As the final bit of polish, I created the ancient Mandalorian language specifically for Republic Commando. The Clones' ancestral language is largely inspired by a mix of Hungarian, Celtic war poetry, and Soviet proletariat work anthems.
Jesse Harlin, Gamespot "SW RepCom Designer Diary 5" (February 14, 2005)
MoF: At what point was it decided that a live male choir would be recorded?
JH: It was very early on and it came out of conversations with audio lead David Collins. David had drawn up an initial music style guide before I came on board, and we both agreed that a male choir would be a great addition. For me, the fact that Emperor Palpatine is behind the entire tragedy of the Republic's decay made him the most important character in the Star Wars prequels. The Emperor is behind absolutely every dastardly event that happens, so I saw Williams' choral theme for the Emperor as an important one to reference. With that in mind, I took the minor third motif from his Emperor's theme and built a new military clone theme off of it. I knew I wanted something tragically heroic, and the idea of something akin to a Soviet anthem just fit so beautifully. After that, I had to figure out what they were going to sing, so I invented the fledgling ancient Mandalorian language (now called Mando'a) and wrote the actual lyrics. The thinking was that the choral music represented the all-encompassing and unquestioning sense of nationalism that drives the Clone Army. The choral voices represent the unified thoughts of the clone troopers as they fight and die together for the Republic without any regard for their own lives.
MoF: Will there be a Republic Commando sequel?
JH: LucasArts hasn't announced a sequel, so there's nothing to comment on at this time. That said, there is a sequel to Karen Traviss' RC novel called Star Wars: Republic Commando - Triple Zero. Karen has massively expanded the choral work I started for the game and has turned Mando'a into a functional living language.
Jesse Harlin, Music On Film "Commando Composer: An Interview with Jesse Harlin" (March 8, 2006)
How wonderful to see Jess recognised here - he's an inspirational guy and it was a joy to work with him. He's too modest to say, but he's responsible for more than starting me off on the development of Mando'a - his music played a real role in giving me a sense of what the clone soldiers and the Mandalorian culture were at an emotional level. I played the soundtrack on a loop while I was writing the books and the spirit and sense of identity it communicated has now permeated all my Star Wars fiction. Good on yer, Jess! That's a true legacy.
Karen Traviss, comment section, Music On Film "Commando Composer: An Interview with Jesse Harlin" (March 8, 2006)
"I had to somehow convey the same urgency and jargon without cussin'," Traviss laughs. "But I did make up some Mandalorian curses which was fun. I had sight of the lyrics for the background music in the game and I just borrowed some of the phonemes and extended the language a bit. I want to go down in history as the woman who made di'kut a household word."
Karen Traviss, Starwars.com "Giving Commandos a Human Side: Author Karen Traviss" (October 22, 2004)
I developed Mandalorian into a fully working language that I call Mando’a. It started when LucasArts sent me Jesse Harlin’s music and lyrics from the RepCom game when I started writing Hard Contact. I asked if I could take it further and create a grammar and vocabulary, because I needed to add depth to the commando backstory. It just mushroomed from there. A couple of friends-Ryan Kaufman, who’s ex-LucasArts, and Ray Ramirez, a US Army sniper-beta-tested it for me. Now I’ve got an informal class on TOS [The Official Site, www.starwars.com] and there’ll be a feature on it in Star Wars Insider in February 2006. I hope to release the full vocabulary around that time too, so everyone can learn the language and speak it if they want to.
Karen Traviss, Exclusive Interview with Karen Traviss, The Clone Gal (August 5, 2006)
To tackle the project at hand, Traviss deconstructed the Republic Commando game lyrics to look for the language's structure and patterns. "Jess had to create lyrics that could be sung, because that was his primary objective, so he needed to get syllables to fit rhythms. But I needed to reconcile that with a structured grammar Jess shared his thoughts with me about how he developed the sounds and I stuck with that softer sound he'd created. He took his sounds from Latin and Hungarian, and I added on some sounds from Urdu, Gurkhali and even Romany; I gave it a Hebrew rhythm and the end result sounds almost like Russian and Gaelic crossed with Hebrew From one or two words -- I started with structuring singular from plural and adding adjectival endings for Hard Contact -- it just took me over completely It's a living language to me.
While real-world cultures take a few centuries to develop a language, Traviss (in true Mando'a fashion) created a working new language in only 6 months. "I was surprised how fast it happened, and how organic it became right away," Traviss says. "| didn't make up words out of the blue, bar two or three specific ones. They evolved. Knowing the Mandalorians (in my head) told me what | needed to know about how they saw the world, and that shaped the language -- just as it does in the real world. I'm not an academic linguist, just someone who learned a lot of languages over the years. (And promptly forgot most of them.) As long as I stuck to thinking, ‘If I'm a Mando, what do I think when I look at this object, or when I do this action?’ then it just flowed."
