quotes that Obi-Wan, Yoda and Qui-Gon helped him? Otherwise you're argument pretty much boils down to 'they can't because I say they can't'

Qui-Gon is an even better counter example. He managed to learn how do it from scratch after he was dead. Must be an amazingly difficult technique.

And what a stupid fucking argument. Someone told me how about how they heard and saw a jet, hey now I can go fly it because I know it is possible.

No you can't. But in your analogy. Pilot knowledge is akin to force sensitivity. Jacen/Anakin already have the ability to do it because they are force sensitive.

There is precedent for this in the EU, Anakin uses energy absorb in 'Conquest' for the first time in the middle of fire. There's even examples in the films. Who taught Luke to use force pull in ESB? No one but he obviously knew it was possible. He tried and hey presto, he succeeds. That's something he can do with very little knowledge or training of the force. The Solo twins have been trained longer harder and have a much better connection to the force than he did.

[AMT]

Heh. This is irrelevant anyway. Jacen and Anakin don't come "back" as ghosts. Luke and Ben travel to the "netherworld" or limbo or whatever and meet them (or something posing as them, as well as Mara) there.

[Crazedwraith]

You know, that actually sounds more stupid than them coming back as ghosts. Seriously one is an ability seen in the movies. The sounds like an episode from Voyage. "Lets go visit the land of the dead!" Fucking lame.

[Darth Yan]

It's similar to the Bartimaeus Trilogy, and they were able to make that sound reasonable. Although that was a fantasy novel.

[Darth Yan]

Plus Jacen entered a state of oneness with the Force during his final battle with Onimi. The state was described as being "farther then any Jedi had ever gone in achieving harmony with the force". Plus he spent five years travelling among Force Users, so it might be possible that he picked it up on his travels.

[Havok]

And the general consensus is not that HE figured it out, but that Obi-Wan, Yoda and Qui-Gon either showed him how, or reached out and basically did it for him.

So you're backpedalling from your initial arguemnt of 'its because he's the fucking chosen one' then? Can you provide quotes that Obi-Wan, Yoda and Qui-Gon helped him? Otherwise you're argument pretty much boils down to 'they can't because I say they can't'

I'm not back pedaling from shit. As I said, it is a general consensus i.e. it has been talked about and discussed using the fact that Anakin actually had a connection and knew people that learned, and perfected the ability and they in turn taught it to him, because that is the best explanation for how Anakin all of a sudden could do it. The fact that he is the Chosen One and stronger in the Force than anyone in history that we know off, helps facilitate the ease and quickness of him either learning the ability, or somehow having it done for him.

Qui-Gon is an even better counter example. He managed to learn how do it from scratch after he was dead. Must be an amazingly difficult technique.

Wrong. Qui-Gon had been learning the ability well before he died, he had just not 'perfected' it to the point of coming back as an actual 'ghost'.

And what a stupid fucking argument. Someone told me how about how they heard and saw a jet, hey now I can go fly it because I know it is possible.

No you can't. But in your analogy. Pilot knowledge is akin to force sensitivity. Jacen/Anakin already have the ability to do it because they are force sensitive.

Ok, so a pilot that can fly a Cessna can jump right in to a 747 and fly it?

There is precedent for this in the EU, Anakin uses energy absorb in 'Conquest' for the first time in the middle of fire. There's even examples in the films. Who taught Luke to use force pull in ESB? No one but he obviously knew it was possible. He tried and hey presto, he succeeds. That's something he can do with very little knowledge or training of the force. The Solo twins have been trained longer harder and have a much better connection to the force than he did.

Again, what a stupid fucking argument. You are using the Chosen One as setting a precedent for something that anyone can do, when everything about him is unique. And you are comparing something that requires a Jedi Master to spend time actually training, to what amounts to the most basic ability a Jedi can use. Not to mention that both those incidents have the desire to not get killed driving them.

Plus Jacen entered a state of oneness with the Force during his final battle with Onimi. The state was described as being "farther then any Jedi had ever gone in achieving harmony with the force". Plus he spent five years travelling among Force Users, so it might be possible that he picked it up on his travels.

This, at least, is similar to what Qui-Gon did and how he first came across the ability IIRC.

[Crazedwraith]

Look Havok. I could continue arguing this if you like but the fact is we're now arguing about something that didn't actually happen. So its rather pointless. If You really want to continue PM or something and I'll send you a response.

