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Languages in Star Wars
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The fictional universe of Star Wars contains many languages. The languages have a role in the story lines. Because of the various languages characters speak in Star Wars they often cannot understand each other. The character C-3PO is a translator fluent in many languages who acts as a go-between for other characters in the stories.
spoken language most often heard, a lingua franca, in the Star Wars films and stories is Galactic Basic (shortened to Basic), although this name itself is never explicitly mentioned in the films.
Other Languages
Huttese
Another lingua franca in the Star Wars Universe that is spoken by many groups and species is Huttese, spoken on Tatooine and other worlds in and around Hutt space.
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Encyclopedia
The fictional universe of Star Wars contains many languages. The languages have a role in the story lines. Because of the various languages characters speak in Star Wars they often cannot understand each other. The character C-3PO is a translator fluent in many languages who acts as a go-between for other characters in the stories.
Basic: the common intergalactic language
The spoken language most often heard, a lingua franca, in the Star Wars films and stories is Galactic Basic (shortened to Basic), although this name itself is never explicitly mentioned in the films.
Other Languages
Huttese
Another lingua franca in the Star Wars Universe that is spoken by many groups and species is Huttese, spoken on Tatooine and other worlds in and around Hutt space. It is spoken in the films by both non-humans (Jabba the Hutt, Watto, Sebulba and others) and humans. Its phonology is said to be based on the Quechua language.
Tribal tongue of the Ewoks
The Ewoks of the forest moon of Endor speak a "primitive dialect" of one of the six million other forms of communication that C-3PO is familiar with, although what this language was is unknown. Ben Burtt, Return of the Jedi’s sound designer, created the Ewok language. According to Burtt, in Bantha Tracks #17 August 1982: "For the Ewoks, I was inspired by a recording on a BBC documentary of an elderly woman speaking Tibetan. It was very high-pitched and sounded like a good basis for Ewokese to me. Eventually then, what evolved was a pidgin, or double talk version of words from Tibetan, Nepali and other Mongolian languages [sic, neither Tibetan nor the Nepali language are Mongolian or even Altaic languages] Huttese was created by the same process." Some have noted that certain phrases uttered by the Ewoks are in real languages sampled from Earth, such as Tagalog (Philippines), and Swedish : "Ayun! Puno daw 'ito!" (When C3PO is being worshipped) means: "There! This is the leader!" in Filipino. Also, "Wala na, wala na, patay," said when an Ewok was killed, means "No more, no more, dead."
Wookie language of Shyriiwook
Shyriiwook (also called Wookiee Speak, or contracted as "Wookieespeak" in the Extended Universe, and video games) is the native language of the Wookiee race. The language consists of animalistic roars and growls. Although it can be understood by members of other species, it is extremely difficult for most non-Wookiees to speak. In Timothy Zahn's "Heir to the Empire", Leia Organa Solo encounters a Wookiee with a speech impediment which conveniently renders his Shyriiwook pronunciation much easier to understand by Leia. Another Wookiee language, Xaczik, is indigenous to Wartaki Island on Kashyyyk and several outlying coastal regions.
Ithorians
Ithorians have two mouths, one on each side of their head. Despite the stereophonic quality of their voices, Ithorians are able to speak Basic, and be understood by others, with ease.
Geonosians
Another alien species with a language are the insectoid Geonosians seen in Episode II, whose language includes click consonants.
Tusken Raiders
The Tusken Raiders of Tatooine, according to the video game Knights of the Old Republic, speak a language of their own; it is, however, difficult for non-Tuskens to understand this language. In the game, a droid named HK-47 assists the player in communicating with the Tusken Raiders.
Jawaese and Jawa Trade Language
The Jawas, also found on Tatooine, speak in a high-pitched, squeaky voice.
Ryl language of the Twi'leks
Twi'leks speak their own language, Ryl, which incorporates spoken words and a form of sign language, using subtle manipulations of the tips of their head tails.
Rodian language
Rodians have their own language called Rodese.
Droids and computers
Droids (robots) and computers in Star Wars use either the natural languages or machine languages. C-3PO is "fluent in over six million forms of communication" and protocol droids are often employed as translators. Astromech droids such as R2-D2 communicate through an information-dense language of beeps and whistles known as Binary; devices exist that can translate this language into Basic. A few non-droids can also learn to understand it through working with the droids for long periods of time, and protocol droids are able to translate Binary into other languages.
Writing
Hindu-Arabic numerals appear throughout the films, mainly on computer displays counting down time or distance. At least one instance of the Latin alphabet crops up in the original version of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope ("POWER - TRACTOR BEAM 12 (SEC. N6)"). Text in the other films is either illegible, offscreen, or in fictional scripts. For the 2004 DVD release, this writing was changed to the Aurebesh alphabet. In the novel The Truce at Bakura, the Ssi-ruuk speak some sort of tonal language which involves whistles. A human prisoner devises an orthography for this language.
Language building
The languages of some fictional worlds have been worked out in great detail, with grammatical rules and large vocabularies, such as J. R. R. Tolkien's Elvish languages, and the Klingon language of Star Trek. The fictional languages of Star Wars, in contrast, are not systematically worked out. The Wookiee growls and the beeps of the astromechs mainly carry emotional indicators for the audience via intonation, and Huttese is mainly a jumble of words taken from numerous real human languages. The language most often heard in the films, Galactic Basic, is itself identical to modern English, with only a few changed idioms and additions of words related to the Star Wars setting. Mando'a, the language of the Mandalorians, is being developed into a working language by Star Wars author Karen Traviss.
Other languages heard are also human languages, albeit ones likely unfamiliar to most of the audience. In A New Hope, for instance, the language spoken by the character Greedo in conversation with Han Solo (in the cantina) is actually a simplified version of Quechua, an indigenous language of the Andean region of South America. In Return of the Jedi, Lando Calrissian's copilot, Nien Nunb, speaks the real human language Haya, spoken in Tanzania (Star Wars Insider #67, 31). Nunb's voice was performed by a Tanzanian exchange student. Similarly, the Ewok language was based on Tibetan, although some fans claim that they also hear English being spoken by the Ewoks at some points during the film. One can also hear some Finnish in the The Phantom Menace, and "Teräs Käsi", the name of a martial art in the Expanded Universe, comes from Finnish and translates as "steel hand".
The Star Wars: Galactic Phrase Book & Travel Guide summarizes book and movie information pertaining to Huttese, Bacce, Ewok, Shyriiwook, droid, Jawa, and Gungan.
Further reading
- Ben Burtt, Star Wars: Galactic Phrase Book & Travel Guide, ISBN 0-345-44074-9.
- Stephen Cain, Tim Conley, and Ursula K. Le Guin, "Star Wars," Encyclopedia of Fictional and Fantastic Languages (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2006), 173-.
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