Doers

How to express job titles and "doer" words

The job titles and "doer" or people words that appear in the original dictionary are so inconsistently constructed that it is impossible to define a single, consistent, easily recognizable way that creates words that fit with the aesthetic of the rest of the dictionary. 

It is of the utmost importance to remember that some words or concepts cannot be translated in a simple manner into Mando'a. Always keep the culture in mind when deciding whether you need a new word and how you would go about constructing it. Would a Mandalorian really think they need a word for this concept? For example, see the discussion about why there is no word for teacher in the culture as it is shown in the official source material. That being said, fan fiction typically changes the culture to suit the story and finds a need for words appropriate for those time-line variations.

For one-off "doer" or people words, use the phrase adat meg [conjugated verb], person who [does verb]. Example: If you only need to say "runner" once or twice in a story, use adat meg viini, person who runs.

If you plan to refer to a particular job or "doer" word frequently, then it's understandable to want a shorter way of saying it. For these cases, the best (though still vague) course of action is to look at job titles similar to the one you want and create the new job title based on your findings. If you are part of a community, be sure to get advice from them and to show how to you came to your conclusion.

See this document for an examination of various ways to create doer and people words: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LCax2e8mBRRq_gorgQHn8MEFTX17GIGouQrRPcr-gAU/

Analyzing the original dictionary

In a very brief examination of job titles and "doer" words that are not related to military ranks, we can see a few trends. In some words, -an could be one of a couple of ways of forming a word for a person who does something (aran, cuyan, goran, meshurkaan, ne'kaan, ruusan). It certainly appears in more worker-related words that -bor (gotabor) and possibly more than -ur (baar'ur, cabur, riduur/veriduur). On the flipside, -an appears at the end of a lot non-job/non-doer words. 

I'm not counting -or alone, because that's always with alor. Meanwhile, -ad seems mostly (if not entirely) related to types of people (age, family/military relationship, metal-person), not jobs that they do (bercet'ad and gotal'ad in the MandoCreator dictionary is fanon, and based on comparison with other "doer" words, incorrectly designed words at that). Even tomad describes a relationship with someone.

However, looking more closely at aran, cuyan, goran, meshurkaan, ne'kaan, ruusan, we find that it's a mixed bag of what -an might mean: aran could be "one who defends" and ruusan could be "one who is reliable" (not a doer word, but a word that talks about "a person with this quality"), plus three more that are unclear, since gor is not a root on its own, the kaan in meshurkaan might come from akaan (but we don't know), the kaan in ne'kaan definitely comes from akaan, and we don't know whether the last two are from akaan in addition to or instead of from the mystery -an.

Additionally, aran and cuyan have partner verbs made by adding on a verb ending to that "doer" noun root. Because of this, if one seeks to make a "doer" word from a verb instead of a noun, then these words might need to be discarded as irrelevant to any -an pattern.

Then there are jobs that are based on what the person does, but no indication that it is a person, such as beroya (bounty hunter, possibly from paid-hunt or something like that), ramikad (commando, possibly raid-sword, although this might be an exception if it's raid-person), ram'ser (sniper, possibly from attack-accurate), narudar (temporary ally, possibly not-enemy-temporarily), and ta'ayl (jailer, possibly two-hold). It is equally unclear what is going on with parjii (victor), prudii (shadow), or aruetii (outsider) — do kaminii or jetii have any relation to these? — let alone chakaar (thief), jare (foolish risk-taker), kyramud (assassin), mirci't/ver'mircit (prisoner/hostage), or sheb'urcyin (toady). The first three seem to be made by adding tii (dropping the "t" if a consonant is already there) to the end of an adjective, while the last three are a one-letter change (the last letter) from related verbs, and the middle two are even more curious in their relationship to other words.