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star wars - Why does Yoda speak the way he does?


Yoda's unique speech consisting of reversed grammar is iconic.


Is there any reason he has adopted this speech pattern?


All other alien species encountered seem to have no trouble speaking normally. Why does Yoda speak in this way?



Answer



Out of universe, his strange syntax has a high symbolism of Yoda's personality; he always put action last. This fits well with the old master and hermit guru archetypes.


In universe, we don't know much about Yoda's species mostly because "George Lucas maintains a strict policy of keeping the history, name, origin, and whereabouts of this species secret".


From Yoda's Wookieepedia article :




Yoda spoke an unusual version of Basic. He usually tended to place verbs (especially auxiliaries) after the object and subject (an object-subject-verb format). An example of Yoda's speech pattern: "When nine hundred years old you reach, look as good you will not." Most agreed that this pattern of speech was convoluted, and while it seems as though others of his species (e.g. Yaddle) had the same penchant for rearranging sentences, not all of them did (e.g. Vandar Tokare).



So, since others (but not all) of his species speak this way, it's probably a cultural matter.


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