Yoda （ヨーダ）って何者でしたっけ？
Yodaは言わずと知れた映画Star Warsに出てくるJedi Masterです。
Master of the Order（ジェダイ騎士団の統率者）で、Jedi High Council（ジェダイ最高評議会）のGrand Master（最長老）でもあります。
因みに、the Orderという単語は、このStar WarsのJedi Order（ジェダイ騎士団）とHarry Potter: The Order of the Phonenix（ハリー・ポッターと不死鳥の騎士団）で初めて知りました。中世英国の騎士団の意味ですが、辞書でも片隅にチョコっと記載あるだけで、最初にthe Orderと聞いても何のことか全然ピンときませんでした。学校でも当然教えてくれませんからね。こうして、本や映画で覚えた単語は、いつまでも新鮮で忘れないですよ。これも本や映画を原語でみる楽しみのひとつです。
ORDERは、一番根っこの意味に「順序」や「命令」などがあります。そこから派生して「秩序」になり、秩序を具体的に遂行する機関として「教団」や「騎士団」に意味が拡がったと考えられます。
いつも思うのですが、英語に限らず外国語の単語と日本語の単語は一対一では対応しません。重なる部分は多いとしても、異なる部分もあるので、「根っこの意味」と「派生した意味」といった形でイメージで覚えるとよい、また、具体的文脈や文章（この場合は、Jedi OrderやThe Order of the Phoenix）で、流れとして覚えると定着する、と思います。
Yoda（ヨーダ）の話し方
さて、本題ですが、今回は、Jodaの話し方です。
Yodaの話し方は独特だって知っていましたか？
英語の語順は普通、 主語（Subject）ー動詞（Verb）ー目的語（Object）ですが、
Yodaは通常、 目的語（Object）ー主語（Subject）ー動詞（Verb）の順で話します。
日本語は、 主語（Subject）ー目的語（Object）ー動詞（Verb）ですよね。
私は友人に教えてもらうまで気付きませんでした。
でも、教えてもらってからあらてめて聞くと、確かにそうで、なんで今まで気づかなかったんだろうと愕然としました。
映画を見る時、原語を聞いていたようで、やはり日本語字幕を読んで、聞き流していたんですね。（反省です）
日本語字幕では、語順の独特さを強調した訳にはなっていなかったこともありますが、勿論それは誤訳ではなく、字幕の字数制限の中で、仕方のないことだと思います。
でも、話法が普通の人とちょっと異なるという情報により、やはりYodaは人間とは異なる種族出身だからなのかな、という類推もできます。こういうちょっとした情報が、翻訳、特に字幕翻訳では伝わりにくい、逆にいえば、原語で聴く魅力はこうしたちょっとしたニュアンスにニヤリと出来る点にあると思います。
具体的なYodaの話法ですが、2015年12月のThe Atlantic Magazineの記事に面白いものがありましたので、紹介します。
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/12/hmmmmm/420798/c/
“An Unusual Way of Speaking, Yoda Has”
When Luke Skywalker first encounters Yoda, it’s on a swampy planet in The Empire Strikes Back. At first, Luke doesn’t realize the long-eared, wrinkly green creature is, in fact, the one he’s seeking.
“I’m looking for someone,” Luke says.
There’s a narrative effect to the way Yoda speaks. To an English speaker, anyway, the way he orders his sentences sounds vaguely riddle-like, which adds to his mystique.
“Looking?” Yoda replies. “Found someone, you have, I would say, hmmm?”
Get the new issue now.
But what’s actually going on with Yoda, linguistically?
First, let’s examine how Yoda doesn’t speak. Many of the world’s most-spoken languages—English, Mandarin—are built around constructions that go subject-verb-object. An example would be: Yoda grasped the lightsaber.
Another common construction, and one you’d find more commonly among speakers of Japanese, Albanian, and many other languages, goes subject-object-verb: Yoda the lightsaber grasped. More rare is a verb-subject-object construction, but that’s how people who speak Hawaiian and some Celtic languages do it: Grasped Yoda the lightsaber.
Even more unusual is the way Yoda famously speaks, ordering his sentences object-subject-verb, or OSV: The lightsaber Yoda grasped. Or, to use an example from an actual Yoda utterance: “Much to learn, you still have.”
“This is a clever device for making him seem very alien,” said Geoff Pullum, a professor of linguistics at the University of Edinburgh. “You have to do some work to realize that his, ‘Much to learn, you still have,’ means ‘You still have much to learn.’”
There are other fictional examples of characters who speak like Yoda. Bowyer, from the 1996 Super Nintendo game, Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, says things like, “Fun this is, yes?” and “Disturb me, you must not! Practicing I am.” But what about in the real world?
“Surprisingly, there are a very few languages—it seems to be in single digits—that use OSV as their basic or normal order,” Pullum told me. “As far as I know, they occur only in the area of Amazonia in Brazil: they are South American Indian languages. One well-described case is a language called Nadëb.”
Looking more closely at how Yoda speaks, it’s not always object-subject-verb, but sometimes a construction Pullum once referred to as XSV, the “X” being a stand-in for whatever chunk of the sentence goes with the verb, even if it’s not an object. So, for example: “Truly wonderful, the mind of a child is,” as Yoda says in Episode II: Attack of the Clones. Truly wonderful, in that case, is the “X.” Pullum, in a blog post in 2005, called this construction “fantastically rare” in the real world.
