When Yoda was introduced to the Star Wars universe back in Empire Strikes Back in 1980, the one thing that really stood out about him was the way he spoke. Sometimes, he spoke relatively normal, and other times, he tossed in the verbs for his sentence right at the end, but we all just assumed that is how every person of Yoda’s species talked. After an episode of Tales of the Jedi released on Disney+, we now know that’s not the case at all.
Meet Yaddle, the female of Yoda’s species. Well, it’s more like “re-meet Yaddle,” as she appeared a couple of times in Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, but she never spoke. She also looked a bit rough. Yaddle is voiced in the one episode by Bryce Dallas Howard (Jurassic World), and she speaks like everyone else who speaks Galactic Basic–the common language in the Star Wars universe. That’s right, she doesn’t say things like, “Try not. Do or do not. There is no try” or “The greatest teacher, failure is.”
Not everything Yoda said was jumbled, but his most memorable quotes are. Yaddle, on the other hand, says things like, “Whatever lies he’s told you, whatever you have done, you can make up for it now by bringing him to justice.” No riddles. Completely coherent.
We should also point out that one thing Dallas does exceptionally well is capturing the timbre of Yoda–who was originally voiced by Frank Oz. She feels like her voice adds more depth to the unnamed species, even if she isn’t jumbling up sentence structure often.
So what is the deal with the way Yoda speaks? That’s completely unknown at this time. Considering his sense of humor, could he have been playing a joke on everyone for decades? We don’t know how he spoke prior to him being on the Jedi Council, so your guess is as good as ours.
Yaddle, Yoda, and Grogu’s alien species still doesn’t even have a name or a homeworld. While Yoda lived for 900 years, he was exceptionally secretive about his history and race. Before Lucasfilm was sold to Disney, there were a few other members of this species–all of which were either Force-sensitive or Jedi–but that was all wiped from canon after the buyout. So right now, it’s just the three mentioned above.
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