Traviss adds, "I did use Mando'a to pay homage to a few things, though. For example, the word dinii is taken from 'dinny,' my local Portsmouth (UK) dialect for idiotic or mad. We also use the word dinlo -- a mad or stupid person -- which some sources believe comes from the Romany language. (Readers may spot that word in my upcoming book Triple Zero, but I'll leave the explanation of Skuumaa for later!) I also called a military backpack a birgaan because a Royal Marine calls his a bergen, which is in fact a trade name. A Bergen pack is brammers (the best), as we say in Portsmouth."
Karen Traviss, Star Wars Insider Online Supplement "Inside Mando'a" (February 15, 2006)
The lyrics are part of the RepCom soundtrack written by the excellent Jesse Harlin, the LucasArts composer. I was given the lyrics by Ryan Kaufman while I was writing the book in case they proved useful, and they did. I extrapolated more words and a few grammatical structures from Jesse's lyrics.
Karen Traviss, forum post, November 23, 2004: https://boards.theforce.net/threads/the-official-republic-commando-hard-contact-discussion-thread-spoilers-allowed.17248265/page-14#post-17583137
From my first days as a cub reporter I accepted that a house style went with the territory. Actually, LFL is remarkably laid back about things. I don't have a problem with it: in fact, the work-rounds are entertaining in their own right. Where else could you invent your own profanities and get paid for it?
AFAIK, Jesse Harlin - the RepCom game music composer - invented Mandalorian, or at least the bulk of it. I took the phonemes and extended the language a little, which in my case meant adding profanity and finding singular forms of existing words. (Actually, it now occurs to me how very, very important sound is to me when I write.)
Karen Traviss, forum post, February 15, 2005: https://boards.theforce.net/threads/the-official-republic-commando-hard-contact-discussion-thread-spoilers-allowed.17248265/page-34#post-18390908
<< Have you had any Mandalorian linguistic lessons or did you coin those just like that? I'm just asking cause certain forms like di'kutla sounds to me like the Swedish jävla, standing for "f-ing something" >>
Ryan Kaufman gave me Jesse Harlin's lyrics for the RepCom Music in case I wanted to use some of them, and of course I did. Jesse, apart from being a brilliant composer, also invented Mandalorian: his girlfriend is a linguist, so what he did was well grounded in real language structure.
Anyway, I did two things with the lyrics. I used excerpts from Vode An in the book - the scene where Niner meets Fi, for example - and I also used the lyrics to get a feel for the sounds so I could invent my own words and phrases.
Di'kut is one of my own words, and I'm delighted that it has resonances in other languages too. To UK ears, it sounds like that well-loved insult "dick-head". I gather it sounds appropriately rude in Dutch, too. I'm not sure how I came up with the suffix -la for an adjectival form but it felt right with the general sound of Mandalorian.
I want to be remembered simply as the woman who made di'kut a household word. (They can keep the Pulitzer Prize.) I hope to expand on that lexicon in the next few novels.
Karen Traviss, forum post, April 27, 2005: https://boards.theforce.net/threads/the-official-republic-commando-hard-contact-discussion-thread-spoilers-allowed.17248265/page-39#post-19410529
Jesse Harlin is a terrific composer as well as a rather spiffing Mandalorian linguist ( :) ) and all-round good bloke. Yes, that's a didgeridoo on that track, and he was going for a Russian feel on other tracks, as you spotted.
Karen Traviss, forum post, April 27, 2005: https://boards.theforce.net/threads/the-official-republic-commando-hard-contact-discussion-thread-spoilers-allowed.17248265/page-40#post-19418821
Anyway, I like inventing new flora and fauna. (You don't say, Karen? Never noticed.) I had fun devising gdans and Gurlanins and then I wondered what farmers might farm on Qiilura, and I thought a multi-purpose food animal - wool and meat, but one that was actually very intelligent - would work. So the merlie was born. More pig than sheep.
Then, some months after the book came out, I was watching a TV farming programme (I don't get out much) and saw for the first time...a mangalitza woolly pig, from Hungary. Whoaaaaa. Merlie!
Yep. Minor "Huh?" moment. But maybe I'd seen a reference years before and didn't recall. No big deal.