[Havok]

Look Havok. I could continue arguing this if you like but the fact is we're now arguing about something that didn't actually happen. So its rather pointless. If You really want to continue PM or something and I'll send you a response.

Yeah, I saw that after I posted.

You know, that actually sounds more stupid than them coming back as ghosts. Seriously one is an ability seen in the movies. The sounds like an episode from Voyage. "Lets go visit the land of the dead!" Fucking lame.

Couldn't agree more.

[Duckie]

*I could post a huge rant post explaining why Mando'a is so terrible, but nobody would care.

I'm procrastinating on starting a writing project that would involve creating an artificial language, so I'd be interested in some examples of what not to do.

well, for tips:
1) Learn how grammar works. Seriously. Don't do it like english. For god's sake don't do things like Mandalorian does, as I will outline.
2) Remember that vocabulary is not 1:1 between languages. 'bear' does not mean both 'carry' and 'furry animal' in other languages. This seems stupid, but what about this? 'to'. There are several meanings of this- the particle that goes in front of a verb's infinitive, and a marker for movement towards. What about 'blue'? Blue includes both light and dark blue, which are seperate words in russian. On the other side, why in english are charity and kindness seperate words? Is that entirely necessary? Some languages merge certain things more than others, like colours: many languages get by with White Black Warm Cold for colour names. (Cold being green-purple, Warm being red-yellow)
3) I mentioned grammar, right? Nobody likes an english cipher. Start with grammar. Word-lists are pointless if you don't know how to do things like plurals or conjugate a verb (if you need to conjugate verbs at all). Word-lists are pointless till you have phonotactic constraints to tell you what can be a verb.
4) Also syntax. I didn't mention that. The most simple case is "Subject Verb Object or something different?". most of the world's languages are SVO or SOV, but they don't have to be. Further things such as head-marking and the like I'd count as syntax, although that's probably not a very precise definition of it if I'm expanding it to mean that.
5) PM me with ideas and asking for help. I'm not as pissy as I will be in a bit about Mando'a, because the very fact you even ask for tips means you can't possibly do something this horrible. If you are, I'd still help nicely- anything to stop another atrocity like this from happening. Never Again. Traviss gone, and now only Paolini is left.
6) Don't do the following:

A DISSECTION OF MANDALORIAN
by this person

Mistake One of Mando'a:
the consonant phonology of mandalorian appears to be as follows
m n ŋ [ng]
p, b t, d k [k, c], g
f [vh]?, v s, ʃ [c, sh]
w, j [y] l, r
tʃ [ch, c], dʒ [j]

Does this look familiar to you? It's english, minus th [path], dh [paths], z and zh (zh being a marginal sound in english anyway, found only in things like 'vision' and foreign loans)

Where are the implosives? Why does it have both an s and an sh? Why can't ng be an inital noise? Why does it have a voiced affricate dzh but no z or zh? Why is there no fricative version of k or g? No clicks? why not other affricates besides the two found in english? What about noble kx, or pf, or gb, or kp, or ts and dz? How about some prenasalised plosives? Palatal plosives, my absolute favorite of noises the human mouth can produce? Hell, how about palatals or retroflex noises at all?

It doesn't need to have all of these things, but having it be the exact same as english spelt funny without the letters th and z is hardly good.

Further, Ms. Traviss does not specify what her notations mean, except in horrible phonetic spelling like ROOS-ahl-or for ruus'alor. This makes it vaguely impossible for me to tell if how many vowels there are, but I guarantee it's about the same as an anglophone's imagined "Generic Foreign" vowels. There appear to be all 5 long english vowels, and at least 3 (a, u, and i) appear to have long forms based on doubled spelling, yet since there's no phonetic notation I cannot tell at all. The 'ROOS-ahl-or' style is insufficient, as based on that I'd imagine it to be spelt ruusaalor. Why not some umlaut, or distinction based on nasalisation, or vowel harmony or somesuch? It could be justifiable if it were better described (perhaps the a, u, and i long vowels are remnants from a time when it had long and short a/i/u, but short i and short u in certain situations lowered to become o and e, thus explaining why there is no long e and o?), but that is not done. Further, see Phonotactics later for why even such an explanation fails hard.

Similar issues plague consonants. What is the letter R, praytell? Is it the rare-among-the-entire-planet english R? The spanish tap? Spanish trill? German uvular, trilled or not? What about japanese lateral r (although the japanese also use a tap)? All of these sounds are entirely different in articulation, their perception as similar is something of a cognitive mystery. Is L velarised or clear? T and D- are they apical or laminar? dental or dental-alveolar? Can they be flapped intervocalically?

