#mando’a

[ranahan]

hukan (n.): cloak, cape, poncho

Roughly equivalent construction to English “coverall”, or “one which can cover all”. So any garment that achieves that effect.

#mando’a #mandoa #mando’a language #mando'a #mando’a words #mando’a extended dictionary

[frogfrogfrogfrogoose]

My absolute favorite thing about the clone wars fandom is we have taken characters with little to no screen time whatsoever and unanimously with no discussion agreed on and expanded on their characters to the point where most people wouldn’t even know it’s not canon. Not to mention the number of phrases or events or whatever that we all collectively made up and accepted as canon with no material at all.

Like what do you mean the Domino Twins were never referred to as that in the show???

What do you MEAN fox’s face is never seen in canon? We all know he has graying hair! (I mean really the entirety of what we interpret about fox’s character isn’t canon)

The clones don’t speak Mando’a??? But they call each other vod!!

#cody’s name isn’t actually kote??? #bly doesn’t actually have a crush on aayla??? #i am convinced the entire fandom is a hive mind #we have created our own canon #star wars #the clone wars #oh yeah also the canon shattering denial we are all capable of #sw: tcw #commander fox #the domino twins #commander cody #mando’a #blyla #the clone wars fandom

[frownyalfred]

when you’re somewhat attractive sometimes guys will try to pick you up at a bar and listen to like .01% of what physically comes out of your mouth, which is a long way for me to say that yes, sometimes I do talk about Jaster Mereel’s Supercommando Codex and the cool parts about translating mando’a at length at the bar

#personal #and I have received zero follow up questions #thoughts #jaster Mereel #Star Wars #I just have strong feelings about it ok #and it informs so much about bloodletting #myfic #theresurrectionist #Star Wars legends #mando’a

[awkward-tension-art]

Edit: here’s the smut because the preview is getting more notes than the actual fic LMAO

Preview for Rex x reader smut

Warnings; Rex is so overwhelmed he starts speaking full mando’a

Minors get the fuck out of here

#reader insert #star wars the clone wars #captain rex #captain rex x reader #star wars tcw #tcw x reader #tcw x you #mando’a

[jedi-nurse]

So I noticed what looks like Mando’a on Sabine's vambrace. I haven't seen anything about it anywhere and didn't know if anyone has seen the translation

#star wars #ahsoka spoilers #sabine wren #ahsoka series #star wars ahsoka #Mandalorian #Mando’a

[art-ally]

Finally done! I'm so excited to share this AU idea I had a few weeks ago of an Arcane Star Wars AU! I was torn on wether to make Caitlyn a Jedi or a Storm Trooper but I felt Jedi fit her better so I went with that and I like the dynamic with Jinx it sets up! What do you think?

#arcane #arcane jinx #jinx arcane #arcane vi #caitlyn arcane #vi arcane #star wars #star wars fanart #arcane fanart #fanart #arcane au #star wars au #au #alternate universe #sith #Sith Jinx #Jedi Caitlyn #caitlyn kiramman #the mandalorian #mando #mandalorians #mando’a #Mando Vi #digital drawing #digital painting #digital art #digital illustration #digital aritst #corel painter

[barnesdeservesbetter]

I’ve come across the word “cyare” couple of times while reading Codywan fics ( that’s what Cody calls Obi-Wan). So, I checked the meaning

But then I got curious and looked through some words and

#the clone wars #commander cody #mando’a #star wars #obi wan kenobi

[danceswithsporks]

Vod means brother, brother means nobody gets left behind or forgotten.

#clone wars #the bad batch #bad batch season 3 #everyone’s gonna end up happy and safe #everything will be fine #Star Wars #inaccurate quotes #my new saying #mando’a

[sadiecoocoo]

My all time favorite clone wars/the bad batch headcannon is the clones speaking Mando’a and calling each other vod. More specifically for tbb calling eachother ori’vid or kih’vod

My second favorite is that Wrecker is a big cuddler and clings to crosshair when they’re trying to sleep

#tbb #the clone wars #mando’a #headcannons #tbb crosshair #tbb wrecker

[ranahan]

Mando’a demonyms: -ad or -ii?