Fast forward to recent weeks. I'm doing a grammar structure for the Mandalorian language. I ponder on what elements would best express some of their cultural attitudes. I make a list. Then I recall that Jesse used Hungarian as well as Latin as inspiration for his lyrics, so I rush off to check Magyar vocab. I did classics, so I'm Latin Girl, but Magyar is not one of my areas. Ever.
Yep. Karen's main grammatical devices = some bits of Magyar grammar.
I have no idea how this happened. It freaked me out. I wondered if the fact that Magyar is related to Finnish had played a part, but I never did Finnish either.
I have no idea how or where I hoovered up so much stuff from Hungary, but I obviously did and now it's all decanting.
Karen Traviss, forum post, May 17, 2005: https://boards.theforce.net/threads/the-official-republic-commando-hard-contact-discussion-thread-spoilers-allowed.17248265/page-43#post-19745898
Jesse is a bloke. Yes, of course I worked with him on this. I asked if he minded my developing the lyrics into a language and he's seen the finished material (if an evolving thing can ever be called finished).
His notes, which he was kind enough to share with me, related only to the pronunciation and where he dervied the sounds from. I stress the sounds because if I say a language is based on something, everyone then starts looking for meanings of words and also for grammar. It doesn't actually work that way. But if you listen to a language, there's a definite sound and rhythm to it, so when Jesse says he started from Hungarian and Latin (he needed something that sounded right when sung) or I say I took Hungarian, Latin, Gurkhali and Romany (because I wanted somehting vivid, diirect and expressive) it's the sounds we're talking about, not structure.
Having said that, I found that entirely at random - because I knew no Hungarian - I'd used identical grammatical devices in some places to Magyar. Like no gender and agglutinative construction. And that was by working out a language from basic principles - what I felt Mandalorians would use in their language and how they would see the world.
Karen Traviss, forum post, September 13, 2005: https://boards.theforce.net/threads/mandoa-class-mandalorian-language.21531491/page-4#post-21543182
Alas, it's not the language so much as the sounds. When you see the lexicon, you won't find much in common with Magyar, or even Latin come to that. A friend of mine said that when I spoke Mando'a - as a demo, you understand, I haven't got totally nuts yet - it sounded more like a Semitic language. (I did Hebrew as well as classics, so...yeah, actually, it's more like Hebrew in some ways.)
Karen Traviss, forum post, September 13, 2005: https://boards.theforce.net/threads/mandoa-class-mandalorian-language.21531491/page-4#post-21547592
I was talking to the guy who did KOTOR about Mando'a only the other day. I was trying to sweep up all the existing stuff and we found there's next to nothing. Which is another reason why the original Harlin lyrics were the basis of the language that I built; the sounds were consistent and that's everything in creating a language.
Karen Traviss, forum post, August 31, 2005: https://boards.theforce.net/threads/republic-commando-sequel-triple-zero.20170225/page-89#post-21367642
When I was writing Hard Contact, the continuity guy at LucasArts Ryan Kaufman asked if I wanted to see the lyrics that would go with the game soundtrack, in case they were any use for the book. They'd been written by the composer, Jess Harlin, and I was instantly taken with them and asked Jess if I could use his lyrics to develop the language for use in the book. It went from there. Jess made a brilliant job of the lyrics, and the sound and weight of the language felt real to me, so I took it as the foundation for the feel of the it the phonemes and built from conceptual basics. It's only in the last couple of months that a Mandarin speaker told me how similar the concepts of Mando'a are to it, but I don't know the language at all. Once you start asking, "What do I need to express things?" then you tend to re-evolve languages just like real ones. It's how human brains work and Mandarin was never in Jess's thinking or mine. He was going for soft sounds Hungarian and Latin and I picked that up and added Gurkhali, Urdu, Romany and Celtic sounds. Not words just sounds. With a few deliberate exceptions, like "dinii", "birgaan" and "wayii", which are there as a nod to my home town's dialect, the vocabulary was created from scratch, too.
Karen Traviss, Sequential Tart interview "Darasuum Kote... Vode An" (August 1, 2006)
The language started life as the lyrics for the superb choral music in the Republic Commando game, written by Lucasarts composer and all-round lovely bloke Jesse Harlin; it didn't have a name. From that springboard I was able to create a whole language. It features in the Republic and Imperial Commando and Legacy of the Force novels, as well as John Jackson Miller's Old Republic comics. Folks have tattooed it in interesting places, had it inscribed on wedding rings, got married using it, and used it in adoption ceremonies. It's even been used by armed forces personnel when training others, to lighten things up a bit. I hear there are even Iraqi troops who are familiar with the odd word. Mando'a, like Mandos, gets around a bit. It's supposed to be fun. Let's all help ensure it stays that way.