Incidentally what about tone? The vast majority of human languages have at least 2 tones, yet Mando'a doesn't? It doesn't need to, but it's just another notch in 'Is anglocentric'.

The biggest issue, however, is the spelling. Traviss carelessly spells /k/ as both k and c, something unprecedented and unheard of outside of the roman republic and its descendants, for no apparant rhyme or reason, not realising that english is one of the few languages to be so strange. She uses an apostrophe in random words for absolutely no detectable reason. Let me digress for a minute to make a public service announcement to every Fantasy Writer and Sci-Fi Author since the dawn of time.

There are five acceptable times to use apostrophes in a language transcription.
1) To mark glottal stops. Consider using a dedicated character such as h or x instead.
2) To seperate collisions that would cause dipthongs, like hothouse into hot'house. Consider hyphens instead, or ignore it. For vowels, consider diaresis.
3) To mark palatalisation or similar things, if you are creating a russian-inspired orthography. Consider not making a russian language that way, perhaps marking it by silent vowels or alternate vowel transcriptions like irish does for its slender consonants.
4) To mark ejectivisation, implosiveness (via 'b, 'd, etc), or other exotic consonants save clicks. Congrats, this is a worthwhile reason, although consider if unicode or a custom font allows you to make it a ligature with the letter to better prevent it looking like stupid fantasy apostrophies. When possible, find a new way, like bb or hb or whatnot for implosive b. Apostrophes are not a good thing.
5) Because you are an idiot and think it makes a language look exotic. Reconsider everything about your life.

Now, back to spelling strangeness. Traviss does not stop at merely using c and k for words, which could be salvaged by claiming c represents, say, /tʃ/ or /c/ or /k/ while k represents /k'/ /k/ or /q/ or somesuch. She also uses it to spell sh, in situations like b'aalec (pronounced ba:liʃ as far as I know, based on her transcription of bah-LEESH). This is entirely silly, as it is used initially in words like ca'tra to mean /k/ (KAH-tra) and even /s/ in words like cinarin (see-NAH-rin), meaning that Ms Travis has intentionally or not duplicated a spelling artifact that results from vulgar latin in terms of soft vs hard c. Consistancy could still be salvaged, but she does not in fact follow through and also make g soften to another noise in front of front vowels like she does for c, presumably because english does not (we changed all our soft gs like the one in 'gaol' into j[ail]).

Further, she uses y and i interchangeably, a spelling artifact that goes back to the merger of /y(:)/ and /i(:)/ back in classical latin and was thus duplicated in french and thus english. This is a pet peeve of mine, it's like using 'x' for 'cs' or 'qu' for 'kw'. There is no conceivable reason for this except:
1) The language is a descendant of latin, or closely influenced by latin or its descendants. (Romance Languages, English) OR
2) The language was romanised by english speakers who were not linguists or even competant but instead were extremely dull missionaries. (Some foreign languages, but not many)

If you simply search and replaced ' with a null, and fixed the spelling, Mando'a would still be complete shit, but would at least not offend the entire universe merely by existing.

Finally, as an afternote, Stress. This one is marginal but it bugs me: Mando'a has unpredictable stress on words, as shown by the few examples I cited above. Some languages do have irregular stress, it is true. However, it's merely another "English doesn't have regular stress, so Traviss did not even think of putting regular stress in because it never occured to her." Further, if the stress is irregular, why not mark the vowels with an acute accent or other mark for stress? Orthographies are meant to be readable and sensible, not poor imitations of the already somewhat dilapidated system english uses.

PHONOTACTICS:

There are none. For those of you who don't know, Phonotactics is why the word Firk doesn't exist in english but could, yet Dlakŗtsvi can't, despite the fact that one can easily say either if you try. (try pronouncing ŗ like the supposed "ir" in the word skirt and you'll realise english actually has 4 "vowels" you've never even realised existed: Skirt, Pull, Adam, Eden). Phonotactics governs what sounds are allowed in english, like how 'str-' can be a starting consonant cluster, but zd- can't.

Mando'a does not appear to have any constraints other than what english would allow. It has few consonant clusters, but they include 'str-', 'tr-', '-rg-', '-tn-', -n'b- (!), -shg-, etc. There appears to be no practical limits on what consonants can appear together in a word, and initially the rule appears to be 'if english can do it, so can mando'a'. For an example why this matters, imagine japanese if you deleted all the letter u. Further, words in hebrew can be things such as bkat or bnei. Finally, Hawaiian can't have any consonant clusters at all. This gives flavour to a language, especially in what ones it allows or disallows. For an example, see Tolkien's adaptation of finnish phonotactics to give his elven language a light sound, allowing voiced consonants only after a homorganic nasal stop [-nd-, -mb- were allowed, but b and d could not occur anywhere else.]