Some Mando’a speakers have headcanoned that the -ii suffix is pejorative (probably because it appears in words like kaminii and aruetii, and a Kaminoan is kaminii but a Mandalorian is mando’ad). But it also appears in neutral/positive words like parjii and prudii, so it could also be analysed as purely neutral agent suffix. Here’s my attempt at a more nuanced interpretation that incorporates both views (and also gives us twice as many words, yay):

The difference between the two forms of demonyms is one of perspective/belonging and degree of emotional affect.

Linguistically, X-ii is more of a neutral agent (“X-ian”), X-ad could be translated as “child of X” as a noun (the most common usage) or also as “having the characteristics of X” or “having the characteristic quality of X” as an adjective (-ad also appears as an adjectival suffix, this is my current working translation for that sense). The neutral adjective would be one with -la/-yc suffix.

In practice

So let’s have some real world examples! Let’s say that I’m born in Sweden (which I’ve translated as Svarya; Svarye would be more faithful phonetic transliteration, but the -e ending kind of looks like a plural and I like the -a ending for place names better… it’s a work in progress. let’s just go with it for the sake of the example). I’m more likely to call myself a svaryad and my neighbours in Finland (which I’ve transliterated as Suumi) suumiise—a purely neutral connotation and used also in news etc. However, if I was an immigration-critical right wing swede, I might call myself and other Sweden-born swedes svaryade but naturalised immigrants svaryiise—a more questionable connotation (but it also could be neutral in some cases: if I was a Finnish-born Swedish citizen who still held sentimental ties to their Finnish identity, I might call myself suumad and svaryii). If I was a racist piece of shit, I might call all dark skinned swedes svaryiise—a pejorative connotation.

A native Japanese might call themselves a nihonad, but western immigrants living in Japan nihonii (somewhat similar to “gaijin”). That would be a whole different context from my Swedish example, with whole another set of connotations. Words for white people or western immigrants are found in many languages and with many connotations, some pejorative, some not. So the implications of the choice between -ad and -ii would entirely depend on who was speaking, where and to whom.

Another situation where you might use -ad instead of -ii is if you wanted to invoke a sense of national pride or unity. So for example, the Finnish right wing nationalist party True Finns would be translated as Haat’Suum’ade. You would also be 600% more likely to see an -ad ending in news around Independence Day, and if there were Ukrainian news in Mando’a, there would be nary a single ukrainii to be seen and instead every Ukrainian would be ukrainad, but all Russians would be rusii. Otherwise newsreaders either give everyone -ii (or in national news -ad for their countrymen and -ii for everyone else), except -ad for peoples (in plural—svaryade would be “the Swedish people”), indigenous people, and national heroes.

For adjectives, if you were talking about Swedish businesses for example, you would use svaryala (or should it be svaryc, hmm…)—a neutral connotation. Svaryad as an adjective would be “having the essential characteristics of swedenness”, so for example, lagom is a svaryad quality and fika is a svaryad custom.

Many words for many Mandalorians

In the Mandalore sector, there would probably be a term with -ii suffix for civic citizens/residents of Mandalore who are not Mandalorians (i.e. have not taken the creed). Possibly mandalasii (from Manda’lase, Mandalorian space—mandalii would probably be Mandallian).

