#mando’a derivational dictionary

[ranahan]

Which format is better? The appendix will contain every single instance of a particular morpheme grouped by morpheme, so does adding more examples clarify anything or just clutter up things?

[project-shereshoy]

Numbers

What's 6 in Mando'a? What about 501st? How do you say "execute order 66"? In this blog post, we'll cover the Mando'a cardinal and ordinal number system, how to make any number from 0-9,999 and other words useful when discussing number and math. Sources are indicated with symbols (^ *) and listed at the bottom.

Numerals

Mando'a uses a base-5 numbering system supplemented with base-10 suffixes. This means 1-5 are unique words along with 0, 10, 100, and 1000. All other numbers are a combination of those words. As it stands, KT Mando’a allows us to count up to 9,999. Here are the counting numbers:

0 - naas^ (literally "nothing") 1 - solus (prefix: sol) 2 - t'ad (prefix: ad) 3 - ehn (prefix: ehn) 4 - cuir (prefix: cur) 5 - rayshe'a (prefix: she) 6 - resol (prefix: rol) 7 - e'tad (prefix: tad) 8 - she'ehn (prefix: shen) 9 - she'cu (prefix: shek)

For the tens place numerals (20, 30, 40, etc), add the “tens” suffix -’eta to the prefixes above above. 0 and 1 do not act as prefixes for counting purposes. 10 is a unique number (ta+raysh aka "two fives").

10 - ta'raysh 20 - ad'eta* 30 - ehn'eta* 40 - cur'eta* 50 - she'eta* 60 - rol'eta* 70 - tad'eta* 80 - shehn'eta* 90 - shek'eta*

For the hundreds place numerals, the principle is the same. Add the “hundreds” suffix -’olan to the original numbers. Like 10, 100 is a unique number.

100 - olan* 200 - ad'olan^ 300 - ehn'olan^ 400 - cur'olan^ 500 - raysh'olan* 600 - rol'olan^ 700 - tad'olan^ 800 - shen'olan^ 900 - shek'olan^

For the thousands place numerals, the pattern continues. The suffix for “thousands” is a conjunction between the suffixes for “ten” and “hundreds”, -’eta’olan. This makes it literally “tens of hundred”. 1000 is an exception to the rule and is instead “ten hundred”.

1000 - ta’raysh’olan* 2000 - ad’eta’olan^ 3000 - ehn’eta’olan^ 4000 - cur’eta’olan^ 5000 - she’eta’olan* 6000 - rol’eta’olan^ 7000 - tad’eta’olan^ 8000 - shen’eta’olan^ 9000 - shek’eta’olan^

More Numbers

To fill the gaps in the above list, simply write out each place with a space between. Eleven (11) is ta'raysh solus*. Two hundred-sixty-three (263) in English is ad’olan rol’eta ehn^ in Mando’a. "Execute order sixty-six" becomes "Ke narir haar’ke’gyce rol’eta resol".

Ordinals

To turn a numeral into an ordinal (1 to 1st or 10 to 10th), add the descriptor suffix -yc. Theoretically this should also work with the suffix -la, but -yc is the one explicitly acknowledged in the KT dictionary. The last (singles) place numeral receives the descriptor suffix. E.g. she’olan sol'yc (501st) or cur’etayc (40th)

Other Useful Words

Soletar, verb, "to count" Sosol ti, phrase, "equal to" Majycir, verb, "to add" Te'habir, verb "to remove or take out" aka subtract

There's no ready answer for "multiply" or "divide", though creative use of tatugir "to repeat" could work in some cases. Fractions might be verbally represented as solus be ta'raysh "1 of 10" or some other prepositional combo that can also represent division. "Mathematics" also doesn't have a dedicated word, but "to calculate" is mirdir.

"But do Mandalorian space-barbarians really need to know math--" Yes. Ballistics. Logistics. Counting pay. Math is everywhere, it is inescapable. Inevitable. Evil Essential.

Sources

Words without source symbols are from officially published works by Karen Traviss, namely the Republic Commando novels. Reference this index to see the book & page number.

Asterik* words are from the lexicon Karen Traviss published digitally, which is hosted as-is on Mandoa.org without alterations (or corrections).

Carat^ words are derivations from the canon words' established patterns. As such, if you want to go with a different interpretation, have fun! These are suggestions and I ain't a cop. We'll answer follow-up questions on how they're derived, but we're not interested in arguing merits of one interpretation over another.

[ranahan]

Appo is the pronunciation of oppo, British (originally military) slang for a friend, someone you work with, or someone who does the same job as you in a different company, political party, etc. It’s on my list of military slang words that might eventually make their way into my Mando’a dictionary in some form or another (Traviss herself has a few of these like taab and birgaan)… But I rather like “place of victory” too.

Blackout/Netra’dayn: Mando’a tends to put prepositions first in compound words, so it would probably be Daynetra or actually Danetra, as dayn gets contracted to da- in compound words. You could even shorten it further to Danet (cf. genet), or Denet which would be easier to say. Or you could derive a word with the same meaning but from different roots, e.g. dhaan. Or karanov = eclipse would also be similar.

Dush’kara: here are a couple of other options for your consideration: racin’kare, “faded stars,” shorten to racin’kar or dha’kar—all would have connotations with bad luck. Haran would be another one.

Mirdal’uliik > Mirda’liik & Oya’uliik > Oya’liik — I’m personally not a big fan of deriving animal names from uliik or bas, because I think more likely the words would have their own roots or be derived from descriptive words. But if you want to use uliik, you can contract it like so.

Ne’yaimpar could also be Ne’yaim’ol. It would have that phonetic ‘o.

Rex: I kinda thought his name came from Rexutu the Unconquerable from Dha Werda Verda.

Bev’sarad: I think you could go with just Bev. Personally I’ve glossed bev as “1. needle 2. spike, tine, spine, thorn” in my dictionary.

still workshopping some of these a bit, but here's the current mando'a name chart for the CCs (plus rex!)

green words are ones I took directly from the mando'a dictionary, yellow words are technically non-canon but are basically real words, orange are words I made up that could probably be real words, and red ones are the ones I just mashed words together and they don't always make the most sense

I'm taking constructive criticism on some of these names! If you have a better mando'a name for a character (esp. one w a red name) I'd be happy to hear it!

edit: other name lists can be found here: 501st 212th !!

