Revisiting the Use of Passives in Mando'a

[Munnodol]

Actually, I believe Passive voice can exist in this language. Using your wookiepedia source, it states that Mando'a lacks a passive verb form, so that means we cannot assign anything to the verb, but what about the object or subject? What I propose is something I call "Hutuun'la Mando'a", or weak mando'a. So for instance let's look at this sentence:

ni edeemir adate= "I bite people"

Here, this sentence is active and possesses a direct object as well as a subject. what hutuun'la mando'a does is that it would add a "hu',h' " to the object (not the verb), so the new sentence would be:

ni edeemir hadate= "I bite [passive] people"

However, you would not say the [passive] part, so the sentence structure largely (minus the new sound) remains the same. Basically, in both sentences the verb appears to be in active form. So what is the difference? Well the difference is that there is little to no syntactic (sentence structure) change, and the change is mainly semantic (meaning) or pragmatic (context). Mando'a speakers would speak using what appears to be passives, but in reality they understand that what is being said is actually a passive sentence. I must say that what I propose is theoretical and lacks evidence.However, the opposing idea also is lacking since many major known languages do possess a passive, but the usage of it varies. So in Mando'a, while they do possess some sort of passive, they still openly hate the use of it I can elaborate more on this for those who want to know.

[Adi'karta]

So basically, instead of saying "I was bitten by a dog" you would say "a dog [prefix]bit me"?

The main issue I (personally) have with passive voice is that there are very few situations where a sentence in passive voice could not be rephrased to be in active voice. That said, there are times when passive voice makes sense, such as in poetry and song, where rearranging word order for artistic purposes makes sense.

You implementation of passive voice is simple and could be used effectively and consistently with little practise, but if the word order remains the same, I am unsure of the purpose of implementing passive voice.

Unless I am misunderstanding your intention?

[Munnodol]

So basically, instead of saying "I was bitten by a dog" you would say "a dog [prefix]bit me"?

The main issue I (personally) have with passive voice is that there are very few situations where a sentence in passive voice could not be rephrased to be in active voice. That said, there are times when passive voice makes sense, such as in poetry and song, where rearranging word order for artistic purposes makes sense.

You implementation of passive voice is simple and could be used effectively and consistently with little practise, but if the word order remains the same, I am unsure of the purpose of implementing passive voice.

Unless I am misunderstanding your intention?

The problem arises when trying to mark subjects. If the language is always in active form, then how do I mark the object of the subject? What if I am the subject? I would have no way of expressing that if the verb is active. The only way I can think of doing it is creating two separate sentences, but there are two big problems with that:

1. This would be difficult in the long passages. For example: "a dog bit me. I was hurt", simple enough, but then we get more complicated: "Boba's sword broke my armor. Fine steel made up my armor. Mandalore possesses the steel." In each of these times, the subject in question has shifted from Boba's sword, to Mandalore. Now imagine this were expanded into a full blown conversation or essay. After a while you would forget what the original topic was. Instead, by using hutuunla mando'a, the focus, the subject, is never lost, since it will be stated, and can always be referred to: Boba's sword [prefix]broke my armor. Fine Steel [prefix] made up my armor. Mandalore possesses the steel. Here, the first two sentences (using hutuunla mando'a) contextually mark the subject (my armor). So by the third sentence the reader or listener would know that we would be referring to "my armor" or that "Mandalore" is a separate subject, to which further rules can be added.

2. Considering the lore for Mando'a says it is blunt, simple, and straightforward, this is a very roundabout way to go into detail about something. One that doesn't fit Mando'a lore. It would be simpler to have a passivization quality that can be expanded upon.