Can you speak Yodish?

"Star Wars: The Force Awakens."  Have you seen it yet?  My husband Wayne and I joined a whole lot of other movie goers on Christmas Day this year at the Violet Crown theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico to get our Star Wars fix.  The movie has an intriguing plot, memorable characters and lively dialogue, but I must admit I missed seeing one of my favorite Star Wars characters-Yoda.

I admire Yoda because he is old and wise, but I have always been especially intrigued by Yoda's use of language.  When I taught courses in English Linguistics, I often used quotes from Yoda to introduce  students to topics in syntax, hoping to spark a little interest in what can be a very dry topic!

Yoda, of course, speaks English.  And we can all understand him.  But we also know that sometimes Yoda's language sounds a bit odd. "Lost a planet Master Obi-Wan has, " says the little green Jedi master. What's going on here?

Yoda sometimes uses an alternate word order from the Subject-Verb-Object basic word order of English.  (Linguists refer to that order as SVO.)  He often places modifiers, like adjectives, adverbs, and even modifying clauses, and also objects before the subject and verb, rather than after.   Yoda says, "Much to learn, you still have," rather than the more usual "You still have much to learn." (Linguists might classify Yoda's word order as OSV.)

Yoda's choice of a different word order gives us a chance to examine our own ideas of what is "right" and "wrong" in a language. 

Would you consider Yoda's language ungrammatical?  His language may sound poetic, archaic and formal, but is it truly wrong?  Yoda would not think so.

Yoda also often omits using the auxiliary verb "do" in negative statements.  He declares, "Size matters not" rather than the more standard "Size does not matter." Also, Yoda does not use contractions, like "doesn't" for "does not", which to me makes his language sound more formal. 

So, do you think you could change your standard dialect of English into Yodish?  The mechanics of doing so are really fairly simple, but can you match the wisdom of statements like these?

"Wars not make one great."

"Adventure.  Excitement.  A Jedi craves not these things."

And my favorite Yoda quote:  "When 900 years you reach, look as good you will not."

Would you like to read more Yoda quotes?    Yoda quotes