[gdcee]

ok i know i’ve snarked a bit in the past about the mando’a dictionary not having a word for boat/ship

but if there was a word it might be sen? or a derivative of it?

me’sen - starship

sho’sen - submarine

but on the other hand there are a bunch of other words with sen in them

be'senaar - missile

senaar - bird

sen'tra - jetpack

shosenla - submerged, sunk, under water

Usen'ye! - Go away!

i know next to nothing about linguistics but it seems to me sen indicates movement? or an object that moves or grants movement?

in which case, boat/ship might use pirun - water (not sho’cye - ocean because that’s already taken by the submarine word and not all boats/ship are meant for ocean travel) to get pir’sen or piru’sen (i.e. thingy that moves on/through water)

[ionfusionpunk]

Mando’a Conjugation Tangents Because My Brain Got Lost

AKA: A Study of Ancient Mandalorian Culture and Society and the Development of Mando’a by Dissecting a Bunch of Words in a Bid to Find the One (Which I Don’t Find, but That’s Okay)

Um. So, I got carried away? 

It started with me creating a clone oc: Clone Commander Alloy. I love creating fun nicknames for my characters, and I thought it would be cool to give him a nickname in Mando’a. I thought: Hey, ‘alloy’ is close to ‘ally’, so maybe one of his close friends/vod call him tomad: ally. Cute. Then I thought, but what about ‘alloy’ in Mando’a? 

(You can jump to the very end for the TL;DR)

Cue me realizing there isn’t a straight translation. Cue me realizing there’s only one (1) metallic element given any sort of name in Mando’a: beskar, which is Mandalorian iron made of a metallic alloy (steel, which itself is an iron alloy, hence Mandalorian iron).

Cue me wanting to dissect the word beskar to figure out where it comes from.

After fighting with my brain for an hour, I finally just made it simple: since beskar is a confirmed alloy of which iron is the major part, then I just need to identify which part of the word is ‘iron’. Easily said and done if one considers that be means ‘of’ in Mando’a, leaving skar to mean iron. (I also cross referenced the Mando’a dictionary to make sure there weren’t any other words composed of skar as a word fragment in any form; it’s not). Literally translated then, beskar means ‘of iron’ which makes sense considering it’s an iron alloy - an alloy made of iron. Thus beskar transliterated is ‘alloy of iron’.

Now I want a word for ‘metal’, because ‘iron’ is too specific to be the only related word in Mando’a. 

I started by looking for ‘forge’, like a blacksmith forge, thinking it might hold a clue. It didn’t. ‘Forge’ in Mando’a is actually nau’ur kad: lit. light up a sword. And, like, I can see where that’s coming from? But it’s more poetic than functional. This is when I recall the word goran: blacksmith, metalworker.

Cool. Okay. ‘Metal’ is included in ‘metalworker’, so I might be a step closer. Unsatisfied with the poetic version of forge, I decide I want a single word that means something closer to what ‘metalworking’ implies; I turn goran into a verb by adding -ar, making it goranar: metalworking, and call it good. 

But I still want to isolate ‘metal’. Alright, so what part of goran is ‘worker’? Turns out that borarir is worker, and it’s base is bora: job. Instead, goran might come from gotal’ur: make, create/ gotal: made, created (an ‘-ized’ suffix). This is cool because tal means blood, so the Mandalorians seem to believe that to create something is very symbolic/ritualistic (like putting your blood, sweat, and tears into something). 

(Kay. Taking the Mandalorian culture into account, it would seem that they would have definitely practiced metalworking as an artform, right? Historically, only the nobility had swords because only they had the time to learn how to properly use them, and we’ve seen that the Mando’ade who aren’t soldiers are often agriculturalists. Yet kad is still a known word, and beskar is basically a deity. It would make sense that, in their development as a culture/society, metalworking would have been way big especially as an art form (I look back at the p o e t i c term for ‘forge’ as an example). It then stands to reason that there’s no reason why the words I want to create don’t exist. They’re just... buried. Deep. Just throwing that out there so I seem less crazy lmao.)

Now, I would think that ‘metal’ would be something close to ‘iron’ considering, logically, there would be a word for ‘metal’ first and then iron later as it was found to be the superior metallic element, especially in alloy form. Kar shows up in a few words, like kar’am: breath, kar’ta: heart, kar’tayl: awareness, knowledge, and kar’taylir: know, hold in heart. As far as kar’ta goes, ta is obviously derived from tal for blood. The am in kar’am is ‘change’. Taylir is hold, keep, preserve. Comparing with mandokar (which we should all know the meaning of by now, it’s used so. often), we can assume that kar either has something to do with the ‘self’ or is more an indication of something personally/culturally/spiritually precious (not the soul, though; colloquially, manda is used as ‘soul’). Furthermore, kar seems to be used in words where emotion is involved (like, 9.5/10 times). 

Personally, I think that kar could mean ‘iron’. Think about it: ‘iron change’ or the ‘change in iron’ to indicate breath just like how different levels of oxygen within the metal itself would affect quality. ‘Iron blood’ which, like, duh, but they wouldn’t have had the tech at the time to know human blood contains iron; they would have just compared the red of rusted iron to the color of blood, which, still cool. Mandokar would then be ‘an individual of/containing iron’ which fits with the definition.

Now, I can’t really get behind the fanon definition of kar being ‘star’. I can’t, because Ka’ra is ‘stars; ancient Mandalorian myth - ruling council of fallen kings’, so I would think ka would be ‘star’ and ra derived from the short list of words that start with ‘ram-’: ramaanar: die (general term), ramaanla: mortal (in the sense of fallible or vulnerable), ram’ika: raid, ramikad: commando, ramikadyc: commando state of mind, ram’or: attack, beseige, ramorla: beseiged, and ramser: sniper, marksman. Considering ika is a known diminutive, ram probably boils down to ‘battle’ or ‘war’ or something similar. Ka’ra then, would literally be something like ‘warrior stars’ - the great warrior kings of the past. 

Back to to beskar, then, which I can actually keep breaking down. In the dictionary is bes’bev: Mandalorian wind instrument also used for combat, a large metal flute with a sharpened, cut-off end. Knowing that laar is song and bes’laar is music, but also knowing that a defining feature of pure beskar is the ringing sound it makes when hit against more pure beskar, and bev: needle, spike, and considering my ‘metalworking as art’ theory, I can see where bes’bev comes from for sure, especially if we assume beskar as a word was created first so that bes could be used to indicate the sound of the metal-strikes. 

(Fun Facts: laar shows up again only in galaar: hawk, jai’galaar: shriek-hawk, the two conjugations of laar that give us ‘singing’ and ‘sing’, and werlaara: myth (archaic). Now, jai- comes from jair: scream, shriek, so that word’s self-explanatory. But werlaara is cool, because wer is archaic for ‘eon’, and laara would be the conjugated form of laar once again. From this we catch a glimpse of ancient Mandalorian culture - namely, the way they told stories: using music. Just thought that was supper cool.)

