Star Wars Grammar By Yoda – A Delight For All You Grammar Lovers

Something for Star Wars grammar lovers.

There is nothing better than a little inverted Yoda grammar to get the purists’ teeth gnashing. This fantastic infographic gives a few examples of Yoda speak, which I have to admit, I love.

From inverted word order, or inversion, to dropping auxiliaries, moving modifiers, all the way through to dropping the negative auxiliary. What fun.

He even changes the verb-subject order, when the fancy takes him.

Grammar rules

While this is a fun little read, what this infographic really says, is that grammar is a flexible set of general rules.

They can be modified, changed, and interpreted in a number of ways.

However, it pays to know the rules first before you decide to bend or break them.

So enjoy this taste of Yoda Star Wars grammar, courtesy of Grammarly, and try not to gnash your teeth too much.

Yoda Grammar

Explaining Yoda Speak

There’s also a great article in the Atlantic that goes into the details of the construction of Yoda language.

You should read the whole article, but here is a snippet.

But what’s actually going on with Yoda, linguistically? First, let’s examine how Yoda doesn’t speak. Many of the world’s most-spoken languages—English, Mandarin—are built around constructions that go subject-verb-object. An example would be: Yoda grasped the lightsaber.

Another common construction, and one you’d find more commonly among speakers of Japanese, Albanian, and many other languages, goes subject-object-verb: Yoda the lightsaber grasped. More rare is a verb-subject-object construction, but that’s how people who speak Hawaiian and some Celtic languages do it: Grasped Yoda the lightsaber.

Even more unusual is the way Yoda famously speaks, ordering his sentences object-subject-verb, or OSV: The lightsaber Yoda grasped. Or, to use an example from an actual Yoda utterance: “Much to learn, you still have.”

Summary

Yes, it’s all a bit of fun.

But it is a good example of how English grammar is very flexible.

There’s always another way you can say something.

Related Reading: 55 Funny English Grammar Rules To Help You Write Better