So let’s say you’re addressing a New Mandalorian: you have a whole range of different terms with different connotations and levels of insult at your use. You could call them:

mando’ad, “a mandalorian”, implying that you don’t see the creed as a non-negotiable part of Mandalorian identity and are probably a New Mandalorian or a sympathiser yourself;

evaar’ad, if you held some sympathies toward them or were at least polite enough to call them by the name they call themselves (even if only to their face);

naak’tsadii, lit. pacifist, a member of peace movement (naak’tsad), mostly a Kalevalan/Sundarian term, implying that you’re probably also either a Kalevalan/Sundarian or share those politics;

arakaanii, a Northern/Keldabian word for a pacifist (lit. “against war”), implying that you’re not one yourself;

arakaanad, a little kinder term for a pacifist, more akin to “a child of pacifism” or “a descendant of the pacifist movement” (the dictionary term would be arakaanii, swapping it for arakaanad would soften it—but since -ad is also for children, it could also come off as patronising depending on context!);

mandalasii, if you held the centrist opinion (one of the many) that you’re willing to tolerate the pacifists, but if they won’t follow the Resol’nare, then they should also accept the same rights, responsibilities and restrictions as other residents of Mandalore who are not Mandalorians. The degree of insult would be highly context-dependent—one thing to call them that during peace talks, another in a cantina;

ka’gahtii, “southerner”, a slang term for a person living on Mandalore's southern continent, a Sundarian, or a Kalevalan immigrant or a person of Kalevalan background living on Mandalore—mostly negative connotations implying Sundarian political leanings which you don’t share;

aruetii, “outsider”, if you wanted to be insulting and highlight their ties to the Republic;

dar’manda, “no longer Mandalorian”, which is one of the worst insults out there, if you wanted to highlight them giving up their traditions and say that they’re not even a Mandalorian anymore.

A droid is a droid is a droid

Several Mando’a speakers, myself among them, have headcanoned that the word for droid should be besad, “child of metal”, not beskar’ad, since beskar is specifically culturally important Mandalorian steel. As an aside, I think the prototypical metal for a spacefaring civilisation should be steel, not iron (unless it’s some yet unknown super metal, but let’s go with steel for best usability to actual speakers today). Iron would be the special case of steel, so perhaps it has a different name altogether or it’s called something like ne’tra bes/netra’bes, “black steel”. So my modified dictionary definitions are (shortened here for convenience):

besad (or bes’ad)—droid

bes—metal, steel

beskar—Mandalorian steel

Anyway.

The standard, neutral word for droid is besad. If you call a droid besii, you’re specifically choosing to not use the standard word, and the connotation is pejorative, implying a lack of sentience. Besii is a backformation from besad, switching the -ad suffix (in this context, the English equivalent would be -man) for -ii (which in demonyms can be either neutral or pejorative, but commonly used for outsider groups)—the implication is that droids are not "us", not people. But you could also call a particularly gutsy droid beskar’ad (looking at you R2D2)—implying they’ve got the droid equivalent of mandokar. Or you might perhaps use beskar’ad for an armoured battle droid, because of the word’s similarity to beskaryc, armoured.

In conclusion

If this sounds complicated, well that’s because languages are complicated. Languages are systems of words and metaphors. Words aren’t defined by words in other languages, but by their relationships to other words in the same language. So it’s the choice of which word to use that matters as much if not more as the word itself or its etymology. I hope I’ve caught some of that realism here.

So there you have it: -ii can be neutral or pejorative depending on the context; -ad is empathetic and highlights a sense of belonging. Now go out there and be exactly as insulting as you mean to!

p.s. Yes, I have a whole fat ass table of transliterated country names and derived demonyms and adjectives etc. which I came up when I was laid down with a flu. It’s a work in progress figuring out how to transliterate different languages with different phonologies and different writing systems into Mando’a. I’ll get it out there someday.

