Lots of people hate Traviss. I don't mind her, especially because I RP using her language, tenets, and culture for the Mandalorians.

 

People don't like her because they don't like seeing Jedi and Sith actually killed by anyone expect each other... Sure, they were overpowered, but that doesn't mean everything she writes is complete BS.

 

For all the haters, play the BH Storyline and enjoy BioWare's implementation of Mando'a in TOR.

That's not it at all. Some people have touched up on it but sorry this is wrong. It has nothing to do with the best Mandalorians being able to show up certain Jedi. It's about how she ADMITTED she hadn't read any novels except her own. She admitted at best she does a quick skim in previous novels. It's especially apparent in the legacy of the force series where many of the things she writes is contradicted by events that have appeared in the previous novels.

She has also compared people who like Jedi to nazi's. There's a very valid reason why people dislike her. It has nothing to do with her writing (well, sorta) but it has more to do with her personality and attitude.

Lots of people hate Traviss. I don't mind her, especially because I RP using her language, tenets, and culture for the Mandalorians.

It's not a language. This is from a linguist I know on another board:

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 ****, 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 *****l 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 *****lised 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 ******** 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 bull********. 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 ****. 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. **** that ****. 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 **** 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.

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 *********** 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. **** 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, gosh darn it all.

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

If Traviss wrote anything right, I'd have to say her TCW work, the novelization of the movie itself and "No Prisoners", was best. The novelization generally lampshaded/called out a lot of the movies' problems, while "No Prisoners" basically deconstructed the entire Clone Wars (series and the war itself) by the third chapter, and did so in a way that you could see the point but didn't make the Jedi entirely horrible.

As in... the first thing Pellaeon (yes, that Pellaeon) does when Ahsoka comes aboard his ship is make her put some stanging clothes on (keep in mind this was released at about Season 1's tail end)... I couldn't stop laughing at the scene, told from Rex's point of view.

I read the The Legacy of the Force series that was authored by Traviss, Allston and Denning.

All three were horrible. In fact, i never want to read another SW book again.

Traviss was entirely too fixated on Mandalorians to the point it broke continuity of the story.

Allston wrote every character as the same character. There was no depth. They were all smug, overly logical snots. I am guessing he was writing himself into the story. As in, Han Solo Allston, Leia Allson, Luke Allston, etc.. defeating the forces of evil with logical nerd rage.

Denning was the most tolerable but he ended up making the bad guy into a simpering, idiotic, (and almost comical) whiny *** where the others wrote him as truly dangerous. There was no punch to his prose. Very boring.

So, what you ended up with was 3 writers cancelling each others' stories out and the series was a jumbled mess.

My advice... do yourself a favor and don't read ANY of them. If you feel you have to read one just to know, don't read anything from those three.

... She has to have things her way, has to make things fit what she wants them to be, irregardless of how anyone else, EVEN THE CREATOR OF THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY SHE'S WRITING FOR, wants them.

 

...

 

THAT IS NOT A WORD!!! GYAH!!

/stabs own eyes

irregardless

THAT IS NOT A WORD!!! GYAH!!

 

/stabs own eyes

Yes, yes it is:

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/irregardless

It's not a perfect word, it's not a highly sensical word, and it may be a redundant word, but it is, in point of fact, a valid word.

Kind of like "flammable" and "inflammable."

irregardless

 

Yes, yes it is:

 

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/irregardless

 

It's not a perfect word, it's not a highly sensical word, and it may be a redundant word, but it is, in point of fact, a valid word.

 

Kind of like "flammable" and "inflammable."

Read your own link, dudebro:

Although well attested, this term is widely regarded as nonstandard and an illiteracy for regardless or irrespective, and is probably inappropriate in virtually any formal setting, except quoted dialog.

She blatantly breaks SW Lore and has no consideration for continuity.

Her first and maybe second book are ok... but don't bother reading anything else.

I'm going to go read her blog for a while now. That's hardcore. I was on the fence before but if she truly meant all that...wow. That is some narcissism if I've ever seen it.

I don't really see the Jedi as sifting through people trying to find the best. They're just looking for Force-sensitive people. There's some really crappy Force users and they still take them. I wonder what she's drawing all of this from. Possibly this is part of her own internal canon too? Maybe she adopted the Jedi as villains since the Mandalorians hated them.

I also disagree about the LotF writing...aside from what was previously mentioned, I felt it was fairly competent writing. I enjoyed it a lot. I'll be able to give more perspective soon, I've been re-reading all of them starting with NJO. I'm on the Enemy Lines duology right now.

Whoever commented on Allston's writing also had an interesting point about him...he makes the characters seem a lot more human and relate able, but also a bit more goofy. Smug, one-lining wisecracks litter almost every single page, and a lot of the character's personalities blur together because they start acting alike. Kind of bizarre.

Read your own link, dudebro:

Still a word.

Still a word.

It's a word inasmuch as a Norinco Hunter is an Assault Weapon.

Still a word.

It is a double negative, it is not a word.

regardless means to ignore

Adding another negative onto the start of it means that it cancels itself out, essentially meaning the same as regard. It destroys the word, and the english language.

First of all, it's not a double negative, that's a whole different thing. What it is is adding a redundant prefix. The meaning is unchanged. Double negative would be something like "unimpossible." At worst, the word is a poor pastiche of "irrespective" and "regardless."

Oh, and regardless does not mean "to ignore," it means "having no regard, heedless, careless." To ignore is "to pay no attention to" or, in obsolete usage, "to fail to notice." One is an adjective, the other verb. One ignores something for some reason, one does something regardless of something else. Related, but different, meanings.