That still doesn’t really help me except just show where other words branched off. So. Square one (1): beskar breaks down into be: of and skar: iron. I would think the ‘s’ comes from the word for metal, especially if iron specifically, using the kar as an indication of strong emotion, is extra important as a metal to the Mandalorians. Based on the words I could find, the best match seems to be eso: flank, side. (Think of how the metal would have been used as armor to protect their flanks/sides). Look at bes; look at eso. I think metal might have been beso, because they would have used metal for armor before they ever used for art considering their warrior-clan history (again, in my head). So, beso: metal. 

Back to goran, ‘cause I think I’m on to something here. So, the closest to ran I could find was rang: ash. Considering the role that ash actually plays in forging metal objects, that makes a lot of sense to me if goran is a metalworker/blacksmith. If I think about how ne’tra is ‘black’, it’s not inconceivable that the ‘ra’ in goran is actually derived from that (again, ran means nothing by itself, and ra is ‘or’). The ‘n’ is most likely just tacked on bc why not and to make it a noun. That just leaves go which seems to have a direct link to whether the word is about creating/making something or not. Conclusion: go: the shaping of something. 

In the end, I couldn’t pin down a specific word for ‘alloy’, but I might get there someday. Thoughts? Sorry for the rambly-ness of this whole thing. I leterally was typing this up as the thoughts hit lol.

TL;DR: 

beskar: alloy of iron (from be: of and assuming kar: iron)

goranar: metalworking

kar: a uniquely Mandalorian word used to indicate extreme emotional/spiritual importance to the subject; iron

ka: star

bes: a uniquely Mandalorian word that indicates the equally unique sound made by hitting two pieces of pure beskar to together

beso: metal

go: the shaping of something

[wardensantoineandevka]

Echoylir and its derivations are the most beautiful words in the Mando’a dictionary. You can fight me over this.

[ranahan]

Here’s the rest of the conversation. I wish I could have all four of these posts show in the same thread because it’s a great conversation.

Here’s more context for the word cetar, which I think is relevant to the discussion:

The root cet- (from whence cetar and cetare) comes from the soundtrack of the Republic Commando game written by Jesse Harlin, i.e. it’s pre-Traviss Mando’a. Here’s the relevant part of the lyrics for context:

Motir ca'tra nau tracinya.

Gra'tua cuun hett su dralshy'a.

Aruetyc runi solus cet o'r.

In English:

Those who stand before us light the night sky in flame.

Our vengeance burns brighter still.

Every last traitorous soul shall kneel.

To reiterate: this is Mandalorians making their enemies kneel in defeat in front of them. It is in fact a war chant—propaganda of sorts. It’s a word choice in the same vein as the other lines in the song, i.e. not neutral at all.

Here’s what Traviss has to say about this word (from this interview):

In creating words, I looked at the words I already had from the lyrics and evolved a few from there, just as a real language would. For example, the word for kneel suggests the word for boots to me, because getting your enemy to kneel before you—as in the song—became licking your boots.

So cetar really is “to kneel in submission” as in “to beg for mercy” or “to grovel” or “to submit to the mercy of someone” and that’s how we get the grovelling apology ni ceta. It is not and never was a general word for surrender. In fact, I would go as far as to say “surrender” might be a bit of a mistranslation in most contexts, where “submit” or “be subjugated” might do better.

It is a rather specific word and the specificity itself suggests that this is a concept that for Mandalorians requires distinctions. That is, one size fits all word doesn’t work for them and they need several more specific words.

Back to Traviss, whatever you think of her attitudes (and I’m reading the RepComm novels now and I do not generally disagree with Izzy), let’s also cut her some slack:

The dictionary she created is a little over a thousand words. Like, that’s not even covering the most basic vocabulary. You’d need twice that to manage basic conversations. I speak some languages where I know maybe 3-4k words and I can manage in a grocery store but I’m lost as soon as I start having a conversation about anything meaningful. Vocabularies of fluent speakers are tens of thousands of words. Of course a dictionary of that size is going to be missing a lot of even very basic words, never mind several synonyms for different shades of meaning. Traviss’s goal was to provide colour for her novels, not to create the next Esperanto.

Traviss was working back from an even smaller vocabulary of just about 70 words (depending on how you you count what appear to be phrasal expressions—she did of course also add many more roots and words). The word she was deriving from that material is the quotidian “boots”. Now in doing that, did she give an incredibly negative connotation to the word cetar? You bet she did. But if you look at the song, it’s not necessarily misplaced as much as it’s misinterpreted.

Which brings me to my third point, languages need words with negative connotations too. Fictional languages as well. How would you ever talk about problematic things if there were no words about them? I am a strong proponent for equal rights and I’m all sorts of queer myself, but I have added slurs and words with negative connotations to my expanded dictionary. Why? Because I want fiction writers to be able to write characters who would use them. Not to glorify those attitudes, but because the world is not all rainbows and unicorns and fiction is one way to grapple with that. I want writers to be able to write stories that deal with issues like xenophobia in Mandalorian culture, but to do that they need to have tools. There’s never going to be a culture that doesn’t grapple with some baggage. When it comes to irl cultures, that baggage can teach us to do better. When it comes to fictional cultures, it gives us that juicy juicy conflict (which in the hands of a good writer, can also teach us).

Lastly, a pet peeve re: the masculinity—toxic masculinity part of the discussion. Izzy is talking specifically about toxic masculinity, which they do clarify in their reply, and again, I have no beef with that. But let’s not please conflate masculinity and toxic masculinity, they’re not synonyms. It’s something Traviss does, and by all gods, something I will fight. Toxic masculinity is imho quite an unfortunate name. It’s not like those attitudes are not shared by many women as well, or do not hurt men as well (patriarchy and the attitudes propping it up never were about all men, but about a small subset of men in power), so a better term would be toxic patriarchy (patriarchism? patriarchality? patriarchalism?).

Okay so, I saw a post asking for a word in mando’a for surrender, and I meant to do a short reply, but this got entirely too long … so new post instead.

This is more than a little complicated due to the nature of the word surrender, as its meaning is incredibly contentious depending on who you ask, who says it, and in what situation. If anything, mandalorians should have multiple words meaning surrender, depending on severity. But let’s start with what exists and why it’s bullshit as the sole word.

There is a word that is close: cetar — kneel in submission (from cetare, boot; as in licking someone’s boots), however … I don’t trust anyone that uses this word in a casual sense, and I suggest you follow suit, bc this follows an incredibly negative connotation attached to the definition of submission / submit, and tbh fits a toxic masculinity that is very much in line with Karen Traviss’ gross misunderstanding of war, fighting, and tactics. I mean sure, you can refuse to surrender, and where will that lead you? The death of everyone who follows you. The death of your people. Good job. Way to go.

It’s entirely misaligned with one of the core beliefs of mandalorians, and the reason why they still exist even after facing what would have been certain death to any other people: survival. It’s literally in the resol’nare poem. It’s said again and again. Survival is a common, repeated, but often never discussed theme, that is intrinsically tied with mandalorians and their history.

