Yoda using normal sentence construction, these videos have
Star Wars' preeminent swamp goblin gets his speech patterns rearranged in fan videos
Film Features Yoda
Showing us a version of Yoda we are unfamiliar with, these videos have. Now, reverse writing we use to order restore. Yes, a major pain in the ass it is to do it this way. For introduction, only suitable it is. Normal speaking Yoda you must watch now so over with this idea we can get.
In the first video, with clips taken from the Star Wars prequels when Yoda became a little CGI guy instead of a cool puppet, we’re shown the kind of memory perversion that YouTube channel Chewie’s Meme Town is interested in offering up. Though it’s a simple enough idea—Yoda’s dialogue is edited so his words fit typical English sentence construction—the effect is kind of upsetting. Frank Oz should not be croaking out the wrinkly green space wizard’s lines in this way. It sounds wrong.
Even worse is a second part that shows us Yoda talking to Luke in the original trilogy. (Be forewarned: A SpongeBob sample is tossed into this one around 30 seconds in and it’s about the twice the volume of the rest of the clip.)
Yoda’s dialogue here makes less sense than in part one, probably due to some combination of the older performance and script making it harder to remix into order. The bigger issue, though, is hearing him speak these rearranged sentences when their original construction has already been burned into our brains from too many childhood The Empire Strikes Back viewings. It’s as uncomfortable as trying to run a swamp obstacle course with a gasping green puppet strapped to your back.
At least Baby Yoda can’t speak and remains, for now at least, impervious to evil fan experiments designed to mutate him from adorable alien into new, strangely unsettling forms. Actually… nevermind.
[via Boing Boing]
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35 Comments
When words reconfigured have your been, sound as good you will not hmm?
srohpatem erom esu tsuj
yvan eht nioj
Funny how when male desire is played backwards it sounds like musical violence.
I look forward to hearing Baby Yoda’s second word, and then his first word.
That’s interesting. Any idea what either of those words might be?
“Mando Da-Da”
Bitches leave…
ouch.
Buy that for a dollar, I would.
Piss Off
If I stare at that still photo too long it starts to look like Jim Carrey’s Grinch.
note: this can be said of any photo.
different green cocks tho.
The Grinch had a dog, not a rooster.
I expanded the image. Nothing.You green cock tease.
I don’t find the rearranged syntax at all upsetting. I prefer it, in fact. The original just makes him sound like an out-of-touch doofus.
man, that first video….yoda as a cgi badass flipping around with a lightsaber saying “not if i have anything to say about it!” is maybe the most cringey thing the entire franchise has ever produced, and that’s a stratospheric bar to clear
What’s weird about Yoda’s speech pattern is that in ESB it’s actually not that crazy. When he’s pretending to be the crazy guy it’s a lot more kooky, and then when he’s just normal Jedi Master Yoda, it’s actually pretty sensible syntax for the most part with long stretches of normal speech. “You must unlearn what you have learned. No. Try not. Do or do not. There is no try.” That’s super direct! Kasdan picked his spots where the weird, flowery syntax worked.But obviously the weird stuff became what Yoda was known for and Lucas, because he’s a way shittier writer than Kasdan is, decided for the prequels that Yoda’s defining feature would be his all-over-the-fucking-place speech. If Lucas wrote the above line for the prequels, it’d be something like “What you have learned, unlearn, must you. Not try, no. Do or do not. Try, none there is.”
In fact, in the reveal that he’s actually Yoda, he straight-up says “I cannot teach him. The boy has no patience.” Then as he gets convinced to train Luke, he has a few lines of odd syntax but also says plain things like “He is not ready,” “You are reckless!” “He is too old,” and “You will be.”
Yeah his speech is so clearly a story beat, it’s strange people don’t catch it. Something like that is also why I take issue anytime anyone compares the original trilogy, including ROTJ, to the prequels or sequels unfavorably. At their worst, the OT movies still feel truly written, where the actual language is important. Even ROTJ has such great throwaway lines rooted in character – “I don’t know, fly casual” – because it’s written by a really talented fucking writer.The prequels are a writer’s nightmare, and the sequels, while worlds better than the prequels, still feel either written-by-committee or Star Wars mad libbed. Beats like Yoda switching his syntax as part of his character reveal are simple but also pretty brilliant.
I’ve always worked with a lot of people from a lot of different countries (hospitality industry) and I’ve picked up on how people who speak different first languages will make different mistakes in their English. I guess I’ve always assumed that Yoda just natively speaks a language that puts the verb first. Then again, so do Germans, and I haven’t really heard them talk like him. Instead, they say stuff like, “We are thinking this Saturday to make a party at our house.”
German does not generally put the verb first. I don’t know where you got that idea. The grammar technically allows for it, but it’s barely ever used. You’d most likely find it in poetry and literature, but even there it’s a stylistic device that is the exception, not the rule.In regular speech, it’d be a rather odd choice. It’d be something an off-puttingly pompous person would do.
As for Yoda, I like to think that his pattern is something from his native language that he then, in his wisdom, decided to keep, because it reflects his way of thinking and his priorities more accurately.
Yeah, I knew it doesn’t literally put the verb first, but the placement of the verb is a bit different than in English, usually, and I thought it generally came before the object. Looking it up now, I see that the word order is a lot more flexible than it is in English, but that the order is subject-object-verb, whereas English is subject-verb-object, so I got it completely wrong. That’s pretty embarrassing, considering that I took a basic German class before, and ought to at least remember the structure of the language.Well, I guess the fairly flexible word order in German is also the case for Yoda. So let’s just say that’s the similarity that I pointed out in the first place.
Actually, German is definitely subject-verb-object, I’m sorry =) I know it’s a convoluted language. Don’t be too hard on yourself.The syntax is considerably less flexible than in English, especially in tenses that use the gerund. It’s my first language and I much prefer English. Writing poetry in German is a nightmare.
The structure of Yoda’s speech is almost the same in the German dub and it strikes the viewer as odd, perhaps even a little more so than in the original.
According to Wikipedia, German is Subject-Object-Verb, but it follows something called V2 word order. I looked up V2 word order, but didn’t really understand.
I swear to you though that the majority of sentences leaving my mouth and the mouth of everyone I know are subject-verb-object. Subject-object-verb is definitely a thing (in certain grammatical cases), but it’s not the predominant structure. I have no idea why it would say otherwise on the Wikipedia. Source: My entire 27 years on earth as a German citizen.
Oh, I believe you; it probably just has to do with meeting some sort of linguistic criteria that us laypeople don’t understand.
That I can certainly believe.Always strange when it seems to be far removed from the actual reality of the language being spoken.
Is the perception because of things like:English: I ate cakeGerman: I habe Kuchen gegessenWhere english speakers would not expect part of the verb construction to come after the object (“I have cake eaten” vs “I have eaten cake”)
Since you used simple past, the correct translation of that, though, would be:Ich aß Kuchen.Although the perfect tense you used in your translation is definitely the form you would use in ordinary speech. Still, even there, the “habe” is considered part of the verb, so the verb still at least begins before the object.
Oh, I’m not arguing that you’re wrong, just where the misconception comes from in native English speakers. Thanks for the clarification.
I’m guessing the dubs into other languages, and the subtitles have been doing this since 1980…? Anyone know? Anyone from Lucasfilm?