ALLOPHONIC DISTINCTION

Dialectical variation and allophonic distinction are given a cursory nod by Traviss, ironically to make her language even more englishlike.

Mando'a is pronounced much as Basic, with a few exceptions. There is no "f," "x," or "z," although some regions do pronounce "p" almost as ph and "s" as z. Those letters have been added to the Mandalorian written alphabet to aid the transliteration of foreign words. Occasionally, the pronunciation of "t"s and
"d"s are swapped. "T" is the modern form; "d" is archaic. "V" and "w" are also sometimes interchangeable, as are "b" and "v"-another regional variation. "J" is now pronounced as a hard "j" as in joy, but is still heard as "y" in some communities.

The initial "h" in a word is usually aspirated, except in its archaic form in some songs and poems, and "h" is always pronounced when it occurs in the middle of a word.

Leaving aside that an unaspirated h is rather impossible, Traviss makes a rather bizarre move, saying that h was silent beforehand and now is pronounced. If so, where did it come from? Sounds don't spring up from nowhere. Hypercorrection can't occur across the entire language, and a restorative sound change using a near-silent archiphoneme like a vowel-initial glottal stop is almost unprecedented. I at least have never heard of a silent letter being restored.

Further, more generic foreignism: J used to be /j/, like it should (English is the only language, based on the corrosive influence of french, to misuse this consonant), but now is /dzh/? This one is at least plausible, it is in fact how the old french j (which later lost the intial d- in the cluster) arose from softened g. However, it's just... generic.

Generic Foreignism: Spanish b-v distinction loss, and Latinate/Germanate (in opposite directions) v-w distinction loss. Further, is d archaic or not? She has d all over her words, and indicates it is pronounced as a 'd' in the pronunciations, but also has T all over the place. Is the archaic pronunciation swapping d and t? That's impossibly stupid, for numerous reasons. Further, the lack of distinction indicates to me that either d or t or both are often flapped, meaning it's another englishism. (Example of flapping: Say itty bitty city. Now say iddy biddy ciddy. If you are flapping d and t, they will not be distinguishable. Now, for an added bonus. Say that sound with nothing in front, but something after it, say- ttina, or ddina. Keep trying if you can't do it at first, saying 'itty' or 'city' while paying attention to how your tongue moves. Notice what happened when you did? Suddenly it became the letter r. An alveolar flap is yet another rhotic sound used as r in some languages (including some varieties of japanese!) and yet english considers it a -tt- or -dd-. Rotokas considers it a d or r, the two are the same to them. Et cetera.)

Further, no X is hardly a thing to pride yourself on. There is no concievable reason any conlang should ever use the letter x for /ks/ unless it is a fictional descendent of Vulgar Latin. Ever. Using x for other purposes (/sh/, as in old spanish), /?/ as in piraha, etc. is acceptable if you're willing to put up with it making you look stupid.

On the plus side, the letters qu are entirely absent from Mando'a, which is like saying "He tripped over his own feet, but on the plus side he hasn't vomited on the floor yet". QU is another latin artefact via french in english, and CW or KW, depending upon your choice of k spelling, is entirely correct and proper. Although don't use kw- in a conlang without good reason. Example: In a language I have made kw- is just one of several labial versions of consonants (pw, tw, bw, dw, gw, lw, rw, hw, and in some dialects sw and zw round out the mix, as -w based consonants are considered a basic consonant up there with generic p, t, k). It's concievably acceptable to make a language where the only labialised consonant is kw, but I tend to err on the side of not making a language too much englishlike without extremely good reasons.

You'll note we're 9 million words in to this epic failpoem and I haven't even gotten to grammar yet. Luckily, we're almost there. The Apertif is getting done, so we can move on the main course soon... as in now. Let's go. Put on your hazard gear for this.

The language is a very regular. It has no cases; only two forms of the verb and a tense prefix system; and simple rules for creating adjectives out of nouns and verb stems. Spelling and punctuation have optional forms so it's
hard to be completely ungrammatical.

I will admit I'm impressed that Traviss knows what a case is considering how English-biased her language is, but I'm pretty sure she knows some German so it's not like it's a godlike achievement or something, like if she actually knew what phonotactics were.