Surrendering means survival. It means living to fight another day. It means being able to reassess your plans and come back wiser than before. It makes me think of the phrase: He that fights and runs away, May turn and fight another day; But he that is in battle slain, Will never rise to fight again.

Surrendering also means knowing when to stop fighting, having the wisdom to end the battle so that you don’t lead all of your people to certain death … which almost happened to mandalorians, specifically (and did happen to the original species of mandalorians, the Taung). Thanks to the efforts of Mandalore the Ultimate, whose incredible leadership lead mando’ade to near total extinction.

This hut’uun was executed in the Battle of Malachor — and with him, the majority of the mandalorian people. It was horrible enough, extensive enough, that most of the galaxy (and most of the surviving mandalorians themselves!) genuinely believed that they would never recover from it. Most believed they would have died out during the old republic, and they would have if it wasn’t for the intervention of one person and a shitload of luck.

So. To tie mandalorians, and mando’a, with a negative understanding of “surrender” is to be completely ignorant of mandalorian history and what almost happened to them (more than once, actually, lmao) as a direct result of continuing to fight when it was foolish to do so, and obviously so. 

I have seen his image held up by “mandalorian fans” asking “why is this not badass anymore?” and I can only rub my forehead in fucking fury lmao because Mandalore the Ultimate is responsible for the mandalorians nearly being wiped out, permanently, from the galaxy, forever. Why anyone would hold him up in veneration instead of using him as a cautionary tale is beyond me, but lmao. Toxic masculinity and an inability to take things with nuance in context apparently comes par for the course with a huge swathe of mandalorian fandom. But I digress.

So. What is a good word for surrender?

We can either redefine cetar, or we can create a new word that carries a neutral-to-positive connotation, so that we can keep cetar for its original incredibly negative intention (which does have its uses and is a necessary word).

Here’s what I suggest:

For serious occasions, we have

kyrte’anir — surrender ; quit while you’re not too far behind

From kyr, to end, and Te Ani’la, Ultimate. Simple, but straightforward.

For light / less serious occasions, there’s

kyrjar’anilar / kyrj’anilar — surrender, give in ; end ultimate foolishness

Again, from kyr, to end, jareor, recklessly risk your life, act suicidally (negative connotation - foolish, not brave (which, lmao, is what YOU ARE when you refuse to tactically surrender)), and again Te Ani’la, Ultimate.

Both words are tied inextricably with Te Ani’la Mand’alor, Mandalore the Ultimate. There’s an arrogance tied in with calling one’s self the Ultimate Mand’alor, a blind kind of arrogance — and given that he was one of the last of the Taung, it’s doubly tragic (almost exterminated all mandalorians, did exterminate all Taung). 

Generally, mando’ade have a tendency to form words from names as cautionary tales — in remembrance of significant moments or people in history (look at, for example, demagolka’s origins). 

They also do, in fact, have multiple other words with the same meaning, usually to carry different weight to meaning, in case anyone wants to comment on “why do we need another word for x.” Like … Mandalorians have MULTIPLE ways to say stupid or foolish. They have multiple words for knives. Multiple ways to apologize. You cannot look me in the eye and tell me that they only have one word for something as significant as surrender, and that its only flavor is coached in such a language as to deter someone from ever surrendering. 

There is no excuse to have mando’a carry clever ways to call someone foolish, and not also ridicule them for getting everyone under their command killed because they were too arrogant, too brainless, and too cowardly to tactically surrender. 

Tbh, crush this idea that all mandalorians, always, refuse to surrender. It’s an idea that’s only supported in a fragile sense of masculinity and pride, and has no basis in the reality of their history and survival.

Finally I’d like to thank @cassiansfuzzyjacket for bouncing ideas around with me, and @variative for wording a definition far more nicely than I could have.

[ranahan]

Canon Mando’a analysis: project outline

Idk, if anyone is curious about what I’m cooking?

I’ll probably re-title and split and merge and move chapters around several times before I’m happy, but the idea is it might look something like this:

Mando’a Phonology

Appendices

Phonetic transcription of Jesse Harlin’s Republic Commando Soundtrack lyrics

Phonology of Jesse Harlin’s Mando’a: vocabulary, phonemic inventory, phonotactics

Phonetic transcriptions of Karen Traviss’s audio recordings

Comparison of Traviss’ glossary ortography, glossary pronunciation, and recorded pronunciation

Phoneme inventory

Phonotactic analysis

Stress analysis

Not necessarily organised in exactly this fashion, but approximately this content.

Mando’a Morphology

Appendices

Tables (so many tables: roots, affixes, compound noun types & couple of specific issues will be covered, but idk yet how these are going to be organised most logically)

Interlinear gloss of Republic Commando Soundtrack lyrics

Mando’a Derivational Dictionary

Now split apart from Mando’a Morphology

Mando’a Syntax

?

Appendices

Interlinear gloss of Republic Commando Soundtrack lyrics (same as above in Morphology)

Interlinear gloss of Traviss’s published Mando’a sentences

Whoops, my hand slipped? That’s about all I can say for myself. 😂

[ranahan]

I’ve finished transcribing the roots section (mostly, I changed my mind on including some things and need to go back and do that later). Now I only need to write something like 150 footnotes, transcribe and do the same for the other sections, finish writing the introductory chapters, create an index, and add in all the references. But on the bright side, this is all stuff that I’ve already worked out and it’s just a matter of putting it on paper.

[ranahan]

Current footnote count.¹⁶⁹ And yep, most of them really do just say “explanation,” “reasoning,” or “etymology” just now. 😂

[ranahan]

@kad-dala

Okay, so I’m just going to preface this by saying I’m an EMT. So if I get pedantic about shit it’s not personal, it’s just me knowing this stuff saves lives and consequently being incapable of being chill about it. If you don’t want to commit to medical realism in your worldbuilding, feel free to ignore me.

First of all, I want to note that there are several triage systems, both across the world and in different situations (in the field vs. in the hospital). I’m going to assume you refer to a triage system like START (used in US and with some modifications in many other parts of the world) which is used by first responders at the scene of a mass casualty incident. TCCC uses a modification on this scheme as well (TCCC is also your google buzzword if you want to learn more about tactical medical care).

I have in my drafts triage as oribru’solet/kadale’solet, lit. emergency/casualty count. Triage comes from French trier (‘to separate, sort, shift, select’): separation/classification is one useful function of triage (but we don’t really have a good root for that), getting numbers is another (which we do have a root for). I’m not married to this word, it’s just the best I could come up at the time it occurred to me.

