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Yoda's unique speech consisting of reversed grammar is iconic.

Is there any reason he has adopted this speech pattern?

All other alien species encountered seem to have no trouble speaking normally. Why does Yoda speak in this way?

Wad Cheber
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Julie B
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    Know the answer, I don't – Eregrith Feb 14 '12 at 09:25
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    Answer in here http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/10971/what-is-yodas-native-language – Kurt Feb 14 '12 at 10:12
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    "Many tourists to Dagobah, we do not get. Every trick to keep them entertained, we need to pull." - Yoda. – Reinstate Monica - Goodbye SE Feb 14 '12 at 10:16
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    When nine hundred years old you reach, speak as well you will not. Hmm? – Kyle Jones Feb 14 '12 at 10:24
  • Because his English is poor... – user931 Feb 11 '13 at 12:35
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    @SS-3.1415926535897932384626433 Surely you mean, "Because poor his English is."? :) – maguirenumber6 Sep 03 '15 at 16:58
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    English is SVO (Subject-Verb-Object) word order; Yoda's native language would seem to be OSV (Object-Subject-Verb) order, and he continues to use the more familiar ordering -- since he's always understood, he probably never saw reason to force himself to use the more (to him) alien-sounding SVO word-order of English. – LindaJeanne Sep 03 '15 at 18:01
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    Out-of-universe it's entirely possible that the incredibly talented Frank Oz came up with this as a way to add even more character to Yoda's voice and speech patterns and everyone loved it (as everyone should love Frank Oz's work). If you watch Empire while repeating to yourself "Yoda is a puppet" over and over again, you'll realize how amazing the puppetry and voice work are in that movie. – Todd Wilcox Dec 17 '15 at 14:20
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    Learn English from a computer, Yoda did. When young, engineer he was; reverse Polish notation he preferred. – Pastychomper thanks Monica Nov 21 '22 at 08:45

3 Answers3

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Out of universe, his strange syntax has a high symbolism of Yoda's personality; he always put action last. This fits well with the old master and hermit guru archetypes.

In universe, we don't know much about Yoda's species mostly because "George Lucas maintains a strict policy of keeping the history, name, origin, and whereabouts of this species secret".

From Yoda's Wookieepedia article :

Yoda spoke an unusual version of Basic. He usually tended to place verbs (especially auxiliaries) after the object and subject (an object-subject-verb format). An example of Yoda's speech pattern: "When nine hundred years old you reach, look as good you will not." Most agreed that this pattern of speech was convoluted, and while it seems as though others of his species (e.g. Yaddle) had the same penchant for rearranging sentences, not all of them did (e.g. Vandar Tokare).

So, since others (but not all) of his species speak this way, it's probably a cultural matter.

DavidW
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DavRob60
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    Fun fact - this is how Latin is organized, generally, with the verb at the end of the sentence. Fac vel non fac... "attempta" ibi non est. – Chris B. Behrens May 02 '12 at 16:52
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    @ChrisB.Behrens: There aren't enough +1s for that comment. – Tynam Feb 05 '13 at 23:53
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    I don't know where I read this this, or saw this, or dreamt this (LOL!) but I remember something about Yoda's gramatical speech to emulate the Japanese language which follows this pattern. Something about the whole Samurai/Jedi connection. This may be totally wrong, but I do remember hearing it somewhere. – MikeV Oct 30 '14 at 20:14
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    Japanese is mostly subject object verb whereas yoda speaks mostly object subject verb. – Escoce Dec 17 '15 at 15:25
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    @Escoce Latin too, for that matter. Latin doesn’t rely on word order for grammar (aside from putting adjectives next to the words they modify and prepositional phrases together), so any order is possible, but subject object verb was more-or-less the conventional ordering. – KRyan Feb 04 '16 at 21:56
  • Action last, yoda always put. An unusual version of basic, yoda spoke. Hmmmm! Converted at http://funtranslations.com/yoda – dors Jun 15 '16 at 13:51
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Presumably, English (or the equivalent in the Star Wars universe), isn't the first language of Yoda's species.

Speakers of 2nd and 3rd languages to their mother tongue often struggle, sometimes permanently, adjusting to new grammatical conventions in other tongues.

Many, just as we see with immigrant populations on earth, adjust well and manage to speak fluently like natives. Other individuals will learn just enough to get by and never bring their language level past a certain level of polish.

Presumably, when Yoda was learning the language, it wasn't done in a setting that focused on grammar and proper syntax. Perhaps he learned it by ear, or taught it to himself in isolation.

Aegon
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Dan
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    More specifically, people often learn the words, but stick with aspects of the grammar of their first language, like the word order. – SQB Feb 11 '14 at 12:02
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    I'd always assumed this was the reason. That and coupled with his age and how languages evolve over time could cause confusion when keeping up with different languages – gabe3886 Jul 17 '15 at 10:53
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Per Dave Filoni (quoting Frank Oz), Yoda's method of speech is an affectation, rather than his usual mode of speech, noting that another member of his species (Yaddle) speaks normally

“Does she speak backwards? I’m like, ‘No, I don’t think so. I think that’s a Yoda thing. Frank Oz told me once that Yoda speaks that way specifically in honor of his own master. That was what he had thought about it. I try to keep moving forward these thoughts. And Bryce on her own made a great Yaddle.”

DAVE FILONI ON CASTING BRYCE DALLAS HOWARD AS YADDLE IN TALES OF THE JEDI

The implication here is that Yoda is perfectly capable of speaking Basic with the correct syntax, but for his own reasons chooses not to.

This is confirmed in the (canon) Yoda #7. He can speak Basic perfectly well.

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Valorum
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    A possible inspiration: the evil Voltamen in The Lost World (long-running serial in Planet Comics) also spoke English with a weird word order (which one reader suggested was based on Latin): "OUR GLADIATORS NO FEAR HAVE...THEY THE BEAST NOW CHARGE...BUT LOOK...OUR MEN FALL...MYSTERIOUS POWER THE BEAST HAS...OUR SHIPS FOR LAUNCHING PREPARE." - Planet Comics #57, Nov. 1948 – user14111 Nov 21 '22 at 02:30