#mando’a #mandoa #mando’a language #mandalorians #mandalorian culture #star wars meta #mando’a linguistics #ranah talks mando’a #mando'a #meta: mandalorians #mando’a morphology

[dancinginmyblood]

as a Royal i feel like when Satine learned basic (as a second language) she only learned from super formal and snobby tutors (or a private school in Sundari) so when she met obi wan and qui gon on mandalore obi wan only spoke formally with her as a joke so that’s why she only speaks super formally

#qui gon spoke formally too but that’s how he always speaks #sw #tcw #pt #satine #satine kryze #obi wan kenobi #obi wan #qui gon jinn #mandalore #mando’a #mandalorians #Star Wars #headcanon #star wars headcanons #clone wars #the clone wars #star wars the clone wars #star wars: the clone wars #sw tcw #sw: tcw

[frownyalfred]

My backup backup Reddit account’s username is a dirty phrase in mando’a and I just had to use it for a work thing and my coworker saw it and said “oh is that a Jewish thing?”

me, crying on the inside: yeah but please don’t Google it

#personal #mando’a #jewish stuff

[starwarsaudump]

Just a little snippet from a DinLuke AU I’m planning on posting on ao3 after I’m done with Of Bolts and Bucket Hearts

“Hey Mando, can you come over and read this?” Luke asked. “I’m not familiar with the language. I figured you might be.”

Din groaned and made his way over to where Luke was standing with the tome. Who even read tomes anymore? Luke kirffing Skywalker apparently.

Din frowned at the tome as he read. It was in Mando’a and seemed to depict two people exchanging a vow of some sort.

“It’s in Mando’a.” He said. “I’m not sure the significance of it, but it’s two people saying the same thing to each other.”

“What are they saying?” Luke asked.

“We are one together, we are one apart. We share all, we will raise warriors.” Din said.

“We are one together, we are one apart. We share all, we will raise warriors.” Luke repeated.

The clattering of a beskar spear brought their attention to the doorway.

“Kara’vhipir, we’ve been over this, don’t drop your weapon.” Nia said. “It’s your life.”

“I- but they!” Ru protested.

“Ya know, if you guys just wanted some privacy for that, you could have asked instead of pretending you hated each other.” Nia said. “A lot less convoluted than making us stick you together to force you to get along.”

“Bloodflower, I don’t think they know what they just did. I think it was an accident.” Ru said.

“Nonsense!” Nia said. “What Mandalorian doesn’t know the traditional marriage vows?”

“One who grew up in a cult that only tells you them once you announce you have selected a partner and have agreed to be wed to them.” Ru deadpanned.

Din’s face paled under his helmet as their words sank in. Traditional marriage vows. He’s just gotten married to the one person person he couldn’t stand the most. Kark.

#dinluke #star wars #skydalorian #clan of three #idiots to lovers #enemies to lovers #accidental marriage #Skywalker OCs #Luke’s aunts use flower nicknames #mando’a

[trudemaethien]

*skidding into your ask box in clown shoes*

ship: Rex/Cody

prompt: b a b y

okay okay prompt: yearning, responsibility, spoil

i do keep poking the next bit of that, promise, it’s just not quite. ready yet. pokepokecomeON

you have tagged me thrice for a last line, so have a pair of lines from the baby-fic and a freestanding other from an entirely unrelated work, then on to the main event:

“Cody kebbu bajur te’orikih sirbur buir,” Fox reports smugly, and Rex looks at Cody sharply.

“Kih’ika ven’gaii gar buir,” Cody hastens to add, “nu ash’ad, naas’mhi.”

—

The Admissions people had said the cadets who scored high enough for rank would be allowed their names back, and RF-7448 would very much like to be himself again.

Rex/Cody

Yearning Responsibility Spoil

(and bc i know what u like ive written u P A I N 😭)

“It only remains to decide the staffing of your new command, Anakin,” General Kenobi said to his newly knighted Padawan. “I have some suggestions, unless you have any requests for specific personnel?”

Around the meeting table, officers shifted. During this impromptu meeting called to inform the 7th Sky Command of Padawan Commander Skywalker’s unexpected promotion to General, Commander Cody had quickly drafted up his own set of suggestions, but unless General Kenobi was reading them from his mind with the Force, it was almost certainly not the same roster.