And here comes the pedantic part, I’m going to nitpick on your classifications:

Red, immediate: ge’tal. The Russian dictionary has linjyc, ‘urgent’ if you want to use that; you could derive it from oribru, ‘emergency’ > oribru’la, ‘emergent, urgent’; or jii, ‘now’ > jiila, ‘immediate’.

Yellow, delayed: shi’yayc. You could use one of the words above for reds and one of the less-immediate for yellows (I don’t know how Mando’a would compare e.g. oribru’la vs. linjyc, same or different as emergency vs. urgent?).

Green, minor/walking wounded: vorpan, kemyc/kem’la kadale (haven’t worked out which adjectival suffix it’s supposed to be). “Walking wounded” is imho a pretty good description, so I chose to calque it (lit. “walking casualties”).

Black, deceased: ne’tra, kyradyc

I don’t know how much background/training you have in triage, but as a quick recap for anyone who doesn’t know what these classifications mean:

Reds are patients who have a problem in one of the major life supporting organ systems: brains, breathing, or bleeding. That’s stuff that has the potential to be immediately life-threatening.

Yellows are patients who aren’t red (i.e. can wait), but aren’t capable of walking. They don’t have to be severely injured: a broken leg won’t kill you, but it will prevent you from evacuating yourself (and will therefore need resources allocated for the evacuation to happen). Or their injuries may be more severe, but they’re holding steady enough they’re not in immediate danger of perishing without medical care that can’t be administered in the field.

Greens are patients who aren’t red and can evacuate themselves. You’ll still need to keep a count of them and give them checkups at some point, because otherwise you’ll miss the guy who’s been walking off an injury with the power of adrenaline, but later keels over from an unchecked bleed. In combat situations, these guys can usually be treated in the field (by medics, or by self- or buddy-aid), and they should be utilized in helping to treat/evacuate the more seriously wounded, securing the scene, or being put back into the fight.

Blacks are deceased. Nothing you can do for them, but you’ll need to check and mark them to make sure you haven’t overlooked someone who you could help.

tldr: The way I see it, the function of triage is not to assign a severity classification, but to assign the order in which casualties are treated and evacuated. The goal is to evacuate and treat everybody, but in mass casualty incidents where there are more casualties than resources, we need to allocate resources in ways which do most good. Or, save most lives and limbs, if you will. Triage classes are also very handy for communicating with people higher in the command chain. Your superiors don’t want or need the medical details, they just want to know what resources they need to assign to your scene. So they’ll be happy if you can tell them you have X people who need urgent medevac (reds); Y people who need medical assistance/evac but can wait (yellows); and Z people who may need non-urgent transportation and checkups/minimal care—or in a combat situation, can continue fighting (greens).

I also think you could use just the first letter of G, S, V and N (or perhaps Oribru’la, Linjyc, Naas (as in the answer “fine”), Kyradyc) as the sigils—easier and faster to write. Ideally—and actually—you’d spend less than 30 seconds per patient when doing your first round of triage. Triage is also a continuous process, so you will need to be able to cross over and rewrite the sigils when you need to move a patient from one category to another. So I think simpler sigils would be more readable. Idk, I’m visualizing mando medics using some kind of paint markers (since they apparently write acronyms like MS on patients) that won’t be washed off by rain/water/mud, but come off with some common solvent like alcohol. But here experience tells me that if it can leave behind a messy residue/unreadable mess, it probably will.

Some other random related vocabulary from my notes:

Adol b’adol (phrase): through and through (of wounds); clear cut (of situations etc)

Agol’shupur (n.): flesh wound, soft-tissue injury

Epan’shupur (n.): gut wound

Casualties (wounded) is kadale, so casualties (deceased) would probably be kyradyce

My take on basic Mandalorian triage terms and symbols

Shupur'sur - damage list, triage,

Ge'tal - red, DAR'KYR'JII not yet dead/urgent,

Shi'yayc - yellow, SHUPUR severe trauma,

Vorpan - green, KADALA injury,

Ne'tra - black, KYRAYC deceased,

Feel free to add on and comment

@ranahan

@quicksilvermad

[ranahan]

Hi! I skimmed your blog, but couldn't find anything on Mando'a for tattoos and related topics. Are there any words/roots in fanon or extrapolations from canon that you'd use for tattoos and such?

I don’t think I have written anything about tattoos, no! And I didn’t have anything in my dictionary either.

The English word for tattoo is a loan from Samoan tatau, which comes from ‘to tap, to strike,’ from the traditional method of tattooing.

And well, this delves pretty far into speculation and headcanons, but there’s one root in Mando’a that could mean the same thing: *dad. I’ve backformed it from dadita, the mando tapping code. The end -ita seems to be a couple of suffixes smashed together (compare kelita, shokita, akaata, etc), leaving the root *dad-. I first thought it might mean something like ‘tap,’ but then I was delving into dialectal English (mostly Tyneside/Geordie and military and naval slang) to figure out some etymologies, and it appears *dad just might come from Geordie dad, ‘blow.’ In my dialect, I’ve used it as a root meaning “rap, knock, tap.”

So back to tattoos! If you wanted to repeat the Polynesian etymology, then tattoo could be something like dadun, dadan, daduk, dadur, etc.

Or alternatively, you could of course derive it from somewhere else or compound it from some other existing roots. For example, Aay’han Community’s dictionary has bev’salan, which is meant to translate to ‘needle-colouring’ I believe. Umei no Mai has pelga’dan, ‘tattooer,’ from pel’gam, ‘skin,’ demar, ‘to carve,’ and -an (same suffix as in e.g. goran). I might have made these something like besal and degam or dengam or demagam instead, but that’s just a different style of compounding.

[ranahan]

Mando’a masterpost

Most of my Mando’a linguistic nerdery you should be able to find under the hashtags #mando’a linguistics and #ranah talks mando’a. Specific topics like phonology and etymology are tagged on newer posts but not necessarily on older. I also reblog lots of other people’s fantastic #mando’a stuff, which many of these posts are replies to.

I also post about #mandalorian culture, other #meta: mandalorians and #star wars meta topics, #star wars languages, #conlangs, and #linguistics. I like to reblog well-reasoned and/or interesting takes on Star Wars and Mandalorian politics, but I am not pro or contra fictional characters or organisations, only pro good storytelling. You can use the featured tags to navigate most of these topics. Not Star Wars content tag is #not star wars, although if it’s on this blog, likely it’s tangentially related or at least Mandalorian-coded.

Currently working on an expanded dictionary and an analysis of canon Mando’a. Updates under #mando’a project. Here are my thoughts on using my stuff (tldr: please do). My askbox is open & I’d love to hear which words, roots or other features you want to see dissected next.

#Phonology

Mando’a vowels

Murmured sounds in Mando’a

Ven’, ’ne and ’shya—phonology of Mando’a affixes

#Morphology

Mando’a demonyms: -ad or -ii?