And in any event, who are you to decide what is and is not a word? Irregardless appears as a word not only on Wiktionary, but in my Webster's dictionary, copyright 1983, which I daresay predates a good chunk of the posters on this board. There, they define it as "a substandard or humorous redundancy." Which still makes it a word, one which I used for a specific reason. Why? If you're half so smart as you pretend you are, you can figure it out.

Claiming that thus-and-such is "not a word" and it "pollutes the language" is the first sign of true ignorance and arrogance. English exists as it does today because we reassign, repurpose, change, alter, squish together, smash apart, import, export, and create new words for new things. "Lightsaber" wasn't a word until George Lucas made it one. "Computer" wasn't a word until someone invented one. "Telephone" and "television" were mishmashes of two ridiculously incompatible things until they started to make their way into everyone's home.

I leave you with one of my favorite quotes, from Eddy Peters, as well as one last piece of advice: Don't argue language with a writer. You'll lose.

Not only does the English Language borrow words from other languages, it sometimes chases them down dark alleys, hits them over the head, and goes through their pockets. — Eddy Peters

I like the idea that Karen Traviss portrayed the jedi as anything but noble.

Except she didn't. She made up an entirely different order of Jedi. The Jedi in her books are nothing like the actual Jedi.

Not having read her books, I can't really comment, but the general consensus seems to be that, rather than showing "how the other half live" and the alternative points of view about why ordinary people may have a beef with the Jedi (which was done brilliantly, I though, in the New Jedi Order series) Traviss instead seems to have gone out of her way to portray them as at best incompetent, at worst outright evil.

Again, I say that this impression comes from not actually having read any of her books, but from second- and third-hand hearsay, so is hardly a highly informed opinion.

That's not it at all. Some people have touched up on it but sorry this is wrong. It has nothing to do with the best Mandalorians being able to show up certain Jedi. It's about how she ADMITTED she hadn't read any novels except her own. She admitted at best she does a quick skim in previous novels. It's especially apparent in the legacy of the force series where many of the things she writes is contradicted by events that have appeared in the previous novels.

 

She has also compared people who like Jedi to nazi's. There's a very valid reason why people dislike her. It has nothing to do with her writing (well, sorta) but it has more to do with her personality and attitude.

I know, I agree that she portrays the Jedi in a horrible light and she's not the best writer.

But, the culture she used for the Mandalorians is accepted as Canon and I like it and use it.

It's not a language. This is from a linguist I know on another board:

 

A DISSECTION OF MANDALORIAN

by this person

I honestly don't care if it's considered a "certified" or "sensical" language by people. In the Star Wars Universe, it's a language and it's been used in Canon, therefore if you're going to RP a Mandalorian, you need to speak Mando'a.

Overall, no one I know would ever bother to learn an entirely made up and useless language.

Basic words and phrases such as "Su'cuy'gar", "Me'vaar ti gar?", "Oya", "Ni'jate", and "Vor'entye" are really the most commonly used. Attempting to talk fully in Mando'a or make complex sentences is too timeconsuming and it wouldn't work because the Language was only made for casual use.

The fact that this person wrote 1000+ words on the subject of a made up language tells me enough about his personal life...

The fact that this person wrote 1000+ words on the subject of a made up language tells me enough about his personal life...

Guy's a linguist talking about language.

How many words have you written on the subject of Star Wars? Same thing.

From what I've read she quit because of how they ***** Mandalorian lore in The Clone Wars cartoon series.

more specificly she quit because some of her work got retconned and refused to even work on an explination to allow both to work well together.

compare this with Tim Zhan's positivly classy additude to the prequals retconning some of his work.

Mandalorians are NOT the property of Karen Traviss, LFL can do what they want with them

I honestly don't care if it's considered a "certified" or "sensical" language by people. In the Star Wars Universe, it's a language and it's been used in Canon, therefore if you're going to RP a Mandalorian, you need to speak Mando'a.

 

elven roleplayers in LOTRO didn't insist all elven rpers speak sindarin, insisting mando rpers speak mandalorian is just petty

Guy's a linguist talking about language.

 

How many words have you written on the subject of Star Wars? Same thing.

The fact remains... its a bull **** "Language." I don't know what people want to call it, A collection of words all sharing similar traits in grammar??

I just don't understand why people nit-pick at things like this, It's a collection of around 1000 words so they can put words in Mandalorian's mouths in Novels and Games... Like this one for instance. It's canon.

I don't believe I've sat down and dissected a fake language in a fake universe in 1000 words in one sitting. I really don't care that much.

elven roleplayers in LOTRO didn't insist all elven rpers speak sindarin, insisting mando rpers speak mandalorian is just petty

It's a figure of speech. If you're going to RP Mandalorian, you need to follow the Resol'nare. Like a Jedi follows the Jedi Code. Within the Resol'nare a tenet is "Speak Mando'a."

It's a figure of speech. If you're going to RP Mandalorian, you need to follow the Resol'nare. Like a Jedi follows the Jedi Code. Within the Resol'nare a tenet is "Speak Mando'a."

/me says, "This is a stupid idea," in Mando'a.

There. I've satisfied your criterion for Mandalorian roleplay.

Regarding Traviss' work, there's is a very fun read here that explains, with citations from the source material, the seeming hatred that Traviss had for the Jedi. Go down until you see a long post by "YodaKenobi" and prepare to be entertained.