This is my page on Mando'a, the language of the Mandalorians. While not directly related to the Republic Commandos, Mando'a is very much a part of the commandos' world and mindset and I thought it was high time I had a section for it here. :) This page will NOT be exhaustive, and nor will it contain lists of Mando'a words. Instead I hope to link to these sources on other sites, and keep references to the Mando'a material currently available in an organized* spot.
* "Organized", of course, is a point-of-view. ;)
Mando'a is being developed by Karen Traviss, the author of the Republic Commando books that we all know and love. Using the lyrics by Jesse Harlin written for the Republic Commando game as a starting point, Mando'a was built from the ground up to be a fully functional language with thousands of words.
As things stand now, the wordlist and grammar instructions have been officially released! So we now have about 1000 words. These are wonderful to play around with, though it's likely you'll run into problems if you try to translate something exactly. Creativity, a good thesaurus, and an understanding of the Mandalorian mind are all vital if you want to find a way to say "I can read this" when there's no verb for "read" yet. :)
Mando'a, like everything Star Wars, is covered by Lucasfilm's copyright. This means you cannot do anything with the language that you couldn't do with other Star Wars intellectual property. It is for private, individual, non-commercial use only, and you should not reproduce or redistribute the word list or grammar guide without permission from Lucasfilm.
You're in luck: the first wordlist and a short grammar document were released in late February 2006!
Grab the wordlist (there are two versions of it - StarWars.com has PDF and Karen's site has Excel - but both have the same content) and the grammer document (PDF) and look through them. The grammer document also appears as part of the Mandalorian Culture article in Star Wars Insider #85 (Mar-Apr 2006), which is also a good read if you're interested in learning the language. I'd suggest you read through the grammar document first, then take a look at the wordlist.
Learning a new language can be difficult, especially when it's so different from English. The good news: Mando'a is actually way simpler than English grammatically, and shouldn't be too hard to learn, even for language newbs (I count myself as one of them!). The bad news: It still takes a lot of time and effort to learn the vocab (this is the part I hate, blah). There's really no way around that. Regardless, if you're a fan of the clones, there is a small amount of Mando'a that you really should be willing to learn in order to communicate with other clone fans online and understand the dialogue in the Republic Commando novels without flipping to the glossary all the time (which is quite annoying, so just learn the words :P). Check out the next section for a list of the words you're likely to run across. Learn these and you're pretty much set!
| ad (noun), ade (pl noun) | son/daughter; sons/daughters |
|---|---|
| ad'ika (noun) | son/daughter (affectionate form) |
| Cuy'val Dar | those who no longer exist |
| di'kut (noun), di'kutla (adj) | idiot, moron, foolish or worthless person; foolish, idiotic (impolite) |
| jate, jatne, ori'jatne (adj) | good; best; very best |
| kandosii (adj) | noble, ruthless, indomitable; colloquial: Awesome! Nice one! Well done! |
| Mando (adj) | Mandalorian |
| Mando'a (noun) | the Mandalorian language |
| Mando'ade (noun) | Mandalorians (literally: Sons/daughters of Mandalore) |
| ner vod | my brother/sister |
| osik (noun), osik'la (adj) | dung (impolite); badly wrong, screwed up, disgusting |
| Oya manda! | an expression of Mandalorian solidarity and perpetuity: emotional and assertive |
| re'turcye mhi | goodbye (literally: Maybe we'll meet again) |
| su'cuy | hi! |
| udesii | Calm down! Take it easy! |
| vode an | brothers all |
| vod'ika | brother, sister, comrade, mate (affectionate form) |
| vor entye, vor'e | thank you; thanks |
Bring it. Mandalorians can own Klingons any day! :P And Elves too, for that matter.
The first Mando'a wordlist and grammar document have been officially released online, but I'm going to keep this page as part of my site for the common clone-related words (see above) and also to announce updates to the wordlist (which Karen said will likely be every few months) and other related material in fandom. As Mando'a catches on, I expect we'll only be hearing more about it in the future!