#in ipa those correspond to s and sh in english

[hylianengineer]

Linguistics class was fun this morning, in a deeply neurodivergent way, because we were learning the Internatuonal Phonetic Alphabet which basically amounted to sitting around making weird sounds trying to figure out which ones go in which words and correspond to various symbols. Fun new stimming tactic.

[project-shereshoy]

Pronouncing Mando'a

Knowing how to pronounce an almost entirely-written language is Tough, especially when the language isn’t phonetic. A phonetic language is when each letter in the alphabet corresponds to only one sound. Korean is a phonetic language. English is not. Mando’a isn't either, although it’s much more phonetic than English. In this post, we’re going to cover the individual sounds (called phonemes), certain letter combos, how to say vowel combos (called diphthongs), “missing” phonemes, and information about accents and variations.

For the sake of readability, some of the linguistic information here is simplified. If you're interested in a more in-depth analysis of Mando'a from a linguistic perspective, let us know!

Phonemes

There are 26 total individual sounds, or phonemes, in Mando’a. 19 of them are consonants and 7 of them are vowels. Compare this to Received Pronunciation English, which has 32 phonemes, 24 consonants and 8 vowels. Below are charts for Mando’a consonants and vowels. Each row has the IPA letter (what you find in dictionary pronunciation guides), the Romanization (English letter), English example words, and Mando’a example words.

*Karen Traviss, the primary developer of Mando'a, wrote on her 2012 website that the letters F, Q, X, and Z did not exist in the original Mandalorian alphabet and exist in the modern alphabet as imports. Despite this, F and Z still appear as phonemes in certain letter combinations and words. KT also states that the Mandalorian letter Beten has multiple pronunciation options. The one listed above is called a glottal stop. See the Accents/Variations section for more options on how to handle these cases.

* Arpat is the only explicitly confirmed example of /æ/ in Mando’a. KT made no distinction between /a/ and /æ/ in her phonetic spellings so all other examples are theoretical.

Letter Combos

As noted in the charts above, most of Mando’a is fairly phonetic with a few letter-combo exceptions. These exceptions are VH, C, CH, CY, YC, and SH. Sometimes you will see double letters, like in the words darasuum, adenn, and aliit. These double letters typically signify word meaning or etymology, but do not have unique pronunciations. For the purpose of pronunciation, treat double letters as a single letters.

VH is sometimes transliterated as an “f” sound and sometimes as a “v” sound with no rule for consistency. See Accents/Variations for options.

C can be pronounced as a hard “k” sound, a soft “s” sound, the “ch” sound, the “sh” sound, or as an “eesh” sound. You determine which version to use by its partner letters:

If C is partnered with H as in CH, it is always pronounced as the “ch” sound, regardless of vowel partner.

If the vowel partner is Y and after C (eg CY) then it is pronounced as “sh”.

If the vowel partner is Y and before C (eg YC) then it is pronounced “eesh”.

If the vowel partner is not Y, but is a “closed” vowel (the “i” and “e” vowels) then C is pronounced as a “s” sound.

If the vowel partner is not a Y, but is an “open” vowel (the “a”, “o”, “u” vowels) it is pronounced with the “k” sound.

If there is no vowel or consonant partner, such as when C is at the end of the word, it is pronounced with the “k” sound.

SH is always pronounced as the “sh” sound rather than as an “s” + “h” sound.

Diphthongs

Diphthongs are when you combine two “plain” vowel sounds into one syllable. The diphthongs for Mando’a are AI, AY, AU, E, EY, OY, and OI.

Most of these are self-explanatory for pronunciation except for E. In most cases, E is pronounced as a plain vowel, like in the English word “bet”. However, when you have the combo EY or E is at the end of the word, then it is pronounced as a diphthong. E is often at the end of words because it’s the plural suffix for Mando’a, so remember to pronounce it as a “long A” vowel in those cases.

What’s tricky in Mando’a is that sometimes the letter combos signify two different syllables and sometimes the letter combos signify a diphthong and there’s no clear rule about which happens when. For example, according to KT’s dictionary yaim is pronounced as a diphthong with one syllable while yaimpar is pronounced as three plain vowels with three syllables: “yah-eem-pahr”. There’s no obvious written distinction.

"Missing" Phonemes

Mando’a has 26 phonemes and Received Pronunciation English has 32. What happens to those 6 phonemes from English? What about sounds that aren’t in English or Mando’a? Phonemes with close relatives, like S and Z are typically interpreted as the phoneme that exists in the language. Mando’a has S, but (theoretically) not Z, so using a Z sound will likely be heard as a funky S. Phonemes with no close relatives, like the TH sounds in English, might be interpreted as one of their distant relatives or simply not understood at all.

