# Why can't Yoda use proper grammar? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 4, 2011, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-yoda-use-proper-grammar/591454 "2011-08-04T13:12:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Telperion](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telperion/32/509_2.png) [@Telperion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telperion)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2011, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-yoda-use-proper-grammar/591454/21 "2011-08-04T15:15:33Z")
> [@Labdad](#): > > If that’s not enough, you can also have Darth Vader on your GPS. (I command you to turn left!") That seems downright dangerous if you don’t do as he tells you. “_I find your lack of brakes disturbing._” ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2011, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-yoda-use-proper-grammar/591454/22 "2011-08-04T15:36:03Z")
> [@Telperion](#): > > That seems downright dangerous if you don’t do as he tells you. “_I find your lack of brakes disturbing._” Worse would be Obi-Wan Kenobi: “This is not the road you are looking for.” ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2011, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-yoda-use-proper-grammar/591454/23 "2011-08-04T15:42:43Z")
> [@Giles](#): > > Worse would be Obi-Wan Kenobi: “This is not the road you are looking for.” Or whiny Luke: “But I wanted to go into town.” ---
**Author:** ![fighting\_ignorant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ac8455/32.png) [@fighting\_ignorant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fighting_ignorant)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2011, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-yoda-use-proper-grammar/591454/24 "2011-08-04T15:48:47Z")
> [@runner pat](#): > > Or whiny Luke: “But I wanted to go into town.” You can go into town when your chores are finished. ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2011, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-yoda-use-proper-grammar/591454/25 "2011-08-04T15:49:50Z")
For the hell of it, I went through the “do or do not, there is no try” scene and checked each of Yoda’s lines. Yes, I’m bored. Leaving aside most “incomplete” sentences like commands, which are just V or VO: “So certain are you?” OVS. “Always with you what cannot be done.” Um. Complex. “What cannot be done” is SVO, though. “Hear you nothing that I say?” VSO, which is totally out of left field. “You must unlearn what you have learned.” Perfectly standard SVO. “There is no try.” SVO. “Size matters not.” Incomplete, but this is one of those lines that gets trotted out as evidence of Yoda’s weird speech. It’s standard SVO (technically SV), but it’s archaic. Modern English speakers would just say “Size doesn’t matter.” Neither is wrong. “Judge me by my size, do you?” And we have our first Yoda Rule OSV! “And well you should not.” SV. “For my ally is the Force.” SVO. “And a powerful ally it is.” OSV. “Life creates it, makes it grow.” SVO. “Its energy surrounds us and binds us.” SVO. “Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.” OVS. “You must feel the Force around you.” SVO. “That is why you fail.” SVO. So we have: VSO = 1 OVS = 2 OSV = 2 SVO = 10 OSV is vastly underrepresented compared to the attention it gets. It’s only used for effect, as are a couple other constructions, and Yoda’s speech is overwhelmingly standard SVO form. Even the incompletes that I didn’t tally generally fall under standard English (like “feel the Force” and “do or do not”). ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2011, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-yoda-use-proper-grammar/591454/26 "2011-08-04T15:49:56Z")
> [@fighting\_ignorant](#): > > You can go into town when your chores are finished. Now drink your blue milk. ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2011, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-yoda-use-proper-grammar/591454/27 "2011-08-04T16:38:55Z")
> [@Bosstone](#): > > … “Hear you nothing that I say?” VSO, which is totally out of left field. … No, that’s normal word order for a question in English, but archaic, because current English uses auxiliary verbs for questions, e.g. “Do you hear nothing that I say?” ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2011, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-yoda-use-proper-grammar/591454/28 "2011-08-04T16:42:37Z")
> [@Giles](#): > > No, that’s normal word order for a question in English, but archaic, because current English uses auxiliary verbs for questions, e.g. “Do you hear nothing that I say?” Oh, absolutely. Everything about Yoda’s speech is merely archaic, not alien. It’s just out of left field because we’re talking about SVO versus OSV, and here comes a totally different (but still correct) construction. ---
**Author:** ![Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e47c2d/32.png) [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2011, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-yoda-use-proper-grammar/591454/29 "2011-08-04T16:46:29Z")
I thought he German was. (Isn’t there a line from Sherlock Holmes about how only the Germans “treat their verbs so discourteously”?) ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2011, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-yoda-use-proper-grammar/591454/30 "2011-08-04T16:53:40Z")
Talk like _Zoidberg_, he does! I assumed Yoda spoke Yiddish as his native tongue. ---