Now, don't get me wrong. Some languages are very regular and simple. Chinese as far as I know has no irregularities. Turkish has one (To Be, of course). Many languages have no case. Languages that the average english speaker would call "Simple" (Analytic languages) are quite common [Turkish isn't one, but Chinese is]. But it's still lazy and anglocentric to do so. If this language were designed competantly, I'd almost guess it were meant to be a language for lazy english speaking nerds to read and learn. It seems to pander to the idea of 'like English but simpler and more regular, with kewl space words spoken by Space Gurkhas'.

Let me briefly explain types of languages to you:
The first form I will explain is the Synthetic Fusional Language. In this language, a single ending (often very compact) will tell you multiple things on a word. For example, in Latin, -as means 'plural accusative-case', and the verb ending -verimus means 'we will have been [verb]ing' (Future-Pluperfect Indicative Active 1st Person Plural). That is a lot of information to carry in a 3 syllable word, no?
The upside of synthetic fusion is that a language has practically free word order. If I know that '-us' means 'Singular Subject' and '-as' means 'Plural Object', there's no way to confuse the following sentence: Gallus Cenas Consumpsit. (The frenchman ate the dinners). There's also no way to confuse the following: Consumpsit Gallus Cenas. Cenas Consumpsit Gallus. Gallus Consumpsit Cenas. Since the subject is still tagged, and the object still tagged, word order is basically free for simple sentences and even more complex ones.
The downside of synthetic fusion is that a language has a shitload of grammar to memorize. Each ending for each type of noun and verb and verb tense and so forth must be memorized. Latin has at least 48 verb endings I can think of at the moment, and 50 noun endings, plus irregular verbs and nouns.

That sounds like it really sucks, what else is there?
Well, there's analytic languages. Plus: No grammar tables to memorize. Everything is pretty intuitive for an english speaker, because english is rather analytic. Example: "I now eat those many egg" (I'm eating the eggs). Downside- word order is now fixed. "Now those many egg eat I" no longer means the same thing. Word order and when to place certain things, and how to form now complex verb ideas like "I will have not been able to have done that" (merely "id nonpotuero facere" in Latin, which is 3 words vs 10). These things can become just as complex as synthetic languages, just in different ways.

Often, things will fuse on the end of words. Like, Many- might become a prefix meaning 'plural'. So Manyegg, Manydog, Manyman, etc. Further, verbs could get things like "Now-Eat-I" or "Eat-I-Now". This is known as Synthetic Agglutinative. Upside: Word order is now looser, especially if you get things like Manyeggob (object), Isub (subject) as english examples. Downside: things like "Eat-I-Now-It" are much longer words than before, although there's now less words in a sentence.

Finally, if agglutinating gets crazy and multiple concepts start fusing into single words, things can become polyagglutinative. Many amerind languages such as Inuit have entire sentences expressed as a single word based on agglutinating particles that now include roots/stems of words, at the cost of the sentence being huge.

Languages can also have less pure status than just 1 of the 4 types- German has agglutinating nouns but a fusional noun case system, and "complex" (synthetic) verbs. English has relics of its fusional case-using past, like verb endings and the difference between Me and I, but it also is largely analytic in structure.

Why did I just turn into linguistics instead of Mando'a?

Because time and time again, Traviss takes the easy way out. It's just "Analytic with a few fusional elements". English, but simpler. There's an entire world out there, and she's stuck on a gloomy island in the north atlantic. No offense to Brits, but your language isn't the crown jewel of the entire world. Maybe a conlang should explore new waters. I'd rant about things that could have been done differently, like a semitic root system, or a latin-like noun case declension system, or making it polysynthetic, but it'd just be long and griping. Let's just move forward with this trainwreck.

VERBS

The infinitive ends in -ir, -ar, -ur, -or or -er. Removing the "r" usually produces the stem.

Sometimes an apostrophe separates the terminal vowel, to indicate the slight glottal stop of some Mandalorian accents. This apostrophe, known as a beten, or sigh-as in Mando'a-can also indicate breathing, pronunciation, or dropped letters.

Mando'a is predominantly a spoken language, and contractions and pronunciation variations occur just as in any language.

-Vr, then. Haven't ever seen r used as a verb infinitive suffix.

