Yodish: not so out of this world
Image: Dick Thomas Johnson via PhotoPin (licence)
For many moviegoers, Yoda is the true star of the Star Wars trilogy. We only ever hear the Jedi master speak English – or Yodish according to some fans – but it’s a quirky kind of English that, while sounding profound, does not ever become incomprehensible.
For example, when he admonishes Count Dooku, ‘Much to learn, you still have, my old padawan, this is only the beginning’, I have little problem understanding what he’s saying, though I might have had to look up ‘padawan’. Indeed, much of what he says has a lyricism that is only enhanced by his monkish robe:
Size matters not.
Nothing more will I teach you today.
Joined the Dark Side, Dooku has. Lies, deceit, creating mistrust are his ways now.
Powerful you have become; the dark side I sense in you.
The reason we can still understand the Jedi master is because the major difference between standard English and Yodish is in the word order or syntax. Much else, including prepositional phrases, remains intact.
Syntax primarily relates to the word order in a sentence. In the English language, the dominant sequence of words in a sentence is the subject–verb–object order, typified by the following sentences:
He rode the bicycle.
The moon was luminous that night.
What the Jedi master tends to do is shift the elements of a sentence around, but not haphazardly. Instead, he has a systematic preference for the object–subject–verb word order. So he might have said:
Bicycle, he rode.
Luminous that night, the moon was.
Linguists like Geoff Pullum have observed that in the real world, very few languages – that is to say, the South American Indian languages – employ object–subject–verb as the standard word order. However, in imaginary worlds, the inversion of conventional word order – or anastrophe – is an old literary device used for emphasis or rhetorical effect. You can hear the 900-year-old Yoda in the following:
Else the Puck a liar call; (William Shakespeare, A midsummer night’s dream, 1979, act 5, scene 1, line 427)
Talent, Mr. Micawber has; capital, Mr. Micawber has not. (Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, 1850, p. 303)
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing. (Edgar Allan Poe, The raven, 1845, verse 5, line 1)
Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear … (Toni Morrison, The bluest eye, 1999, p. 204)
Anastrophes have also been employed to great effect in speeches:
Now the trumpet summons us again – not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need – not as a call to battle, though embattled we are … (John F. Kennedy, Inaugural address, 1961)
The British Empire and the French Republic, linked together in their cause and in their need, will defend to the death their native soil, aiding each other … (Winston Churchill, We shall fight on the beaches, 1940)
By inverting the sequence of certain words or phrases in a sentence, anastrophes can be a skilful way of getting readers to attend more carefully – and, in some cases, to ascribe more weight – to what is being said.
In small doses, powerful this can be.
