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Strormer
2011-11-10, 01:48 AM
Hey, does anyone out there know where I can find information in bulk on Mandalorians, especially their culture and language. I want to use Mandalorians heavily in my next saga campaign, but the information I have in my Saga books doesn't cover everything I need. I'm relying mostly on Wookiepedia and the KotOR campaign guide.
Anything that's more extensive would be really helpful.
Thanks all!

Alleran
2011-11-10, 02:51 AM
The Mandalorian "language" that was pioneered by Karen Traviss is actually quite terrible (this is the reason why (http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=136229&p=3152288&p3152288) - scroll down to the post by Duckie).

Wookieepedia is basically one of the best resources out there for their culture and so on, and they try to be as unbiased as possible.

GeekGirl
2011-11-10, 11:58 AM
You may not have time to read all of it, but Legacy of the Force (books not the comics) go into so pretty good detail to their society.

Mando Knight
2011-11-10, 01:20 PM
The Mandalorian "language" that was pioneered by Karen Traviss is actually quite terrible (this is the reason why (http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=136229&p=3152288&p3152288) - scroll down to the post by Duckie).
Well, it's decent in a "THERE BE FOREIGN LANGUAGE HERE" sense. It's probably better than 75% of other Sci-Fi conlangs out there, but by no means should be thought an equal to Quenya... it's probably one of the best bad conlangs out there. It's like the bad German you see popping up everywhere in stereotypical evil German characters: doesn't hold up to scrutiny, or even necessarily make sense from a linguistics point of view, but it sounds cool.

On the other hand, I'm not entirely sure exactly how much of the blame is rightly placed on Traviss's shoulders for Mando'a's faults. She did go ahead and made the otherwise-nonsense chants from Vode An and Dha Werda Verda make sense...

Strormer
2011-11-10, 02:51 PM
A) Thanks, I guess I'll stick with WookP for now.
B) Wow, that's quite the post. Admittedly I love stories and I write, but I've never really been very good with grammar and language.
I suppose its a little silly of me to hope for a Tolkien level language out of SW, but I figured if any language in the entire SW universe had been fully explored, it would be mando'a. Thanks guys.

Coidzor
2011-11-10, 03:27 PM
...Mandolorians have their own variant of lemonade?

or is that like lemonade except made from butchered mandolorians? :smalleek:


It's like the bad German you see popping up everywhere in stereotypical evil German characters: doesn't hold up to scrutiny, or even necessarily make sense from a linguistics point of view, but it sounds cool.

Everywhere? Which everywhere do you speak of?

Velaryon
2011-11-10, 03:34 PM
The Mandalorian "language" that was pioneered by Karen Traviss is actually quite terrible (this is the reason why (http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=136229&p=3152288&p3152288) - scroll down to the post by Duckie).

I read as much of that as I could bear. Honestly I think he's making a huge issue out of something that wouldn't really bother anyone who's not a linguistics nerd. Most of the points boil down to 1) it's too similar to English, and 2) there are unnecessary apostrophes everywhere simply for the sake of making it look exotic.

I agree with the second point, but the first seems like a pointless objection from the perspective of someone for whom linguistics is not a major interest. Traviss's Mandalorian language does not need to be a fully-functioning independent language with entirely believable structure and etymology. If it is touted as such but isn't really, then that's a separate problem beyond the scope of .

For the purposes of a roleplaying game, all that really matters about the language is whether it sounds cool enough to bother including a few words here and there. So in short:


Well, it's decent in a "THERE BE FOREIGN LANGUAGE HERE" sense.

This.

Anyway, short of either reading Karen Traviss's three entries in the Legacy of the Force series (a terrible option I do not recommend whatsoever), or playing Knights of the Old Republic, Wookieepedia is probably the best source available on Mandalorians.

EDIT:


...Mandolorians have their own variant of lemonade?

or is that like lemonade except made from butchered mandolorians? :smalleek:

Haha! This is now going to be canon in my future Star Wars games. :smallbiggrin:

Mando Knight
2011-11-10, 04:42 PM
I suppose its a little silly of me to hope for a Tolkien level language out of SW, but I figured if any language in the entire SW universe had been fully explored, it would be mando'a. Thanks guys.
I would've expected Huttese to get more development, actually. Seeing as Jabba uses it exclusively and it's the de facto lingua franca of the Star Wars underworld, I'm surprised it hasn't risen to the same prominence among SW fans as Klingon has among Trekkies.

...Mandolorians have their own variant of lemonade?Yes. It's cold, sometimes a touch bitter, and although it's one of Traviss's favorites, the SW fandom at large is rather mixed about it and doesn't particularly appreciate her insistence that it's superior to anything the Jedi drink.

Everywhere? Which everywhere do you speak of?
I mean places like Irregular Webcomic!, Team Fortress 2, usw. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GratuitousGerman)

Coidzor
2011-11-10, 04:47 PM
I would've expected Huttese to get more development, actually. Seeing as Jabba uses it exclusively and it's the de facto lingua franca of the Star Wars underworld, I'm surprised it hasn't risen to the same prominence among SW fans as Klingon has among Trekkies.

I guess SW fans hate Hutts, and rightly so, in comparison with Klingons having more actual fans.


