Learn Mando'a

Unless I really haven't been paying attention - and I've searched the forum beforehand as not to embarrass myself too much - what is the actual Mando'a name for the Mandalorian Crusades / is there even one, and if so, which root word does it derive from?

(Wasn't sure whether this belongs in the "Lexicon" category or no, but if there is an obscure canonical name, it wouldn't really fit the "new words" category)

Naturally, I've checked Karen Traviss' dictionary and trawled both web and literature - but there seems to be no indication as to there ever being a canonical name to these campaigns other than the Basic/English one. All I found so far was evaar'shukar (neo-crusader) as provided by Taljair te Mir'ad in this very forum - but nothing directly on the Crusades themselves.

So, did I forget to look in a crucial place or is this really a gap?

i don't know to but you can make it by fusing two word like war and way or sacred i think

I don't doubt that I could create the word, but that doesn't really help me. I'm trying to see which specific connotation behind the word "crusade" the authors were trying to convey. Holy War? An epic, though not neccessarily holy undertaking? A warrior's quest?

Of course, it could be that there is no official Mando'a translation, but that would be... weird, to say the least. It is as if the US could only refer to the Declaration of Independence as the "Unabhängigkeitserklärung", because they never bothered to name it in their own language.

As far as I know, there is no official term. That's not necessarily surprising, though, since there's a lot of things we have no official words for which should have words. So, it isn't weird to not have words, since Mando'a is not a complete language and as a constructed language, it won't have more words added than are necessary or easily derived.

I would almost guess that there are different words - even in Mando'a. There should be a term used by the people in that time (which might go along the lines of what was suggested as 'holy war', even though that's what we understand when the term crusade is used) and a term used by the people after. Maybe I'm thinking a bit along the lines of what WWI was called in its time and after. Also we only know the "Basic" term, so we don't know if there is even a reason to look at "crusade" as a word for the Mando'a meaning.
It could be that they were called "Epic Quest" in their time and later they were understood as "Epic Foolishness" (just as an example - there would be bonus points if there was a pun in there, though).

Or it could be that in Mando'a there is no special name for it because they didn't think that it was special (and later there might have been a name coined to talk about it because in Basic it was deemed important - so the Mando'a word would be a direct translation in that case)

Interesting. That would mean the Mandalorian attitude towards the defining events of their history would be surprisingly blasé.

Ani'la Akaan was the end of it. It might have just been called Ori'Akaan or some derivative of that like Or'kaan during. Kinda like how we called WWI the Great War until we gave it a sequel and had to change the name.

Vlet Hansen wrote:Ani'la Akaan was the end of it. It might have just been called Ori'Akaan or some derivative of that like Or'kaan during. Kinda like how we called WWI the Great War until we gave it a sequel and had to change the name.

You wouldn't happen to have a source for Ani'la Akaan?

Bounty Hunter guild handbook, in the section at the back from the death watch. It has a history section.

Vlet Hansen wrote:Bounty Hunter guild handbook, in the section at the back from the death watch. It has a history section.

Many thanks!

Which one do you mean, precisely? "The Bounty Hunter Code: From the Files of Boba Fett"?

Exactly, from the section in the back.

I've been thinking about this myself.
I didn't know about the Ani'la Akaan reference in canon materials. I guess that would directly translate as "total war"?

I started by establishing what makes a crusade different from any other conventional war: religion.
The root of our modern word, it seems, comes from the French croisade which evolved from the older form croisée literally meaning "marked with the cross". So I had considered a similar direction and came up with Joraliik, intended to mean "carry the sigil".

I like it, it's snappy.

What would the sigil be, then? In the earlier crusades, I imagine it would be the wheel emblem of the cycle of life. After Ultimate takes power, I suppose it would be the modified symbol indicating Mand'alor's primacy.

I wish we had a direct word for "oppose" or "versus" since ara'novor doesn't seem to work here, but the ideal longer-format term in this context I think would be "war against Arasuum" since the opposition to stagnation was the casus belli being used.

I also imagine that it may have been the "Mando serpent" although I'm very much interested in this circle of life connection. That seems to be the earliest example of Taung insignia associated specifically with the Crusaders... "Joraliikade"?

I agree that the next progression might be the same circle with the skull superimposed. Mandalore the Ultimate's Neo Crusaders, after Ani'la Mand'alor had his vision on Shogun. "Evaar'la Joraliikade"? Of course, after the disaster of Malachor V, only the adopted races remained. I'm not aware of any Taung existing after that.

You make another interesting point, however, that the Taung religion was based upon the eternal struggle between Kad Ha'rangir and Arasuum. The dance of Yin and Yang, although our concept of opposites does seem to be different from the Taung's. To Mandalorian priests, Arasuum had no redeeming qualities.

Have you ever heard of a Taung priest? Perhaps this is a breakthrough.
Perhaps the Taung saw no distinction between ordinary war and sacred wars at all. All war was sacred to the Taung.
Perhaps the word for Crusade has been staring at us all along. What if Ani'la Akaan was not meant to be interpreted as "total war", but Mandalore the Ultimate's War? Prior to that might have been Sol'yc Akaan, Mandalore the First's War.

What if the word for Crusade is simply Akaan, and the Mandalorian Crusaders themselves were simply Akaanade? That would make the Neo Crusaders "Evaar'la Akaanade". This would also mean that we may be viewing the word for "army" in a narrow way: not being a reference to an organized segmented unit like a group of divisions, but the entire collective body of warriors.

Evaar'la Joraliikade sounds pretty slick, I'll admit.

However, from a philosophical point, the conflation between Akaan and Crusade really does work for me. I love it! Not only does it sound good, but it fits very well with established Mandalorian attitudes! Perhaps their term for a "war" that DOESN'T count as a crusade would be akin to dush'la akaan!

Fighting that isn't sacred?

Oh!
You mean takisite!