General Kenobi had not informed him in advance about this, let alone consulted him. Once again, a natborn was given precedence over Cody, no matter the absolute lack of experience, time in grade, or non-military promotion above more deserving leaders.

He suppressed his objections, and there were many, with utmost professionalism for as long as it took Skywalker to answer—not more than half a second.

“I want Rex,” the young Knight declared. “He’ll be my Captain and he can pick whoever else he wants to come along.”

Cody wasn’t that good at suppressing past his face, it seemed, because Kenobi and Skywalker both jerked around to look at him, Kenobi confused and Skywalker glaring. “Is something the matter?” they both asked, with very different intonations.

“He’s the best,” Skywalker said. “That’s what I need.”

“Did you have someone better in mind, Commander Cody?” Kenobi asked politely.

Cody steeled himself. “There is no one better,” he answered, and that was the Force-damned truth. “Captain Rex will submit his staffing recommendations within the hour, if there’s nothing else for us to cover here, Sirs?”

He couldn’t look at Rex as he sealed their separation. It was out of his hands.

“No, I think not,” Kenobi said genially. “You may go say your goodbyes.”

Cody swallowed his feelings about that into a black hole, and said, “Thank you, General Kenobi. Skywalker.” He stood and saluted properly and left the room after the rest of the clone staff.

They kept it proper all through the passageways, but as soon as the door of his quarters latched closed, Rex barreled into him and Cody caught him with all the strength he could muster.

A sob shook through Rex’s chest, and Cody squeezed him roughly. “None of that, now,” he reprimanded his brother.

“Fuck,” Rex cursed into his shoulder.

“Yeah,” Cody said wearily, “yeah, I know.”

“That nattie, jetii, civvie prick! Doesn’t think about anything except what he wants, and the rest of us have to put up and shut up; kark him,” Rex snarled.

Cody sighed heavily; he did not disagree.

“And you’re just letting him—you have Kenobi’s ear, you could—”

“I could what, Rex? It’s already done and dusted. Outmaneuvered. If he’d asked me first I could have guided it, maybe, but he didn’t, so my hands were tied. You were there!”

“Yeah,” Rex said bitterly, pulling away, “I was. The best. Not even a token protest, Cody? I’d rather you have called me half-rate and subpar, and gotten him to take …Checkmate, or Bliss instead.”

Cody said nothing, letting those words echo between them. Rex drooped.

“Sorry,” he muttered and sank onto Cody’s bunk, elbows on knees and face in his hands.

Cody knelt in front of him and pulled his hands away. All the reluctance and heartbreak he’d hidden in the meeting was clear on his face now and Rex could hardly meet his eyes.

“I don’t want to go,” he said futilely, voice small.

Cody closed his eyes to keep from tearing up, and bowed his head, leaning into Rex’s hold. He had to master himself for a long minute before he could speak.

His voice only shook a little when he said, “I love you, Rex.” Another steadying breath. “We still have a little time. Do you want to go over who I recommend, or—”

“Or,” Rex said, pulling him up from his knees. “Definitely, or.”

Responsibility Weighs Heavy 🔒 https://archiveofourown.org/works/51600688

#writing prompt #ask game #ask answered #last line game #star wars tcw #clones #cloneshipping #cody/rex #nonconverse #mando’a

[kara-akaane]

You know part of me is like constantly thinking about the implications of Mandalorians supposedly having a long history of allying with the Sith and yet mando’a not having a unique word for them, instead just literally saying ‘not Jedi’

[echoing-locations]

Ok I have a genuine question for Star Wars fans, (mainly fan artists and fic writers) how do y’all know mando’a???!? Is there like a website out there that translates it or are you just making it up as you go?? Is it an actual language???

Please I need answers 

#star wars #the mandalorian #mandalorian #star wars the clone wars #tcw #mando’a #mando #star wars fanart #star wars fanfiction #star wars fandom #please #i need to know #questions #genuine question