Sith (language)

"Dzworokka yun; nyâshqûwai, nwiqûwai. Wotok tsawakmidwanottoi, yuntok hyarutmidwanottoi"

- The Rule of Two

The Sith language (or simply Sith) was the native language of the people of Ziost and Korriban. It was adopted as the mystical language of the Sith Order after the Dark Jedi Exiles enslaved the Sith species. Sith was an agglutinative language, in which words or even phrases were made up of linears sequences of distinct meaningful units. Despite the preeminence of the Galactic Basic Standard, the Sith language remained in use up until the post-Imperial period. To the Lost Tribe of Sith, an order founded on the remote planet Kesh the Sith language was known as the Old Tongue.

Usage
Originally, this language was only spoken by the Sith, a species of red–skinned Humanoids from the Stygian Caldera. It was later expanded upon and evolved when the second generation of Dark Jedi split from the Jedi Order in 7,000 BBY, just after the Battle of Corbos, and enslaved the natives of Korriban. The Sith language became a symbol of the newly created Sith Order, a powerful sect of dark side adepts. This was made easier through the creation of devices known as translation talismans. Such artifacts, initially designed and created by the Jedi Exiles who sought to learn of the Sith's secrets, allowed their wearer to read the Sith language as if it were their own mother tongue.

Around 5,000 BBY, the Sith dreadnaught Omen was forced to crash land on the remote planet Kesh. The marrooned Sith were never able to to return to space, so they settled amongst the native Keshiri and founded the Lost Tribe of the Sith. This allowed the Sith language to expand far from its cradle. In this marginal Sith colony, the language became known as "the Old Tongue".

Even after the majority of Sith were of other species than the Sith Pureblood, the language was preserved in holocrons, temples, and tomes. However, outside of the dark side circles, very few scholars knew how to decipher this language, and even fewer could pronounce its complex word structures. In the eleventh century before the Battle of Yavin, the Human Darth Bane became familiar with the tongue of the ancient Sith during his studies at the Academy of Korriban, unlike most of his fellow students. Bane would seek the wisdom of Masters long dead in leather-bound volumes covered with blood-red ink.

Millennia after the founding of the Sith Order, individuals as modern as Vergere, Dr'uun Unnh, and Jerec spoke it. The members of the Lost Tribe of Sith also managed to preserve the knowledge of the language, and all members from apprentices and higher knew it. For example, Vestara Khai was able to use it to communicate with a pack of Tuk'ata on Korriban. There is a possibility that the Sith Lord Darth Nihilus spoke this language, as his hissing speech sounded verbally identical to the voices within Atris' Sith Holocrons.

Phonology and accent
The phonetic palette of the Sith language consisted of 37 phonemes or speech sounds. There were 17 basic consonants: t, d, k, q, m, n, ts, dz, s, z, h, ch, j, sh, r/l, w, y. Twelve of those elementary consonants could combine with a y our a w to form complex consonant clusters such as mw, dzy or nw. There were also 8 distinct vowels: i (as in "hit" or "heat"), â (as in "bash"), u (as in "suit"), û (as in "club"), o (as in "toad"), a (as in "ah"), oi (as in "toy"), ai (as in "buy").

Because of its limited segment inventory, Sith scribes faced difficulties when trying to translate non-Sith names. For example, the name of Palpatine would have to be transcribed as Marmûtin, as the Sith language didn't have a "p" sound or an "l" between two consonants. To overcome such difficulties, creative scribes would actually translate the name into their language based on its etymology.

Sith morphemes&mdash;the smallest meaningful units in the grammar of a language&mdash;were often made of closed syllables (syllables ending with consonants), which made them sound brisk and choppy. The language was regularly stressed, with every word accented on the first syllable.

Morphology
The language of the Sith extensively employed regular agglutination and used derivative suffixes to a greater extent than Galactic Basic Standard. Many different markers could be added to a root until very long words were formed&mdash;and a single word could constitute an entire sentence. For example, the phrase "because of dreaming about a demon" translated in Sith as a single word kûskutsiqsayanjat. This word was made of four distinct morphemes: kûsk + ut + siqsa + yanjat = "to dream" + (nominal marker) + "demon" + (ablative marker).