I'm not an academic linguist, nor do I play one on television, but Mando'a has been beta tested by a few people from fans to LucasArts staff and it seems to work pretty well. It's flexible, and you don't need to get hung up about complex grammar. Well, would you correct the syntax of a guy in armour with a blaster held to your head? Didn't think so...
Karen Traviss, website post, captured June 17, 2013: https://web.archive.org/web/20130617082501/http://www.karentraviss.com/page20/page26
Inside Mando'a Culture and Language (interview with Karen Traviss): https://archive.org/details/sw-insider-86-online-supp-mando-a-culture-and-language
Interview with Karen Traviss by "Mr. Klingon" about the construction of Mando'a from October 2005: https://archive.org/details/JoelAndersonOntheHorizon
Interview with Karen Traviss by "Mr. Klingon" about the construction of Mando'a from February 2006:
https://archive.org/details/JoelAndersonIncomingKarenTravissInterview_1
Interview with Jesse Harlin about composing the Republic Commando soundtrack (including references to Mando'a): https://web.archive.org/web/20060615193250/http://musiconfilm.net/get_feature.php?id=6
Interview with David Collins and Jesse Harlin, the audio lead and composer for the Republic Commando soundtrack (including references to Mando'a): https://devgameclub.libsyn.com/dgc-ep-217-swrc-bonus-interview-with-david-collins-and-jesse-harlin
Quotes from an interview with Jesse Harlin, in the original post and the reblogs and comments: https://www.tumblr.com/fox-trot/743809811512180736/thats-the-one-i-took-out-the-chunk-about-the
Select quotes from the above interview (with comments from a fan): https://www.tumblr.com/ranahan/743859207622819840/dev-game-club-dgc-ep-217-swrc-bonus-interview
Republic Commando Soundtrack Official Lyrics, as provided by LucasArts (archived backup): https://web.archive.org/web/20060821175704/http://www.lucasarts.com/games/swrepubliccommando/downloads/mp3s/Lyrics.pdf
Republic Commando Soundtrack, from the official Republic Commando website (archived backup): https://archive.org/details/RepublicCommandoOST
dinii, birgaan, wayii: "With a few deliberate exceptions, like "dinii", "birgaan" and "wayii", which are there as a nod to my home town's dialect, the vocabulary was created from scratch, too." Karen Traviss, Sequential Tart interview "Darasuum Kote... Vode An"
dinii, birgaan: Traviss adds, "I did use Mando'a to pay homage to a few things, though. For example, the word dinii is taken from 'dinny,' my local Portsmouth (UK) dialect for idiotic or mad. We also use the word dinlo -- a mad or stupid person -- which some sources believe comes from the Romany language. (Readers may spot that word in my upcoming book Triple Zero, but I'll leave the explanation of Skuumaa for later!) I also called a military backpack a birgaan because a Royal Marine calls his a bergen, which is in fact a trade name. A Bergen pack is brammers (the best), as we say in Portsmouth." Karen Traviss, Star Wars Insider Online Supplement "Inside Mando'a"
di'kut: "Di'kut is one of my own words, and I'm delighted that it has resonances in other languages too. To UK ears, it sounds like that well-loved insult 'dick-head'." Karen Traviss, https://boards.theforce.net/threads/the-official-republic-commando-hard-contact-discussion-thread-spoilers-allowed.17248265/page-39#post-19410529
Source of jareor and related words: https://web.archive.org/web/20060516100816/http://karentraviss.livejournal.com:80/283887.html?thread=4968943
Source of Darman (initially named after another author, then presumably turned into a Mando word at a much later time): see the post dated "Nov 05, 2005 10:13 AM" from Traviss on this page, https://web.archive.org/web/20070823022431/http://forums.starwars.com/thread.jspa?threadID=237751&start=315
Another note on the name: https://boards.theforce.net/threads/the-official-republic-commando-hard-contact-discussion-thread-spoilers-allowed.17248265/page-39#post-19410701
Fan theories about sources of words
Where the suggestion comes from someone other than the keeper of this website, the source is given if known.
