From Amazonas, Yoda is

Why does Yoda speak the way he does? Where does his language come from? To answer that question, you have to understand that languages often have a particular grammatical order.

In languages like English and Mandarin, this order is subject-verb-object i.e. ‘Yoda felt a disturbance in the Force’.

In other languages such as Japanese, the grammatical order is subject-object-verb i.e. ‘Yoda, a disturbance in the Force, felt’.

But in a very few languages, the order is object-subject-verb i.e. ‘A disturbance in the Force, Yoda felt’. Here, we find Yoda-speak.

To an English speaker’s ears, this grammatical order of object-subject-verb takes on a riddle-like, storytelling quality. To our ears, it makes Yoda sound mysterious and wise - it makes us think there is more to what he is telling us, and our job is to figure it out. As he would say, ‘much to learn, we have.’

But where is this kind of grammatical order found? Are there linguistic clues to Yoda’s origin? There are those who argue that Yoda is Hungarian, German or even Shakespearian in his speech patterns. But, object-subject-verb is really only consistently used in one part of the world - Amazonas, Brazil.

The best-known example of such a language is Nadëb. It’s spoken in Amazonas, Brazil. Amazonas is an enormous state, covered almost entirely by the Amazon rainforest. It’s traditionally been inhabited by semi-nomadic peoples who mix agriculture, fishing and hunter-gathering. The temperature remains a constant 26-28 degrees celsius and it receives about 60mm of rain every month. Exactly the sort of environment Luke Skywalker first encountered Yoda in.

Warm, damp and green, it is. Much like Yoda. Linguistics appears to have solved an ancient mystery. Yoda is from Amazonas… or somewhere very like it.