Written forms
"Somehow, the Massassi script, with hooks and barbs on each glyph, seemed more menacing than any curses they could call down."

- Corran Horn

The Sith language was originally written in complex hieroglyphics. Over the centuries, Sith scribes wished to develope less complicated scripts. This resulted in the creation of two different scripts. The first one, known as "Common Sith" was used for mundane, everyday use, while the other, "High Sith" was for ecclesiastical use. A third writing system known as the Kittât was also used for incantation scrolls. The latter consisted of thirty-seven runes, and was suitable for both calligraphy and epigraphy.

The Massassi warriors who followed the Sith Lord Naga Sadow in exile on the fourth moon of Yavin Prime also developed their own hieroglyphic system, a simplified version of High Sith. They carved many inscriptions using this new writing system on temple walls and obelisks scattered across the jungle of Yavin 4, notably in the Temple of the Blueleaf Cluster or at the monumental rear entrance of the Great Temple. When the Sullustan naturalist Dr'uun Unnh explored Yavin 4 on behalf of the Alliance to Restore the Republic, he successfully translated some of the Massassi texts contained in the Temple of Exar Kun.

Known phrases

 * Dzworokka yun; nyâshqûwai, nwiqûwai. Wotok tsawakmidwanottoi, yuntok hyarutmidwanottoi.&mdash;"Two there should be; no more, no less. One to embody power, the other to crave it."
 * Eyah seh maat, shu kor huaan.&mdash;Unknown. Something soothing.
 * Haa, neyo la yud masur kee, tah uhnah kahru lur shu.&mdash;Unknown. Something menacing and challenging.
 * Ja'ak.&mdash;"I am free."
 * Na-hah ur su ka-haat. Su ka haru aat.&mdash;Unknown. Probably something like: "Lead the Sith to us if there are any here."
 * Taka zeech ma toka duuwaj.&mdash;Unknown. An incantation to gain access to a Sith obelisk.
 * Ur-kaa!&mdash;Unknown. Probably something like "Halt!" or "Freeze!"
 * Vexok savaka.&mdash;"Wake up, there is work to do."
 * Zhol kash dinora.&mdash;"It is done."

Behind the scenes
"To that end, I imagined a tough&mdash;but not barbarous&mdash;language, one that could convey a kind of confident, elegant cruelty. And Sith would have to ring with authority so you could envision it functioning among elites of the dark side the way Latin functioned in Europe for centuries: as a repository of culture and learning."

- Ben Grossblatt

In November 2010, senior editor Ben Grossblatt, who has degrees in linguistics, created a functional Sith language for the Book of Sith: Secrets from the Dark Side. His work included Sith rules of grammar and sentence construction and a Sith runic script. More information about the creation of this language was revealed in Speak Like a Sith, an article featured in the Star Wars Insider 134. Sith is the second working conlang ever developed for the Star Wars universe, the first being Karen Traviss' Mando'a.

While Grossblatt's system is realistic and functional, there are conflicts between his version of the Sith phonology and Sith vocabulary established in previous works. While the Star Wars Insider article states that the Sith has no 'e' 'p' or 'f' sounds, words or names such as "derriphan" "Ffon", "aleph" or "Kressh" have appeared in older canon sources. Not even "Korriban", the name of the Sith species' homeworld, can be written using this system, due to the lack of 'b'. In fact, even some of the new words that were invented for Book of Sith&mdash;including "Grotthu" and "Zugurak"&mdash;cannot be properly transcribed.

In the 1990s comic book series Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi, occurrences of Sith language consisted of nonsensical words, composed only of unpronounceable series of consonants&mdash;such as Nkrttw flgkllm shprrlt mdnnq. This version of Sith doesn't blend well with ulterior appearances in canon, and should probably be considered an artistic licence. In Speak Like a Sith, Ben Grossblatt noted that no one would even try to speak a language if it consisted of unpronounceable words like r'rhhoqtk. However, in the audio drama adaptation of Tales of the Jedi, the instances were Exar Kun speaks Sith sounded very different from their comic book counterpart, featuring a variety of vocalic sounds.