Besom, chaavla, dadita, dinii, kando and related words, mhi, shebs, skanah, skraan, vi, wayii, yaim: Similar to various English slang words. Note that "mhi" and "kando" are from Jesse Harlin's Vode An, and not created by Traviss, so are likely not related to the English slang. Pointed out in: https://www.tumblr.com/ranahan/740799798828023808/dinii-n-lunatic-dinila-a-insane-besom
ad’ika, adiik: Similar to Malay/Indonesian word "adik," which means "little one." Note that Malay/Indonesian is not on any language-inspiration list that Traviss publicly shared. Suggested by HellfireSky on Tumblr.
ast: Similar to Ancient Greek word "autós," which means "self."
at: Similar to the Latin word "ad," which means "toward, to."
bic, ibic: Similar to the Latin word "hic," which means "this, this one, it."
buruk: Similar to Malay/Indonesian word "buruk," which means "bad, evil, ugly." Note that Malay/Indonesian is not on any language-inspiration list that Traviss publicly shared. Suggested by HellfireSky on Tumblr.
chaavla: Similar to the English derogatory term "chav;" see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chav . Pointed out by kaasknot on Tumblr.
chur: Similar to the Old Irish word "chur" ("cur"), which means "sowing, planting, burial."
dadita: Similar to the "dits and dahs" of Morse code and to a word in some English dialects for "strike, hit, blow."
dayn: Possibly inspired by the Portsmouth English pronunciation of "down." Suggested by kasting-nets on Tumblr.
hoshap: The etymology of the English word "spoon" is from a Middle English word meaning "chip of wood."
jag: An English slang word related to drunkenness (Kal Skirata was a violent drunkard).
kute: Possibly from the Latin for "skin, rind, leather" ("cutis").
kranak: Possibly from the Scottish Gaelic "crannag," which refers to an artificial island, typically with a dwelling on it. Pointed out by kasting-nets on Tumblr.
mav: Possibly from the American English word "maverick," which refers to an independent nonconformist.
meg: Similar to the Irish word for "size" ("méid"), which can also be used to mean "what."
payt: Possibly inspired by the Portsmouth English pronunciation of "port." Originally source of suggestion not recorded.
sakagal: The X sound in Mando'a would probably be rendered as "sk"; thus, "saka" is possibly an expansion of that sound combination to turn it into a word.
shekemir: Vaguely similar to the Latin word "sequor," which means "to follow."
shig, behot: ”beverage - any infusion of whatever’s available, but usually a mild stimulant herb with a citrus flavor called behot.” Possibly based on Earl Grey tea, which has oil of bergamot in it. Pointed out by kaasknot on Tumblr.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Grey_tea
siver: Identical to the obsolete English word "siver," which means "to simmer."
solus: Similar to the Latin word for "alone, single."
suum: Similar to the Latin word "summa," which means "top, summit, highest point or place."
staabi: Possibly a corruption of "starboard." Originally source of suggestion not recorded.
tom: Similar to the Latin word "com" ("cum"), which means "with, along with, jointly."
trikar: Similar to the Latin word "trīstis," which means "sad." The "kar" might come from the Mando'a word for heart, making this "sad heart."
tsad: Possibly inspired by the Greek word "systáda," which means "cluster," and/or Hungarian word "szövetség," which means "alliance."
ures: Similar to the Hungarian word for "empty, void" ("üres").
vorpan: Possibly a mashup of words for green in Latin ("viridis"), Hebrew ("yarok"), and English.
yaim: Similar to "gan yem/ hyem," which means "to go home" in a northern English dialect. Pointed out by Rowan in the Rash'la Nari Discord server.
Bic ni skana'din: Based on the British slang.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/scunner
haryc b'aalyc: British euphemism for drunk.
https://www.tumblr.com/eyeloch/170645694993/haryc-baalyc
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tired_and_emotional
Ne'tra gal mesh'la, jatisyc, bal, wayii, jahaal'got: Translation of the slogan for the English beer Mackeson.
osi'yaim: Based on the British slang.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/shithouse
usen'ye: Based on the British slang.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/shit_off
waadas/waadasla/ori'wadaas'la: Likely from the English phrase "wad of cash." Similar to Hausa word for "wealth" ("wàdā"). Note that Hausa is not on any language-inspiration list that Traviss publicly shared.
Examinations by various people of what they discovered about the real-world development of Mando'a.
A History of Mando’a: https://numidianprime.wordpress.com/2022/01/25/a-history-of-mandoa/
History of Mandalorian Language: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZTqCn0BZwM
Note that the script was created before the language and separate from the language.
Development History: The Mandalorian Alphabet (note that all appearances of the Mando'a scripts in official media use the script as a cipher for English with one exception — a few banners in Star Wars: Tales of the Old Republic have Mando'a in one of the Mando'a scripts): https://forum.mandoa.org/viewtopic.php?t=222 and with pictures: https://project-shereshoy.tumblr.com/post/668753830966657024/development-history-the-mandalorian-alphabet