Traviss is bullshitting. She KNOWS there is no basis for her abuse of the letter '. "It can mean just about anything" in a spelling system means "It means nothing". Spelling is systematic, and marking breathing is hardly intelligent outside of the realm of speech pathology. Further, she never explains how it marks pronunciation shifts (palatalisation? ejectivisation? what?), meaning even she doesn't know.

The verb cuyir (to be) is frequently dropped and indicated by word order, as in ni (cuyi) verd-I (am) a warrior.

To say "It's good", a Mandalorian will often just say jate (good) rather than bic jate - it (is) good - or the full form with the verb, bic cuyi jate.

The addition of the prefix tion turns a statement into a question.

The prefix ke or k' indicates a command. Using ke with the infinitive is
formal, but in everyday colloquial use the verb loses its -r ending.

Dropping the copula is at least not in english (much, save in some dialects). I can't complain. Also, '-tion', although it looks much too like 'question' and thus sets off my '[un]conscious english cribbing' alarm (nothing is as embarassing as that happening to a language), it at least is pronounced 'ti-on' and not 'shn' like english does due to vulgar latin hijinx.

Infinitive Imperative is rather spanishy, but I can't complain either. This is actually not too bad of a session, which is a rope-a-dope for the next one that will punch you in the cut.

To create the negative form of a verb-or, in many cases, a noun- add
the prefix n', nu, nu', or even ne (depending on ease of pronunciation) before either the whole sentence or the negative phrase, depending on meaning.

Pronunciation is always a key factor in determining which letters are dropped when spoken. The negative prefix often denotes a negative noun, such as ne'briikase (unhappy).

Hi I'm this idea and I didn't work in Esperanto, please euthanise me. Also, 'pronunciation is a factor in how the language sounds when spoken'? No shit. Give me some pronunciation info, then, unless you think mandalorian is pronounced with accents ranging from japanese to aussie to canadian to nigerian and that the dropping of letters changes depending upon whether said mandalorians speak which of those languages natively.

A summary of the verb forms, using jurir:

Ni juri kad: I carry a saber.
Nu'ni juri kad: I don't carry a saber.
Ni ven juri kad: I will carry a saber.
Ni ru juri kad: I carried a saber.
Ke jurir kad: Carry that saber! (Formal.)
Ke'nu jurir kad: Put that saber down! (Literally,
"Don't carry that saber!")

Okay, the use of 'don't carry' for 'put down' is rather good. It reminds me of latin, how you will form negative commands by "Cease to X!". However, this does not excuse the complete boringness of these particles. Yeah, it's analytic. I get it. Fuck that shit. Your language should not be boring me to death, even if it is analytic.

Here's a brilliant idea- make some particles called evidentiality particles. I stole this shit from Quetchua and it makes any language 200x more awesome instantly. Have sounds tagged on the end of verbs or as analytic particles or as a factor in fusional endings, depending upon how you want it, which indicate things like "Hearsay", "Probably", "Sure", "Proven Fact", "Untrue", etc. Hunter-gatherer cultures often develop these because it's useful to say like "There might be a tiger in that bush, stay still" or "There's probably going to be food at the tree" or "I heard that there was a huge noise last night, what do you think it was?".

That's just one example of a way you can change a language to make it still analytic but more interesting. Instead of saying "I hear existed loud noise yesterday possessive night, what think it was?", say "Existed loud noise yesterday possessive night hearsay, what think it was opinion?".

Further, note how englishlike the grammar is, within the limits traviss is allowed by her own structure (such as an imperative prefix) she makes it entirely englishlike with SVO grammar and similar. There's nothing per se wrong with SVO itself, it's tied for most-common-word-order, but it's like murder evidence piling up. The alibi is looking a little thin, if one even existed. I also guarantee that adjectives come first in Mando'a, despite a vast majority of SVO languages using noun-adjective form. Germanic Languages and French are actually exceptions to the rule, which is really galling because it means the only deviation from the generic she has is to make it unintentionally more englishlike. A few seconds on google if you know where to look can get you resources on whether adverbs come first or last, whether the direct article is before or after a noun, et cetera, including statistical percentages based on linguists' observations.

Aaand here's the gutpunch.

Gender nouns are the same for men and women. Gender is implied contextually, if relevant. Where gender clarity is necessary, the adjectives jagyc (male) or dalyc (female) are added

I can't disapprove, although I think colloquially -jag and -dal would dominate since -yc is completely useless from an optimality theory point of view and just from a practical one.

There is no need to make verbs agree with subjects - there is one form only.

This is also implied by analytic, like the lack of gender, so I'm not too concerned, although I still think it's lazy to make an analytic language without any cool features to back its simple grammar up.