**Author:** ![Kizarvexius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/da6949/32.png) [@Kizarvexius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kizarvexius)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2011, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-yoda-use-proper-grammar/591454/31 "2011-08-04T16:56:51Z")
> [@Telperion](#): > > That seems downright dangerous if you don’t do as he tells you. “_I find your lack of brakes disturbing._” I think I juth bit my tongue in half. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2011, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-yoda-use-proper-grammar/591454/32 "2011-08-04T17:15:08Z")
> [@](#): > > But if he’s had 900 years to practice the language, you’d think he’d be a little better at it than that. I mean, if I had even 40 years to practice French (the language I studied in college and high school), I bet I’d get pretty good at it. I’d still have an accent, probably, but I don’t think the grammar would trip me up that much. As a high school coach I heard once said, “Practice doesn’t make perfect. Practice makes permanent. Perfect practice makes perfect.”. He’s had 900 years of practice in speaking in his own style, and that’s a hard habit to break. And **Jophiel** , I’ve heard that Yoda’s speech patterns were actually deliberately modeled on Yiddish. ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2011, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-yoda-use-proper-grammar/591454/33 "2011-08-04T17:20:10Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > And **Jophiel** , I’ve heard that Yoda’s speech patterns were actually deliberately modeled on Yiddish. Now this I can believe. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2011, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-yoda-use-proper-grammar/591454/34 "2011-08-04T17:34:52Z")
We have actual human beings who have lived on Earth all their life, in one area of the world even, who cannot string together a sentence using correct grammar. Expect too much from an alien you do. ---
**Author:** ![Gangster\_Octopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a8b319/32.png) [@Gangster\_Octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gangster_Octopus)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2011, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-yoda-use-proper-grammar/591454/35 "2011-08-04T18:10:46Z")
Why do we assume Yoda is grammatically incorrect? Maybe wrong we are. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_T](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Gary\_T](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_T)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2011, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-yoda-use-proper-grammar/591454/36 "2011-08-04T21:15:04Z")
It’s more specifically a matter of [syntax](http://grammar.about.com/od/rs/g/syntax.htm). ---
**Author:** ![MostlyClueless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@MostlyClueless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MostlyClueless)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2011, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-yoda-use-proper-grammar/591454/37 "2011-08-04T21:19:21Z")
[Yoda’s response](http://img2.moonbuggy.org/imgstore/up-the-shut-fuck.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2011, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-yoda-use-proper-grammar/591454/38 "2011-08-04T21:31:06Z")
> [@Jophiel](#): > > I assumed Yoda spoke Yiddish as his native tongue. And I’ve claimed for years that, along with Spanish, Yiddish was America’s second language. I had to be told Yoda talked funny. But Frank Oz is Dutch, and our Dutch assistant pastor was a close family friend, so that’s more reason to assume his speech patterns were normal. ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2011, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-yoda-use-proper-grammar/591454/39 "2011-08-04T22:33:13Z")
> [@Odesio](#): > > We have actual human beings who have lived on Earth all their life, in one area of the world even, who cannot string together a sentence using correct grammar. Expect too much from an alien you do. No we don’t (except babies, on a technicality, and those with particular sorts of hardcore brain damage). But we have an awful lot of actual human beings who can’t (or can’t be bothered to) correctly analyze the grammar of some other human beings… ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2011, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-yoda-use-proper-grammar/591454/40 "2011-08-04T23:50:36Z")
Yoda also likes to fuck with people’s heads. He likes to pretend to be smaller and weaker than he really is. Note, for example, that cane he’s always carrying around. He clearly doesn’t need it, as his fight with Dooku amply demonstrates. It’s a prop, to make him look old and feeble, and trick people into underestimating him. I suspect his speech pattern is at least 75% act. He could speak properly if he wanted to, but he doesn’t, because he wants people to underestimate him. **Bosstone** , if you’re still bored, it would be interesting to see another breakdown of Yoda’s speech patterns, from before he lets Luke know who he really is. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-yoda-use-proper-grammar/591454.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-yoda-use-proper-grammar/591454.md?page=3)