An exploration of how different third-person pronouns could potentially be used when referencing groups. None of this is part of any dialect yet.
kaysh — the movements of the Droid Army were headed by living beings, so any group that contains at least one living being should use a pronoun for living beings and should be thought of as a single entity.
kaysh — any group composed of anything that acts like a living being (regardless of whether any of them are) should use a pronoun for living beings and should be thought of as a single entity.
val — the movements of the Droid Army were headed by living beings, so any group that contains at least one living being should use a pronoun for living beings and should be thought of individuals working/existing together.
val — any group composed of anything that acts like a living being (regardless of whether any of them are) should use a pronoun for living beings and should be thought of individuals working/existing together.
val — the composition of the group is irrelevant, but it is thought of as individuals working/existing together. Val is not a pronoun restricted to living beings and therefore is used to talk about a group.
bic — any group that has at least one nonliving entity or thing in it should use the pronoun for nonliving things. As there is no canonical third-person plural pronoun for nonliving entities/things, it does not matter how these are thought of. If a dialect has a plural form of bic (typically bice — or bic'e, to enforce the hard c) and the dialect considers a group to be individuals working/existing together, then the plural of bic is used.
For added possibilities, it could depend on the nuance that the speaker is trying to convey, so any of the above could be correct.
In the article "No Word for Hero: Mandalorian Language," under the pronoun heading, it states: "As with nouns, pronouns have no gender. Some are also possessives, such as gar, which means both you and your, and — as in Basic — is both singular and plural. Kaysh means both him and her, and his and hers. Val means they or theirs. However, ni (me), ner (my), mhi (we) and cuun (our) do have different forms."
Because there is such an emphasis in the article about how Mando'a use the same words to describe "men" and "women"; because KT obviously doesn't know what "agglutinative" actually means, so is probably not referring to grammatical gender here; and because the list for what kaysh means does not include "it," I see this as weak evidence that all of those pronouns refer to living creatures, not things.
In the dictionary, there is a separate entry for "it" — bic. This could indicate that Mandos make a distinction between the living/sentient and the nonliving/nonsentient. However, because the original definition also said "(very generic use of it)," it could be a dummy pronoun, for times when there is nothing to specifically refer to in the context of the sentence. For example, "it" is a dummy pronoun in the phrase "you can do it." Bic might serve as a dummy object, while ashnar serves as a dummy pronoun.
KT also differentiates between emuurir, which the original dictionary has as "enjoy (food, activities, etc.)," and guuror, which the original dictionary has as "be fond of (of a person or creature)," which I further submit as evidence that Mandos have a different pronoun for "things."
Finally, as a culture that supposedly eschews material belongings (even if they amass a great deal of wealth), it also makes sense to me that the language would to have a different pronoun for things, which doubles as a way to emphasize the importance of people.
But ... what about "kaysh guur' skraan"? The definition of this in the original dictionary specifically states, "using the verb for affection rather than enjoyment." Not that KT took the time to make this statement, with its implication there's something special about guuror, so I contend that using guuror with nonliving things means that one elevates that thing to the same level as a living being. To me, a translation perhaps more accurate, if blunter, is "they are obsessed with eating."
But ...can someone use or'parguur/or'paguur and paguur with things? Because the original dictionary does not offer emuurir forms of these verbs, perhaps this indicates that, for Mandos, the opposite of liking something is not "disliking" it, but indifference and — perhaps even — that thinking about something enough to have a negative opinion on it is detrimental to experiencing shereshoy, life in its fullest.
Large parts originally posted by me in Mando'a Nerds and expanded here.