Today’s Rhymes With Orange:
An earlier Rhymes on Yoda’s syntax, complete with links to Language Log postings on the subject, is here. Here we see the early days.
Today’s Rhymes With Orange:
An earlier Rhymes on Yoda’s syntax, complete with links to Language Log postings on the subject, is here. Here we see the early days.
June 25, 2012 at 3:29 pm |
A more visited one this link has become. A lot of laughter I have done there.
June 26, 2012 at 6:21 am |
Thank you for the links to the Language Log disscussion on the syntax of Yoda sensei. Regularly following LL back then I wasn’t, and so missed them the first time. Read them now I have, and missed in there any reaction to Yoda similar to my first one.
The first Star Wars movie I saw was V The Empire Strikes Back and I think that’s where Yoda first appears. When I first heard Yoda speak, it only took a little bit of dialog and I thought, and I think even muttered :
Cymro ydy fo!”
Welshman is he
‘A Welshman he is!’ in Anglo-Welsh
‘He’s a Welshman.” Standard English.
I.e., Yoda on my first hearing reminded me right away of Anglo-Welsh. For general readers, Anglo-Welsh, contrary to what the name might lead us to think, is a Welsh influenced dialect of English, not a dialect of Welsh.
I don’t think there is any mention in the LL discussions (Pullum, Lieberman, and others) of Anglo-Welsh as a possible model, initial inspiration, or jumping off point for Yoda’s English. If so I missed it and apologize.
Does anybody know whether Anglo-Welsh and maybe Middle Welsh epic literature were or could reasonably be inferred to have been or can be ruled out as part of the creation and development of Yoda’s persona?
July 4, 2012 at 8:41 am |
[…] Earlier postings on Yoda-speak, on Language Log (with an inventory of earlier postings), here, and on this blog, here and here. […]
July 25, 2013 at 7:06 am |
[…] A Rhymes With Orange on Yoda’s syntax, complete with links to Language Log postings on the subject, was posted here. Another Rhymes, on the young Yoda, is here. […]