Accents/Variations

All the above is a way of pronouncing Mando’a, not the way. Variations on “standard” pronunciation exist both in canon and in real life. Throughout this section, we’ve referred to the number of phonemes in Received Pronunciation English rather than just “English”. This is because English has many dialects and each dialect has a unique set of consonants, vowels, and pronunciation rules. In every day speech, we call these variations in pronunciation accents.

As more and more people speak Mando’a, more and more dialects and accents will develop. Vowels are the most common indicator of accents given that a near-infinite spectrum of possible pronunciations are condensed into only 10 phonemes, but there are even variations with consonants.

In the Star Wars Insider 86 Mandalorian Article, KT notes that for in-universe dialects, some regions pronounce P as F and S as Z. Sometimes, T and D are swapped, where T is the modern form and D is the archaic. V is sometimes interchangeable with W or B. J is usually pronounced with a hard “j” but some communities pronounce it as “y”.

The purpose of language is to communicate and convey ideas. As long as people understand what you mean, the precise pronunciation of a word isn’t as important. Below are common variations in pronunciation:

Beten can be pronounced as a pause, a short breath, a glottal stop, a schwa, or completely silent. Remember that a glottal stop is the dash in the English word “uh-oh”. A schwa is the “default” vowel for a language. In American English it’s “uh” like the “a” in “about”, while in Received Pronunciation Egnlish it’s “er” and is at the end of “here”. Beten is complex because it’s not just a letter, but also a symbol for contraction and a symbol for conjunction. How you choose to pronounce Beten can be equally complex.

R has a lot of variation. Some prefer the American R, some prefer the British R, then there’s also the Gallic R (very throaty), and even the tap-R. Choose whichever you like most.

Nasals are the sounds “m” and “n”. The variation in these sounds is where you place your tongue when making the sound, as far up as the tip of your tongue on your teeth or as far back as the root of your tongue at the back of your mouth.

T and D can be similar be pronounced in different places. Pronouncing them on your teeth or above your teeth won’t change the sound itself very much, but it’ll change how easy it is to switch to other sounds and can change the overall speed of your speech.

VH also has variations. Sometimes it’s simplified to either a “v” or “f” sound, but there’s also the option to pronounce it as “v” = “h”, which would sound like a regular “v” with a puff of air afterwards.

Z is not technically a letter in Mando’a, but it’s used in KT’s original pronunciation guide for several words, such as bes’bev being “BEZ-bev” and tsad sometimes being “ZAD”. You could interpret this as natural variation for the S letter, which means “s” and “z” are equally valid ways of pronouncing bes’bev. You could also interpret this as a rule where the S’ and TS combos are consistently pronounced as “z”.

/æ/ as in “cat” does not have many explicit examples in Mando’a, even though we have the phonological rules to know when it should show up. However, some people choose to drop this vowel entirely and make all non-diphthong As as a plain “a” as in “car”.

Double Letters do not typically affect pronunciation. However, some people prefer to treat double-letter combos as indicators to make the sound longer than usual.

Examples of Spoken Mando'a

Knights of the Old Republic has one NPC speak a Mando'a pidgin. This pidgin is not understood by the in-game Mando'a speakers. This game and by extension the pidgin were created before KT began development on what became official Mando'a.

Star Wars: Republic Commandos contains the first spoken Mando'a, and it's technically sung. Jesse Harlin created the conlang as "ancient Mandalorian" and passed the lyrics he made to KT for development into what would become official Mando'a. Songs with Mando’a include: "Vode An", "Dha Werda Verda", "Gra’tua Cuun", and "Kar’ta Tor".

There are three audio blurbs by KT originally hosted on her website (see link below).

The Clone Wars (2008) contains brief examples of Concordian in episode 2-12 “The Mandalore Plot”. Condordian is related to Mando’a, though the degree and nature of that relationship is unclear.

Rebels episode 3-16 “The Legacy of Mandalore” contains a brief conversation in Mando’a.

The Book of Boba Fett contains a Mando’a song called “Aliit ori’shya taldin”.

Sources

KT's Website/Blog, archived 2012 here: https://web.archive.org/web/20120617235524/http://www.karentraviss.com/page20/page26/index.html

KT's 2009 Mando'a Dictionary, archived 2012 here: https://web.archive.org/web/20121229211626/http://karentraviss.com/page20/page26/downloads/index.html

KT's 2006 article in Star Wars Insider #86 "Mandalorians: People and Culture"