“The curious feature of Yoda’s syntax that some linguists have commented on is that, although it is by no means consistent, he seems to speak as if he thinks OSV [or XSV] is normal,” Pullum told me. “In fact, he generalizes it, favoring the beginning of the sentence for various modifiers and complements that English syntax would normally leave till the end of the clause.”
Consider for example: “When 900 years old you reach, look as good, you will not.” But then there are other facets of Yoda-speak, times when he leaves auxiliary verbs—various forms of be, do, and have—dangling, as he does in a phrase like, “Lost a planet, Master Obi-Wan has.”
And then there are the times when Yoda speaks in regular old subject-verb-object constructions. (“A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind.”) Pullum says these inconsistencies make for an “odd mix,” though others have been less forgiving. Writing for The New Yorker in 2005, Anthony Lane had this to say of Yoda’s “screwy” syntax: “Break me a fucking give.”
A funny line, timing-wise, but, as the linguist Mark Liberman pointed out at the time, not actually all that Yoda-esque. (“A fucking break, give me,” was one more Yoda-ish alternative offered in a blog post Liberman wrote on the subject at the time.)
Looking more closely at Yoda, and particularly at his dialogue in Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, further confused Liberman, who analyzed dozens of Yoda’s lines in the film. “A bit of empirical investigation has left me more puzzled about Yoda’s syntax than I was before,” he wrote. (Most perplexing, he said, was an example of a fronted element—the sort of clause that you might bring to the start of a sentence for emphasis—found between the subject and predicate: “That group back there, soon discovered will be.”) Liberman has said it would take a larger dataset to fully analyze Yoda-speak, but he won’t get it from the latest film (spoiler alert): Yoda’s a no-show.
Yoda-speak gets even more confusing, to me anyway, when you try to translate it from English. In Estonian versions of the films, according to one fascinating Reddit thread about linguistics, Yoda retains the word order used in English versions. “This is grammatical in Estonian, but does make it seem as though Yoda is constantly stressing the object phrase as the main point of his statements,” according to one commenter. “This gives his speech an unusual quality.” But in Czech translations, rather than speaking in his general object-subject-verb manner, Yoda apparently speaks in subject-object-verb (like in Japanese).
Really, though, Yoda was written for an English-speaking audience. And, as James Harbeck pointed out in an article for The Week last year, there are plenty of examples from popular literature that sound just as offbeat syntactically as Yoda, even if they're not identical in construction. There’s Walt Whitman (“Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring”), and Shakespeare (“For them the gracious Duncan have I murdered”), and whoever wrote the lyrics to “The Little Drummer Boy” (“Come, they told me, the newborn king to see”). “These sentences remind us of Yoda-style things we can do in poetry and other stylized forms,” Harbeck wrote. “And that's the thing about Yoda-speak: We understand it. It is comprehensible English because it is written by English speakers, for English speakers, using things you can do in English.”
To appreciate Yoda, maybe it’s best to abandon one’s grammatical senses altogether—or, you know, “unlearn what you have learned.” Like the little guy says, “Do. Or do not. There is no try.”
面白いですね。英語国民が日本語（主語ー動詞ー目的語の語順）を聞くときも、ちょっとYodaっぽい（Yoda-ish）と感じるんでしょうかね？
或いは、もしかしたら、日本語をイメージして、Yoda語を作ったのかもしれません。（あくまで推測ですが）
実際、Yodaの名前は日本人名、溝口健二監督後期の作品に多く参加した脚本家で大阪芸大元映像学科長の依田義賢氏、をモデルにしているという説があります。
Yoda語ももしかしたら日本と関係あるかと考えるとワクワクします。
Yoda（ヨーダ）の名言
また、Yodaは、名言も多く残していますので、語順の特殊性と併せて、名語録のいくつかを紹介します。（2017年12月のGoalcast記事からの引用です）
Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will.
Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.
In a dark place we find ourselves, and a little more knowledge lights our way.
Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.
Patience you must have, my young padawan.
When nine hundred years old you reach, look as good you will not.
Truly wonderful, the mind of a child is.
A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack.
Adventure. Excitement. A Jedi craves not these things.
No! Try not! Do or do not, there is no try.
Judge me by my size, do you?
Wars not make one great.
Clear your mind must be, if you are to find the villains behind this plot.
Always two there are, no more, no less. A master and an apprentice.
Always pass on what you have learned.
Mind what you have learned. Save you it can.
To answer power with power, the Jedi way this is not.
In this war, a danger there is, of losing who we are.
Attachment leads to jealously. The shadow of greed, that is.
In the end, cowards are those who follow the dark side.
So certain were you. Go back and closer you must look.
Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.
When you look at the dark side, careful you must be. For the dark side looks back.
You will find only what you bring in.
Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future…
If no mistake have you made, yet losing you are… a different game you should play.
Control, control, you must learn control!
そして、最期に、Episode VIII, The Last Jediからの引用です。過去のBen Soloの育成の失敗からReyの教育を躊躇するLukeに対し、YodaのSpirit（霊体）が諭します。
Pass on what you have learned. Strength, mastery, hmm… but weakness, folly, failure also. Yes: failure, most of all. The greatest teacher, failure is. Luke, we are what they grow beyond. That is the true burden of all masters.
“The greatest teacher, failure is”、失敗は成功の母ともいいますが、失敗にこそ学ぶべき点がある、真理ですね。