A prefix system indicates tenses. Colloquially, Mandalorians use only the present tense, but they adopted the prefixes ru (past) and ven (future) when dealing with species who need specific tenses.

WHAAAT.

You cannot exist without a past and/or future tense. Arguably the future is a luxury, many languages do without (Japanese, for instance), but the past-present distinction is vital. Or at minimum, having a past-present and a future tense to distinguish now from later.

How do the Mandalorians not use measurements of time? I was originally going to shrug this off with 'oh, they must use analytic words like 'now' and 'later' like my "I now eat many egg", but then I realised, 'ru' and 'ven' are those words. Ven for instance is a root found in words meaning meaning 'future'. It's mad. I might believe it if I were told of an example people who don't use time distinctions at all (the Pirahã, perhaps, I'd not put anything past them), but it seems implausible enough that it sets off my alarms. Further, in a primitive hunter-gatherer society, perhaps you don't need time measurement, but how do the Mandalorians manage to do anything in modern civilisation without times? They can't make it clear from context, especially since Traviss doesn't state this when usually she would love to say "context will tell".

There is no passive form. All verbs are active. If needed, the passive is formed by using the adjective and - if spoken in full - the verb cuyir.

Here Traviss confuses the passive form of a verb ('the lamp was broken' is passive, focusing on the lamp compared to 'something broke the lamp' which focuses on the person or event which is only implied in the passive sentence) with the participle ('broken'). Just because in english they look the same doesn't mean they are the same, and further, making passives work via 'copula participle' like I think she intends is very, very english-romance. Why not a word that flips a verb to passive from active? How about a word that deletes the subject by taking its part as a null word, so that 'Null broke lamp' serves as 'the lamp was broken?'. How about actually making verbs slightly not analytic, and making them alter somehow for passives. They could, say, add a suffix, or change the pronunciation of the end in a regular way like, say, tat to tad. (which would be hard since that would require Traviss have not ended any active verbs in voiced consonants, for instance, so it's too late now unless she wants to revise her 1186 word dictionary.

The indefinite article eyn, (an) is almost always dropped except for emphasis, as is the definite article te, or the more emphatic haar (the).

Plurals are formed by adding -e. The "e" is always pronounced as "ay".

The first sentence is rather good- a difference between a more emphatic and less emphatic article is at least not obviously englishlike, although translating haar as 'this/those' and te as 'the' makes it less exotic.

The plural information is useless. Regularity is again okay, if a bit stale (how do the Mandalorians keep their language that pure and regular? Turkish is an anomaly, and Chinese doesn't use endings. Endings are volatile things, they often change based on how they're attached which causes irregularities (like engilsh -z, in dogs (dogz) vs s in cat(s) vs oz in heroes (hiroz), although that one is at least regular. See latin for some irregularities in pluralisation, or technically singularisation, in Declension 3). Further, the pronunciation info is just taunting us. "Always pronounced 'ay'" (which I assume is english 'ay' (ei) and not 'rest of the world ay' (ai, since i=y/j). What else could it be? What other e sound is there in mando'a?

My guess is she's trying to distinguish e from ε, both of whicha re in english. Play is ple in phonetic notation, and Pet is pεt. Ay also accidentally implies dipthongisation (ei, which is different from e, although largely equivalent to e: [despite what you're told, english doesn't have length distinction, e: = e in english. Our 'short' vowels are actually different entirely, and have been since their long counterparts moved in 1300, our terminology just didn't update]), but this further just nails in 'english language', since that's exactly how you'd pronounce a terminal e in english too.

Fun fact; Mando'a has possessives that are the same as its pronouns. No, there's no 'of' equivalent. You just say 'you chair' for your chair. This is simplistic almost to pidgin levels, making me wonder if Mando'a would make more sense as a language that had shattered post-conquering by the New Republic and was a trade tongue pigin like Unserdeutsch or Tok Pisin. Example Tok Pisin sentence: "Dat man hi bi goodpela bi tru" (He was a good fellow/person, this statement is true). Pidgins are highly analytic, simplistic in grammar, and based on the phonology of the conqueror (thus why mando'a sounds like english). This is the only conceivable explanation for all of the facts about Mando'a and yet it still doesn't work, as it has almost no basic/english words in it.

ADJECTIVES AND ADVERBS:

Adjectives and adverbs are formed by the addition of the suffix -la or -yc (pronounced eesh), depending on which makes pronunciation easier. There is only one form of the adjective.