Yes. It's cold, sometimes a touch bitter, and although it's one of Traviss's favorites, the SW fandom at large is rather mixed about it and doesn't particularly appreciate her insistence that it's superior to anything the Jedi drink.

I mean places like Irregular Webcomic!, Team Fortress 2, usw. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GratuitousGerman)

Heh. Good one. I'd forgotten about Team Fortress 2. I wonder if Meet the Medic is out yet. I must away to youtube to verify this now.

...Wait a minute. Traviss is her real last name? :smallconfused: Did... Did she change her last name once she became a SW writer or was she uniquely blessed with a last name that sounds more like one from SW than real life? :smalleek:

TheCountAlucard
2011-11-10, 04:50 PM
Heh. Good one. I'd forgotten about Team Fortress 2. I wonder if Meet the Medic is out yet. I must away to youtube to verify this now.Believe me, it is, and it's awesome. :smallamused:

Mando Knight
2011-11-10, 04:57 PM
...Wait a minute. Traviss is her real last name? :smallconfused: Did... Did she change her last name once she became a SW writer or was she uniquely blessed with a last name that sounds more like one from SW than real life? :smalleek:

It's her real last name.

Anyone part of the anti-Mandalorian backlash would probably say that it ought to be Travissty, though. I prefer to stay out of that controversy and believe I hold a middle-of-the-road opinion on the matter.

Yora
2011-11-10, 05:05 PM
Mandalorians play a pretty big role in the Knights of the Old Republic Comics. Or Tales of the Jedi. I never completely understood the naming of the series.

It's the comic about the Jedi Covenant, that should help you finding them by asking people who know these things better. I think its also a quite good read as well, so I recommend it.

Edit: Scrap that!
It's Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic from 2006 and not to be confused with Tales of the Jedi: Knights of the Old Republic from 1993, that's something completely different.

Xuc Xac
2011-11-12, 07:36 AM
I would've expected Huttese to get more development, actually. Seeing as Jabba uses it exclusively and it's the de facto lingua franca of the Star Wars underworld, I'm surprised it hasn't risen to the same prominence among SW fans as Klingon has among Trekkies.

Number of people in the real world who speak Klingon: 50-100 thousand (estimated, not all fluent)
Number of people in the real world who speak Huttese: 10 million native speakers

Huttese is actually a real language, like most of the languages in Star Wars (aside from Wookiee which is animal noises). Huttese is Quechua, the same language that Indiana Jones speaks in South America in the fourth movie and claims to have learned in his youth.

The Ewoks speak Kalmyk, a language derived from Tibetan and spoken by members of a Buddhist enclave in Central Asia. When they fall to their knees to worship the floating C-3PO, they are actually chanting the Kalmyk version of the Buddhist prayer for compassion for all sentient beings.

Lando Calrissian's Sullustan co-pilot Nien Nunb speaks two Kenyan languages: Haya and Kikuyu.

Other sci-fi franchises just make up words or, at best, hire a linguist to make a conlang for them. Star Wars just picks obscure languages from the real world and invites refugees or exchange students to drop by the recording studio at Skywalker Sound to read a few lines.

Tiki Snakes
2011-11-12, 10:01 AM
Number of people in the real world who speak Klingon: 50-100 thousand (estimated, not all fluent)
Number of people in the real world who speak Huttese: 10 million native speakers

Huttese is actually a real language, like most of the languages in Star Wars (aside from Wookiee which is animal noises). Huttese is Quechua, the same language that Indiana Jones speaks in South America in the fourth movie and claims to have learned in his youth.

The Ewoks speak Kalmyk, a language derived from Tibetan and spoken by members of a Buddhist enclave in Central Asia. When they fall to their knees to worship the floating C-3PO, they are actually chanting the Kalmyk version of the Buddhist prayer for compassion for all sentient beings.

Lando Calrissian's Sullustan co-pilot Nien Nunb speaks two Kenyan languages: Haya and Kikuyu.

Other sci-fi franchises just make up words or, at best, hire a linguist to make a conlang for them. Star Wars just picks obscure languages from the real world and invites refugees or exchange students to drop by the recording studio at Skywalker Sound to read a few lines.

Assuming you didn't just make this up, I find this to be suprisingly awesome. :smallsmile:

PairO'Dice Lost
2011-11-12, 07:27 PM
Assuming you didn't just make this up, I find this to be suprisingly awesome. :smallsmile:

Technically, Huttese et al. aren't identical to the mentioned real-world languages; they're very close, but most of the phrases use their vocabulary with altered semantics or otherwise tweak things a bit:


The dialogue with Greedo was loosely based on the Peruvian native language Quechua. This instance of spoken Huttese is unique in the Star Wars universe as it contains dental clicks and ejectives as phonemes. Later appearances resemble more the Aymara language

[...]

Apart from the vocabulary, no real grammatical structure and syntactic rules exist. The meanings of some phrases are known, but not enough to consistently make a word-by-word analysis of them.

But it is true that the various spoken alien languages (i.e. not Chewie's Shryiiwook and similar) in the Star Wars movies are derived from real-world languages; the behind-the-scenes material (particularly the old Behind the Magic trivia/encyclopedia CD) goes into more detail, if you're interested.