Prazutis
Prudii Kyr'am Alor/Mandalorian Elder
Mando'a, sometimes referred to simply as Mandalorian, was the primary language spoken by the Mandalorian culture. Elements of Mando'a were taken from the language of the ancient Taungs of Coruscant, from which the culture stemmed, evolving over time to become something unique.
Mando'a was a primarily spoken language, rather than a written one, and was thus an expressive language that was often thought of as easy to learn, a trait highly desirable in a culture that regularly adopted adults from numerous races and species. The language's grammar was relatively uncomplicated, but there were elements that necessitated adjustments for a speaker of Basic, including Mando'a's expression of tense, and its gender-neutrality. Because Mandalorians believed in living their history, along with the idea that a tomorrow was not always a certainty, past and future tense were colloquially done away with. Instead, the prefixes ru for "past", and ven for "future", were used in place of the more widely-used tense forms. There was also no passive verb form in Mando'a; a verb was either active or simply absent from the statement.
Furthermore, infinitive verbs ended in -ir, -ar, -ur, -or, or -er. To produce the stem, removing the "r" at the end was all that was required. Ni vorer was incorrect, but Ni vore—meaning "I accept" and using the inflected form—was correct. Oftentimes, an apostrophe—known in Mando'a as a beten, or "sigh"—was used to separate the terminal vowel, indicating the slight glottal pause of some Mandalorian accents. Other uses for the beten were as an indication of a breath, for pronunciation, or a sign of a dropped letter or letters in a contraction. For instance, the sentence "I carry a saber" could be translated in Mando'a as the formal ni juri kad, or the pronunciation-marked ni jur'i kad, since the emphasis was placed on the second syllable in the word juri, and even the more commonly contracted ni jur'kad. Dropping a terminal vowel when conjugating was quite common, especially in Mandalorian poetry and song. Occasionally, certain verbs would be left out all together, and instead implied via word order. While this tendency to forgo certain words could be confusing to Basic speakers, and make the language appear abrupt, the militaristic Mandalorians had largely assumed the concise speech common in military orders. Whereas the literal translation for "It's good" would be bic cuyi jate, a Mandalorian was much more likely to just say jate, or "good", instead.
Due to Mando'a's nature as a gender-neutral language, gender was implied by context. Buir meant both "mother" and "father", just as "son" and "daughter" were both represented by the word ad. When it was necessary to specify gender, the adjectives of jagyc or dalyc—male and female, respectively—would be added. This grammatical system was a rarity for a language spoken by beings who reproduced sexually.
To form a question, the interrogative prefix tion was placed at the beginning of a sentence. While Gar verborad'ni meant "You are hiring me", the addition of the tion prefix placed before gar would turn the previous statement into the question, "Are you hiring me?" Another example of a meaningful prefix was ke, which was drawn from the Mando'a word for "order", or ke'gyce, and was placed at the start of a sentence to indicate a command. In order to create the negative form in Mando'a, the prefix n', nu, nu', or ne was added before either the sentence or the individual word. Ne'briikase meant "unhappy", while Nu'ni juri kad meant "I don't carry a saber". When forming a plural, -e was added to the end of words ending in consonants, while -se was added to the end of words ending in a vowel. As with most languages, there were exceptions to the rule, such as in the case of gett becoming gett'se. Originally, the indication of a plural was done with an -a suffix rather than an -e, a practice that went away over time.
Adjectives and adverbs were formed by adding the suffixes -la or -yc to the end of pre-existing nouns. Di'kut, meaning "idiot" in Mando'a, could easily become di'kutla, meaning "idiotic". Comparatives and superlatives were formed in much the same way. When creating a comparative, the suffix -shy'a was added to the end of the standard adjective. For a superlative, the -ne suffix was added. An example would be the word dral, meaning "bright", becoming dralshy'a, or "brighter", and the word jate, meaning "good", becoming jatne, or "best". No distinction between adverbs and adjectives was made in Mando'a, and although a non-Mando'a speaker might make out a Mandalorian to be uneducated should he say in Basic, "The boys done good", it was much more likely that they were simply unfamiliar with Basic's past tense and adverbial forms. Mando'a also made less use of articles such as "the" and "an" than Basic, generally adding them only for emphasis.
Mando'a had a similar pronunciation to Basic, with a few notable exceptions. The letters "f", "x", or "z" were not present in Mando'a, although the written form of the Mandalorian alphabet included the letters for greater ease in transliterating foreign words. In the absence of the letter "f", Mando'a substituted the similar-sounding "vh" combination, and the Mandalorian "s" could be pronounced in the same way as a common "z". Over time, the pronunciation of "d" lost favor to the more modern "t", though certain Mandalorian communities still preferred to pronounce the letter "j" as a "y" sound, instead of the more commonly heard hard "j" found in words like "joy". When speaking, the first "h" present in a word was typically aspirated—aside from its archaic form used in traditional songs and poems—and always pronounced when found in the middle of a word. Mando'a possessed no silent letters, though the opposite was often true of Mandalorian songs: terminal consonants could become extra syllables in order to better maintain rhythm and meter. For example, tor could easily become to-rah, and tang could just as easily become tan-gah.
