#brain STOP we do not have to linguistically analyze EVERY SINGLE WORD associated w/ the jedi

[dapurinthos]

been thinking about jedi language since @gffa made this post with the ‘padawan means learner’ bit, and about how there’s a ship in one of the clone wars gameboy games called sedawan. which is a sort-of proto-crucible in that it’s for bringing crystals back from ilum because it’s been deemed too dangerous for the younglings to go themselves (the clone wars: jedi alliance came out in 2008 to the animated series’ ‘the gathering’ in 2012). chu’unthor is a cerean word, so it’s not relevant. takara is not a ship used for padawan training.

so the linguistic analogy should be (since we know george lucas was cooking with japanese flavouring from the jidaigeki films that influenced star wars, not just the buddhism):

student : 学生 : padawan :: teacher : 先生 : sedawan

individually: 学生 (gakusei): student 学 (gaku): education. also: knowledge [ignorance, yet knowledge!] [11-year-old me: like haruka & michiru’s school mugen gauken!]; origin: middle chinese haewk (learning) 生 (sei): (as a suffix) a student. also: a living, life. origin in middle chinese sraeng (alive, raw, unprocessed)

先生 (sensei): an elder, a scholar, teacher — only when referring to another) 先 (sen): before, previous. origin: middle chinese sen (first, before) 生 (sei): [see above]

so is it pada/seda + wan? or is it there rendaku (ori + kami —> origami) happening here and the compounds are pa/se + tawan? (je + tai forming je’daii —> jedi?) as for the compounds, i think it would be really neat if padawan, whatever it breaks down into, is the ignorance, yet knowledge precept in a single word, going from the 'raw, unprocessed' definition of 'sei'. the -wan/-tawan as the 'knowledge' part, with 'pada-/pa-' as the 'ignorant' part. seda-/se- as 'elder, first, before'. padawan: the ignorant acquiring knowledge; sedawan: the one who previously acquired the knowledge.

a side-trip: differentiating between ‘student’ and ‘learner’ 学習者 (gakushūsha, lit. one who learns knowledge) aka 'learner' exists as a word. english is a bitchy language and has both student and learner used for the same thing (why did you choose to use 'learner', rpg book? it's bothering me). it’s the normans fault. all of it. them with their french coming in here and replacing cneordlæcan with estudiant from studeō. the germans got their word from ‘track, trace’ while the latin one is ‘to push, hit’ and somehow does a transformation that almost everyone else didn’t do (yeah, this is where we get pertussis from, because tussis is also a descendant, but one that keeps the violence). italic family, you’ve got a lot of explaining to do.