Agent nouns in Mando’a

Reduplication in Mando’a

Verbal conjugation in Ancient Mando’a & derivations in Modern Mando’a

-nn

Adjectival suffixes (this one is skierunner’s theory, but dang it’s good and it’s on my post, so I’m including it)

e-, i- (prefix) “-ness”

#Syntax

Middle Mando’a creole hypothesis — Relative tenses — Tense, aspect and mood & creole languages — Copula and zero copula in creole languages — More thoughts about Mando’a TAM particles

Mando’a tense/aspect/mood (headcanons)

Mando’a has no passive

Adjectives as passive voice & other strategies

Colloquial Mando’a

Alienable/inalienable possession — more thoughts

Translating wh-words into Mando’a

#Roots, words & etymology

ad ‘child’—but also many other things

adenn, ‘wrath’

akaan & naak: war & peace

an ‘all’ + a collective suffix & plural collectives

ba’ & bah

*bir-, birikad, birgaan & again

cetar ‘kneel’

cinyc & shiny

gai’ka, ka’gaht, la’mun

jagyc, ori’jagyc & misandry

janad

*ka-, kakovidir & cardinal directions

ke’gyce ‘order, command’

*maan-, manda, gai bal manda, kir’manir, ramaan & kar’am & runi: ‘soul’ & ‘spirit’

*nor- & *she- ‘back’ (+ bonus *resh-)

projor ‘next’

riduurok, riduur, kom’rk, shuk’orok

*sak-, sakagal ‘cross’

*sen- ‘fly’

tapul

urmankalar ‘believe’

*ver- ‘earn’

*ya-, yai, yaim (& flyby mentions of eyayah, eyaytir, gayiyla, gayiylir, aliit)

Dialectal English & slang in Mando’a

#Non-canon words

Mining vocabulary

Non-canon reduplications

Many words for many Mandalorians

What’s the word for “greater mandalorian space”?

Names of Mandalorian planets

Dral’Han & derived words

besal ‘silver, steel grey’

derivhaan

hukad & hukal, ’sheath, scabbard’

*maan-, manda, kar’am & runi: ‘soul’ & ‘spirit’ & derivations

mara/maru, ‘amber-root’

*sen- ‘fly’ derivations

tarisen ‘swoop bike’

*ver- ‘earn’ derivations

#mando’a proverbs

#mando’a idioms

Pragmatics & ethnolinguistics

Middle Mando’a creole hypothesis

History of Mando’a — Loanwords in Mando’a

Mando’a timeline

Mandalorian languages

#mandalorian sign language

Kinship terms

Politeness in Mando’a: gedet’ye & ba’gedet’ye — vor entye, vor’e, n’entye — vor’e etc. again — n’eparavu takisit, ni ceta

Mandalorians and medicine, baar’ur, triage

#Mandalorian colour theory (#mandalorians and color): cin & purity, colour associations & orange, cin, ge’tal, saviin & besal, gemstone symbolism

#Mandalorian nature, Flora and fauna of Manda’yaim

starry road

Concordian dialogue retcon

A short history of the Mandalorian Empire

Mandalorian clans & government headcanons

Mando’a handwriting guide: part 1, part 2, part 3

What I would have done differently if I had constructed Mando’a

FAQ

Can you answer a question about combat medicine? May I direct you to my post about Free tactical medicine learning resources.

Can I use your words/headcanons in my own projects? Short answer: yes please.

Do you do translations? If I happen to be in the mood or your translation question is interesting. Feel free to bomb my inbox, but don’t expect quick answers.

What’s your stance on Satine Kryze and the New Mandalorians? They’re fictional and I don’t have one beyond their narrative being interesting & wishing that fandom would have civil conversations about them without calling each other names.

Why do you portray Mandalorians as multi-racial and gender-agnostic when they’re not that diverse in canon? Because that’s the power of transformative works: to create the kind of representation we want to see in a world where it’s lacking.

LGBTQIA? I don’t stand for any shade of discrimination. If I say something insensitive, rest assured it’s because I temporarily misplaced my other brain cell, not because of malice.

NSFW? No. This is a linguistics blog, so cursing and some explicit vocabulary should be expected—slang is one of my interests, and vulgar language comes with the territory—but no porn here. I don’t believe in nudity or sex in themselves being taboo topics and I was a medic for a good chunk of my life, so frank discussions about sex education/medical/anatomical/trauma topics might also happen. I’ll try to tag if these topics come up, but frankly my own explicitness- and gore-meter is kinda broken after a career in emergency medicine, so things might slip by.

Asks under #ranah answers

P.s. Let me know if the links don’t work or something else is wrong (some items don’t have links, they are articles in my draft folder/queue which I’ve listed here so they don’t get lost—sorry for the tease!). Also please tell me if you need me to tag something I haven’t so you can filter it: this blog is for readers—if I was writing just for myself, I wouldn’t bother to edit and publish—so let me know what I can do to make it work better for you. Thanks!

[ranahan]

Mandalorian soul(s) & Mando’a words for them

So have you noticed how Mando’a has three different words for a soul or a spirit: manda, kar’am, and runi?

Warnings for lots of speculation and headcanons about Mandalorian religion and spirituality.

What is a soul?

First of all, I want to note that cultures around the world have very different ideas of what the soul is. The Christian idea of an immortal soul that goes to heaven after the body dies is hardly the only or even the most prevalent one. Many cultures believe there are many different kinds of souls and that humans have more than one soul.

I was going to draw examples from earthly cultures and religions, but I just put about 50 posts in my drafts folder and I want to publish this before it disappears in that black hole where no information escapes from. Suffice it to say that people have really different takes on what a soul is. Seriously, look up some examples. Blow your mind a bit.

GFFA of course also has the Force, so who knows what kinds of Force traditions Mandalorians have if any, and how those would affect their views of souls and spirituality. I recently reblogged Izzy’s interesting headcanons about Mandalorians and the Force, if anyone is in need of inspiration.

*maan- ‘original’ & Manda

In the canon dictionary, this root on its own is an adjective:

maan (adj): original, first

That’s “original, first” in the sense of “genuine, true” and given the derivations, the root *maan- at least probably also carries the meaning of “inherent, intrinsic, innate”.

*maan- also appears in words like:

veman (adj): real, genuine

Probably from *vut- ‘special’ + maan. “Really original”.

ramaan (n): death (a neutral term)

Probably from *ram- ‘attack’ + maan, “the original attack(er)” or ram + an, “one who attacks all”. Could be either. I’m more partial to the latter etymology, but I’m putting ramaan here just in case.