Mando'a was a primarily spoken language, rather than a written one, and was thus an expressive language that was often thought of as easy to learn, a trait highly desirable in a culture that regularly adopted adults from numerous races and species. The language's grammar was relatively uncomplicated, but there were elements that necessitated adjustments for a speaker of Basic, including Mando'a's expression of tense, and its gender-neutrality. Because Mandalorians believed in living their history, along with the idea that a tomorrow was not always a certainty, past and future tense were colloquially done away with. Instead, the prefixes ru for "past", and ven for "future", were used in place of the more widely-used tense forms. There was also no passive verb form in Mando'a; a verb was either active or simply absent from the statement.
Furthermore, infinitive verbs ended in -ir, -ar, -ur, -or, or -er. To produce the stem, removing the "r" at the end was all that was required. Ni vorer was incorrect, but Ni vore—meaning "I accept" and using the inflected form—was correct. Oftentimes, an apostrophe—known in Mando'a as a beten, or "sigh"—was used to separate the terminal vowel, indicating the slight glottal pause of some Mandalorian accents. Other uses for the beten were as an indication of a breath, for pronunciation, or a sign of a dropped letter or letters in a contraction. For instance, the sentence "I carry a saber" could be translated in Mando'a as the formal ni juri kad, or the pronunciation-marked ni jur'i kad, since the emphasis was placed on the second syllable in the word juri, and even the more commonly contracted ni jur'kad. Dropping a terminal vowel when conjugating was quite common, especially in Mandalorian poetry and song. Occasionally, certain verbs would be left out all together, and instead implied via word order. While this tendency to forgo certain words could be confusing to Basic speakers, and make the language appear abrupt, the militaristic Mandalorians had largely assumed the concise speech common in military orders. Whereas the literal translation for "It's good" would be bic cuyi jate, a Mandalorian was much more likely to just say jate, or "good", instead.
Due to Mando'a's nature as a gender-neutral language, gender was implied by context. Buir meant both "mother" and "father", just as "son" and "daughter" were both represented by the word ad. When it was necessary to specify gender, the adjectives of jagyc or dalyc—male and female, respectively—would be added. This grammatical system was a rarity for a language spoken by beings who reproduced sexually.
To form a question, the interrogative prefix tion was placed at the beginning of a sentence. While Gar verborad'ni meant "You are hiring me", the addition of the tion prefix placed before gar would turn the previous statement into the question, "Are you hiring me?" Another example of a meaningful prefix was ke, which was drawn from the Mando'a word for "order", or ke'gyce, and was placed at the start of a sentence to indicate a command. In order to create the negative form in Mando'a, the prefix n', nu, nu', or ne was added before either the sentence or the individual word. Ne'briikase meant "unhappy", while Nu'ni juri kad meant "I don't carry a saber". When forming a plural, -e was added to the end of words ending in consonants, while -se was added to the end of words ending in a vowel. As with most languages, there were exceptions to the rule, such as in the case of gett becoming gett'se. Originally, the indication of a plural was done with an -a suffix rather than an -e, a practice that went away over time.
Adjectives and adverbs were formed by adding the suffixes -la or -yc to the end of pre-existing nouns. Di'kut, meaning "idiot" in Mando'a, could easily become di'kutla, meaning "idiotic". Comparatives and superlatives were formed in much the same way. When creating a comparative, the suffix -shy'a was added to the end of the standard adjective. For a superlative, the -ne suffix was added. An example would be the word dral, meaning "bright", becoming dralshy'a, or "brighter", and the word jate, meaning "good", becoming jatne, or "best". No distinction between adverbs and adjectives was made in Mando'a, and although a non-Mando'a speaker might make out a Mandalorian to be uneducated should he say in Basic, "The boys done good", it was much more likely that they were simply unfamiliar with Basic's past tense and adverbial forms. Mando'a also made less use of articles such as "the" and "an" than Basic, generally adding them only for emphasis.
Mando'a had a similar pronunciation to Basic, with a few notable exceptions. The letters "f", "x", or "z" were not present in Mando'a, although the written form of the Mandalorian alphabet included the letters for greater ease in transliterating foreign words. In the absence of the letter "f", Mando'a substituted the similar-sounding "vh" combination, and the Mandalorian "s" could be pronounced in the same way as a common "z". Over time, the pronunciation of "d" lost favor to the more modern "t", though certain Mandalorian communities still preferred to pronounce the letter "j" as a "y" sound, instead of the more commonly heard hard "j" found in words like "joy". When speaking, the first "h" present in a word was typically aspirated—aside from its archaic form used in traditional songs and poems—and always pronounced when found in the middle of a word. Mando'a possessed no silent letters, though the opposite was often true of Mandalorian songs: terminal consonants could become extra syllables in order to better maintain rhythm and meter. For example, tor could easily become to-rah, and tang could just as easily become tan-gah.
