The Beskaar Maiden's Guide to Speaking Mando'a

To speak the language is one of the very tenets of Mandalorian culture, it’s stated in the Resol’nare that defines every one to wear the helmet of the Mandalorian or walk in the path of the culture. 

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Perhaps you’ve heard the language before, sometimes spoken plainly - other times spoken in whispers. Within some sects, it is believed that the language must be protected as well as our faces. But if we protect our language and hide our culture - then we starve ourselves as we are a culture of adoption, we are not just a race of people.

Being a predominately spoken language, Mando’a has a lot of variation in how it’s spoken as contractions and pronunciations with often differ from Aliit (Clan) to Aliit. There are no cases an no real usage for proper grammar consider that it is completely optional. The only keys to remember are verb tenses, and that the word order indicated meaning. 

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One use of grammar you will find in Mando’a is the use of the apostrophe. Which is sometimes used to separate a terminal vowel to indicate a stop or accent. For instances, Mando’a is pronounced with a hard a at the end. Man-doh-AH versus Man-doh-ah (Mandoa) which would be pronounced with a softer a.

Mando’a pronunciations are not unlike Basic but there are some rules to follow. 

• No ‘f’, ‘x’, or ‘z’. 

• Regional note: Some areas pronounce ‘p’ as ‘ph’ and ‘s’ as ‘z’ 

• ‘T’ and ‘D’ are sometimes swapped - ‘T’ being more modern and ‘D’ being archaic. 
• ‘V’ and ‘W’, ‘B’ and ‘V’ are also interchangeable depending on region. 
• ‘J’ is pronounced hard, but is still heard as ‘y’ in some communities. 
• ‘H’ is aspirated at the beginning of the word but pronounced in the middle of a word. 

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Other pronunciation notes: 

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• -uy: oo-ee
• U: oo
• Cye: shay
• -yc: sh after a vowel
• C: k, when it comes before a at the beginning of a word.
• C: s, whe it comes before other vowels at the beginning of a word or in the middle of a word. 
• Cy: sh or ch
• E: ay

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When speaking Mando’a, there is no gender for nouns or pronouns but there are a few words of possession. 

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Gender is only ever referred to contextually, but the gender of a person doesn’t matter in Mandalorian culture so there’s no need to recognize the different between genders. If it is necessary to denote gender for purposes of clarification the adjectives jagyc (male) or dalyc (female). 

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It’s important to note that Mandalorian do not typically refer to any tense safe for the present. But the prefixes of ru (past) and ven (future) have been adopted when dealing with species that require specifics.

In conversation, the indefinite articles of eyn (an), te or haar (the) are often dropped entirely. 

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When it comes to adjectives and adverbs, they are typically formed with the addition of the suffix -la or -yc.

Superlatives are constructed from adjectives with “-ne”. 

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Comparatives are constructed from adjectives with “-shy’a”.

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So, now is where things get interesting with Mando’a. The Verbs. One thing to keep in mind is that pronunciation is KEY in determining what letters you want to drop when speaking. A negative prefix denotes a negative noun. To create negative verb forms simply add the prefix n’, nu, nu’, or ne’ before the sentence or the negative phrase, depending on what you mean. 

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Prefixes k’ and ke indicate a command, but in it’s use the verb loses the -r at the end. Which reminds me. The infinitive of the verb ends in -ir, -ar, -ur, -or, -er and when you remove the r, you produce the stem of the verb. Easy, right? 

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The verb cuyir (to be) is always dropped, so to say, “It’s good”, it would just be “Jate” (good) rather than “Bic jate” (It is good.) In addition, the prefix tion turns the statement into a question. 

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So. To summarize:

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 juror kad: Carry that saber!

Ke’nu juror kad: Put that saber down. 

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