The adverb is exactly the same as the adjective.

Comparatives and superlatives tend to be constructed from adjectives with -shy'a for the comparative or -ne for the superlative.

'depending upon which makes pronunciation easier' is not a rule of grammar. At minimum, jesus, make a rule, like 'yc after consonants, la after vowels', so that it's grammar. That's not a fucking language.

Adverbs and Adjectives being the same makes me leery, as adjectives should ideally have more ties with nouns than with 'generic descriptor phrase'. After all, many languages use them the same (we talk of 'the rich' and 'the wealthy' in english.) Then again, it's not inconcievable, especially since Mando'a has such a strict word order and is english structured so it's always Adjective-S Subject Adverb Verb Adjective-O Object.

finally, back to pronunciation, to bring us full circle

The stress on syllables shown in the lexicon is as commonly spoken, but many Mandalorians place stress on different syllables.

Oher points to note:

-uy: pronounced oo-ee

How is this not obvious from reading it? Is it because english doesn't have uy in it so they're confused? I notice that 'ay' in Mando'a does in fact mean e as I suspected, except in one word where it's transcribed as ay (real ay) for no reason I know of. Gaa'tayl is /ga'tajl/, but Gaa'taylir is /ga'telir/. I have no clue why. Oh hey, there's another place for apostrophe. Two of them- contractions of prefixes and suffixes [Traviss does not realise you can't contract a word in the middle, it has to be at a boundary where two words intersect or else it's not a contraction] (l'ordeurves), and in phonetic transcription for representing stress

u: oo

Again, how is this not obvious. Also, why does U get attention, but no other vowel explanations like when it is ε and when it is e.

cye: shay
-yc: sh after a vowel
c: k, when it comes before a at the beginning
of a word
c: s, when it comes before other vowels at the
beginning of a word or in the middle of a word
cy: sh or ch

No. I refuse to even talk about this. Fuck you. I'm done, this page is over. I'm not going to get into vocabulary.

Pronouncing terminal consonants varies in songs. They often become extra syllables. For examples, tor becomes to-rah and tang becomes tan-gah to maintain rhythm and meter.

This is not how you make poetry or song. Yes, sometimes poets and songwriters cheat a little, but it's not supposed to be a rule.

In conclusion, god damn it all.

Somewhere across the Atlantic, the reincarnated spirit of J. R. R. Tolkien pulls the trigger, crying, and does not know why.

[Duckie]

ghetto edit: swap e and ε in all contrasting measures of them, I always confuse those two. And because I do, when I get it right I double guess myself because I always get it wrong and swap them anyway.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Guys is it confirmed we won't hear or see any more bloody Mando'a anymore? I die a little inside every time I see that shit. I don't even read Star Wars EU and it pisses me off knowing that such a terrible conlang* exists, let alone seeing examples of it.

I made one as bad as it once, but I was 11 and it was for a D&D campaign so I have an excuse.
*I could post a huge rant post explaining why Mando'a is so terrible, but nobody would care.

You have one more novel to put up with, 501st Imperial Commando II. Then you have her old fans, who we need to round up for the gulag. If even one escapes, we risk them becoming an author for Lucasfilm Licensing in the future.

[charlemagne]

why Mando'a is terrible

Oh man, that's really horrible. I wonder how a civilisation even gets to the point of writing poetry using such a dumbed-down language. I mean what the fuck, no verb tense? How did these guys get anything done before they "imported" the knowledge that time is passing? How do you even form complex thoughts when thinking in such a stupid language?

But it's kind of telling that Traviss seems to thinks a language has to be simpler than English to be cool.

[Old Plympto]

Epic post, Duckie. You should clean it up a bit and find a place where you can put it up for posterity's sake. I'm sure someone will link to it from Wikipedia or Wookieepedia.

[Aaron]

Why not put it on SDN's wiki?

[18-Till-I-Die]

Yes I'd like to second that.

Very informative and well done dude, we should put it on the SDN wiki. I've not been there in a while, does Duckie have a page? Cause if so I'd sugest putting it there.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Yes I'd like to second that.

Very informative and well done dude, we should put it on the SDN wiki. I've not been there in a while, does Duckie have a page? Cause if so I'd sugest putting it there.

I'd actually suggest that it would be more appropriate to have it on a Mandalorian page if we have one or the Karen Traviss page and just make sure we leave something obvious (I was thinking size 26 wing ding font 1 in lazer yellow!) to make sure Duckie is credited for it.