Parents are always excited to hear their child’s first word. Will it be “Mama”? “Dada”? Or maybe something completely unexpected? So tell me this, Mandalorian watchers: what will the Child’s first word be to parent-figure Mando? As a parent myself, as well as a world language teacher, these are my morning coffee thoughts as we work through Season 2 of Jon Favreau’s The Mandalorian.
Right now, fans of “Baby Yoda” (yeah, I like the moniker, even if Favreau hates it) love every coo and giggle from the big-eyed cutie pie. But eventually, it stands to reason that the Child will begin to talk. So what will it say? What will it sound like?
I’m basically just a Star Wars movie fan, so don’t go all Extended Universe on me. But here’s my academic take. From a language perspective, the original Yoda speaks the English-like language known as “Galactic Basic” in the films. But his distinctive syntax, or irregular word order, leads me to guess that Basic is not his first language (L1). Think about how we native English speakers use our own language, which mirrors Basic. It’s generally subject-verb-object (SVO): The girl picks up the cat. Yoda uses an object-subject-verb syntax (OSV), which would make him say, The cat the girl picks up. Second language acquisition rules tell us that one of the levels of language learning means using L2 vocabulary with L1 syntax, so it would stand to reason that Yoda’s first language has that same OSV syntax. (Hush. I’ve got the paper on the wall that says I know what I’m talking about.)
Now, this does not mean The Child will echo Yoda’s syntax simply because they seem to be the same species. Yeah, we’re talking about a fictional universe, but all good fiction is rooted in reality at some juncture. If you are a parent, have witnessed children picking up a first (or second) language, or have studied an additional language to your first one, you can observe plenty of accepted tenets of language acquisition.
The Child’s origins may also play a role in its inevitable language acquisition, and that’s where the fun part begins. Favreau hasn’t really told us much as to the little one’s backstory, other than it is definitively not Yoda’s offspring. (Damn, that would have been so much fun!) There is no lack of theories out there in the fandom, let me tell you. Was the Child cloned from a relative of Yoda or at least one of their species? Was he stolen or kidnapped? On the surface, I am comfortable assuming it was kidnapped, as the Child’s location when Mando acquired him in Season 1 didn’t seem like any type of lab. It was a dirty, cluttered compound. That doesn’t scream “high-tech cloning operation” to me. Rather, it seemed like an out-of-the-way hiding place.
We know the Child is about 50 years old, and Yoda lived to more than 900. So at approximately five percent of his life, how much language acquisition has it already accomplished? If the Child was at least born (Replicated?? How do they reproduce?? So. Many. Questions.) to its own species, did it get a linguistic start with the native language? At what point was it stolen, and who was keeping the Child? How much exposure to those languages did the Child have? And now that Mando is its primary caretaker/adoptive parent, how much influence will Mando’s language patterns have on the Child?
Fellow Star Wars fan, I wish I had the answer.
We are left to our imaginations, to some extent, since so little about Yoda was revealed within the scope of the triple trilogies. (Yoda appeared or is heard in eight of nine films, plus the series Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels).
Our only other sightings of Yoda’s species are, of course, the Child in The Mandalorian and a female of the species, a Jedi character named Yaddle who appears in The Phantom Menace. Although Yoda’s creator and Star Wars originator George Lucas maintains that there is no backstory to preserve some mystery to Yoda and his species, I’m sure he didn’t quite envision where this would lead. The lack of backstory is frustrating the hell out me. The species has no known name, no known home planet, no known history, no known language.
So I’m sure Favreau will keep us guessing until the very last minute. He seems to be playing the long game, maintaining the maddening mystery that Lucas began. At least with an animatronic puppet character, the aging process of the Child can be staved off, unlike a human child actor who can grow both exponentially and unexpectedly during the filming of a series. We can probably expect to hear the gentle gurgles and squeals of Baby Yoda for quite some time. But when that first word comes? The Child’s fandom will explode with joy, I’m sure.
I have probably either had too much or not enough coffee at this point.
The Mandalorian is streaming on Disney+.