I believe that the element *mand- that appears in lots of words like mando, manda, and their derivations, is etymologically maan-ad, which has lost an unstressed vowel. This carries the meaning of ‘first person, original person’ or as a plural, “first/original people” which is actually what a number of earthly peoples call themselves. Like that’s a very, very common etymology for the name of your own tribe.

So I reconstruct *maanad (or the same with a short vowel, *manad) as an archaic word with the meaning of “a mandalorian”. I also reconstruct it with a second meaning of “true self, innate self, inner self”, or a soul in that sense. So then…

manda (n): collective soul

…could be an archaic plural of manad-a, with a lost syllable in the middle which is a really common pattern in Mando’a. Mando’a uses plural as a way to form collective concepts, so this is “all Mandalorian souls”.

So when you have gai bal manda, “name and soul”, or kir’manir ‘to adopt, give a soul to someone’, the soul here is specifically the Mandalorian soul, a partaking of the shared identity.

Kir’manir could also be glossed as “to give an origin”, which in Mandalorian terms is exactly what you are doing when you adopt someone: you take them in as a part of your clan. For Mandalorians who don’t care about bloodlines, this is just as legitimate a tie as being born into a clan: in both cases, you become a part of the shared ancestry and heritage.

This is a headcanon, but the picture I get of Mandalorians is that anyone can be a Mandalorian (if you have mandokar, literally “Mandalorian heart”)—but no one can be a Mandalorian without a clan (it’s in the Resol’nare & and in words like kir’manir). You need to get adopted in order to convert and become a Mandalorian. You need to have a clan to hold up the basic tenets of being a mando’ad. You need to be adopted in order to share in the web of souls that make up the manda. This is a really interesting dichotomy. It makes Mandalorians kind of into an ethnic religion like Judaism, only you don’t need to be born as a Mandalorian, only be adopted as one.

In fact, I think that adopting your biological children is really common if not the norm. If you view the gai bal manda in the light of giving the child a soul and a tie-in to the manda, then gai bal manda is to Mandalorians what baptism is to Christians. You can’t go to the Christian heaven without a baptism, and you can’t reach the manda without gai bal manda. I imagine this is where the fanon of adopting dead children so they don’t have to wander eternally comes from (someone hit me with a name; who came up with that? I love it!).

But also! Mandalorians in general are not depicted as very religious. So I guess this is one belief, but it is probably not shared universally and perhaps not even widely. Maybe it’s an old belief, developed in the aftermath of the Mandalorian Wars, when the tie of the non-Taung to their adopted ancestors was still tenuous, and while they were moving away from the worship of the old gods, religious beliefs of all kinds were still rampant. And in the upheaval before they settled on a new canon, all kinds of beliefs and split-off religious sects sprung up left and right.

kar’am

kar’am (n): breath

Okay, not soul. But I believe this is “breath” in the sense of “spirit” (breath and spirit are connected words in many many many languages). Not breath in the sense of “to breathe” as in the bodily function (that’s haal).

So what kind of a spirit is this? Well, it’s made of two roots: *kar- ‘heart, core’ and *am- ‘change’. Heart for mandalorians is also the seat of knowledge and by extension, consciousness. Change is a loaded concept spiritually.

But the interpretation I want to go with is that change is also considered the true nature of the reality and natural world, and is thus connected to a lot of words that relate to nature and reality. The Aay’han dictionary has aman (n): nature, lit. “one who changes all” and I absolutely adore that. So kar’am would be a more bodily spirit, related to life force, vital force, vitality and physical states. So you could derive words like:

akaan’karam: morale, fighting spirit

to’karam: “together spirit”, the spirit of pulling together for a common cause.

ures kar’am: listless, lifeless

Alternatively, you could derive these form oya instead.

Runi

runi (n): soul (poetic only)

My best guess is that this is *run- + nominal suffix -i.

Best I can tell, there are no other words related to it in the dictionary, unless it’s related to the past prefix r’/ru’ and ruug ‘old age’, in which case the sense could be something like “the thing which has gone” as in “the soul has fled”.

So what about the definition? Traviss says “poetic only”, so which poetic sense is she referring to? English (in which the translation is given) has several:

The innate quality that makes something itself, “the soul of (something)”. I would have been tempted to go for this sense, but for me that seems like repeating *maan-. It could of course be that over the time, maan has come to mean Mandalorianness specifically, so runi has acquired this more general sense which maan had originally.

The animating principle, vital force. Already interpreted kar’am this way. And even if I scrapped that interpretation, I’d go with oya instead, not runi.

Embodiment, personification. “You are the very soul of the party.”

Psyche, “body and soul”. Does not seem very “poetic” to me?

Person. “Not a soul.”

A strong positive feeling, inspiration, passion, fervour. Hmm, in Mando’a words like that seem to be derived from oya.

A supernatural spirit.

So which sense was Traviss going for? Shab if I know.

I’ll make a part 2 with some more derived words later, but now I want to post this before going to bed.

[ranahan]

Yes, Mando’a is terribly incomplete, but not every lexical “gap” in the dictionary is a gap (I’ve written about it for kinship terms here). And even those that are real gaps, aren’t bugs: they’re opportunities for worldbuilding.

Our medical system is divided up into a lot of little subdivisions: neurology, cardiology, paediatrics, pathology, oncology, and a baker’s dozen of others. And within a specialty, different professionals have strict roles and standards of training: combat medic, EMT, paramedic, doctor. In our system, a doctor is a specialist in medicine and a nurse is a specialist in nursing and never shall the two step into each other’s fields.

Partly this is our perception as professionals working within the system. Laymen may not be capable of making or understanding the differences.

If we just translate English words like ‘doctor’ and ‘medic’, we are making a lot of assumptions about how the Mandalorian medical system and education works. Namely, that it works the same way as our 21st century hospitals do.

And I’ve got to tell you, even in EU where nursing education is standardised, emergency care credentials don’t travel because each country has different emergency care systems and standards and education levels for their medics.

But who knows how surgery droids and medical scanners and AI assistants might change how medicine works and is taught? Do they treat nursing and medicine as separate fields or as a continuum with different levels of training? Maybe nurses are replaced by droids? Maybe surgeons are? Is physiotherapy or psychology a subdivision of medicine or a different field? And what about cultural differences: did Mandalorian medicine develop from a tradition that resembled western medicine, or perhaps from a tradition that resembled Chinese medicine? Are doctors paid for treating illnesses or for keeping patients healthy?

This is a basic problem in conlanging (basic as in foundational, not necessarily easy). Different languages divide up the same semantic space differently. English divides the semantic space describing temperature into hot—warm—cool—cold, but French makes do with chaud—froid. English has ice—water—steam, but Japanese divides water into hot and cold: kōri—mizu—yu—jōki. English divides hand and arm, while Finnish uses käsi for both. Words are defined in relation to other words, they form systems. If we just translate English words without thinking about the systems, we are going to replicate the English system and essentially create a very complicated cipher for English.

I understand why using baar’ur for both ‘medic’ and ‘doctor’ bugs you. In English, a medic and a doctor have wildly different skillsets and levels of training (I’m a medic, but please don’t ever ask me to act as a doctor!). But maybe Mando’a has a catch-all term for all medical professionals. Think about it: Mandalorians are nomadic, spacefaring people. They would come into contact with (and possibly be forced to seek medical treatment from) wildly different worlds and cultures. Their native Mando’a terms for medical professionals wouldn’t translate! So perhaps baar’ur originated as a slang term for any medical professional, and was later adopted into wider use. Baar’ur is essentially a ‘body-man’—sounds like slang, doesn’t it?

Or perhaps Mandalorian medicine developed from combat medicine, and that’s how ‘medic’ became generalised to mean any medical professional. And if that’s the case, perhaps they differentiate different levels of education by ranks (or terms derived from military ranks) instead. Rather like every infantryman is an infantryman, but some are privates and some are captains.

Since this happens to be my field, I’d love to work out medical vocabulary for Mando’a. As soon as I’ve covered phonotactics, proto-Mando’a, basic vocabulary, grammar… Uh… it might be a while.

P.s. I’d love to have a link to a “big ancient fandom compiled spreadsheet”. Mind sharing?

Just wanted to say, a doctor and a medic are not always the same thing! A doctor could be a medic, but a medic doesn’t have to be a doctor! The terms are not always interchangeable :)

(Please please never ever ask me to act as a medic LOL)

(Brought to you after noting Mandalorians in fic being referred to as baar’ur [medic] even though they are in fact explicitly a doctor.)

[ranahan]

What do you think is the correct word for "greater Mandalorian space"? I've seen 'Mandalase', don't remember where though, and have been using Tra'Manda in my own fics. Is there anything established in canon/fanon?

Good question! I’ve pondered it myself and the answer I’ve arrived at is that there should probably be several words.

See, what is meant by “the greater Mandalorian space” probably varies depending on the time and the speaker and the context, because the Mandalorian civilisation is a bit like the Roman civilisation: do you mean Rome the city, Rome the administrative region, the Roman Empire, or the Roman world as a cultural area?

For Mandalore we have at least these different senses:

Mandalore the planet (“Mandalore actual” or Manda’yaim)

Mandalore system (which includes at least three other inhabited planets and moons)

Mandalore sector

The entire area of space administered by the Mandalorian government (which is never really defined in canon)

Mandalorian Empire (historical)

The wider Mandalorian cultural area/area influenced or historically a part of the Mandalorian Empire

The indented words are from the unedited parts of my dictionary, so they are somewhat tentative and I’m not necessarily married to them. However this is what I currently have.

#1

The first is easy, the planet Mandalore is called Manda’yaim in Mando’a.

Manda’yaim: 1 the planet Mandalore, the fifth planet in the Mandalore system, capital world of the Mandalorians; 2 during periods of diaspora, can also refer to other Mandalorian areas or enclaves

haat’manda’yaim: Manda'yaim proper; planet Mandalore in contrast to its satellite Concordia, other planets in the Mandalore system, other Mandalorian worlds, or Mandalorian enclaves of the Mandalorian diaspora

#2

The Mandalorian system we can probably form directly from the word for a star system, perhaps Mando’tolase, lit. Mandalorian system, assuming tolase is also the word used for star systems and not just for other kinds of systems (not sure which way I lean on it tbh). Or Manda’tolase, if you subscribe to the fandom take that the star Mandalore is named Manda (or a variation thereof).

Or people might colloquially refer to the Mandalorian system also as Manda’lase.

I imagine there’s probably some kind of interplanetary law which defines what area of space is considered to belong to a planetary system and what is “international waters”/deep space.

#3-4

The third is what I suppose you were asking about. I’ve seen Manda’lase all over the place, but I don’t actually know where it came from—if anyone does know, please let me know! Linguistically the derivation goes something like this: manda ‘the shared Mandalorian oversoul’ > manda’la ‘having the Mandalorian soul, i.e. Mandalorian’ > Manda’lase ‘all of Mandalorians collectively’. In any case, I rather like it and have been using it myself since it seems about as established as anything in Fando’a.

Edit: Manda’lase appears to have been coined by Batsutousai; thanks for @johamur for pointing it out!

Mando’tra, Mandalorian space could also work. Manda’tra, substituting the word mando ‘mandalorian’ for manda ‘soul’, sounds to me a bit like the emphasis is on the shared culture less than the shared administration. Not that Mandalorians themselves necessarily see a big difference there.

It’s unclear whether Mandalore sector refers to a geographical area or an administrative region. I guess in everyday speech, people might conflate the two and use Manda’lase for both. So you might end up with a definition something like the following:

Manda’lase: 1 Mandalorian space; 2 Mandalorian system; 3 Mandalorian sector (colloquially)

In any case, I haven’t come up with a word for sector I like yet, although it’s on my list of needed words.

#5-6

For the historical Mandalorian Empire, I have:

Mando’alorai (or Mand’alorai): 1 Mandalorian Empire (historical); 2 still sometimes used of the regions that used to be governed by the Empire as a cultural area

alorai (n): 1 empire; 2 realm, domain, holding, governed area

Where alorai is either a portmanteau of alor + veeray, or alor + the same nominal suffix -ai we have in e.g. parjai.

Another option is:

Ori’Manda’lase: Mandalorian Empire (lit. Great Mandalore); Greater Mandalore, the historical region of space once controlled by the Mandalorian Empire

ori’manda’la (a): imperial (of Mandalorian Empire specifically, not other empires); of or belonging to Greater Mandalore, the historical region once controlled by Mandalorian Empire

ori’manda’lase tugoten (n): Mandalorian Empire Revivalism (Revanchism), an ideology on Mandalore that supports the revival of the Mandalorian Empire and a return to Mandalore's conquering days.

ori’manda’lase tugotenii (n): Mandalorian Empire revivalist, a supporter of Mandalorian Empire Revivalism. Tugotenii for short.

I’m using revivalism and revivalist over revanchism and revanchist, because in the Star Wars universe revanchists could be confused with supporters of Revan.

In any case, I think context should determine whether you mean the historical empire as a nation state, or the historical empire as a current area of cultural influence. Most reasonable beings would use Mandalorian Empire in either of these two senses, but then you have the likes of Tor Vizsla, who’d probably use a term with a similar sense to “Greater Russia”, i.e. areas that “should” belong to or be returned to Mandalorian governance.

I have some other scattered words and thoughts about Mandalorian government and citizenship, but this is already pretty long. In any case, that’s what a quick search through my dictionary file brought up, hope you found something to your liking!