How Yoda Helps Students Master Shakespeare

Star Wars:  Episode VII – The Force Awakens movie is a gift to English teachers.  Easy Shakespeare is when Yoda-speak know you.  Yoda’s speech patterns can help students overcome one of the biggest obstacles to understanding Shakespeare:  the unfamiliar word order known as syntax inversion.  Yoda, like Shakespeare, plays around with word order. 

Why so strangely Yoda speaks?  In English the most common word order is subject-verb-object.  Adjectives come before nouns (He is a tall man.)  Adverbs come after verbs (She speaks softly).  Prepositional phrases typically follow the word they describe (He shops at Target.  The house on the corner is mine) Yoda switches the word order like this:

STANDARD ENGLISH                                                YODA

You are strong, Luke.                                                    Strong you are, Luke. 

I go sadly into the mist.                                                 Into the mist sadly go I.

The future is always in motion.                                     Always in motion the future is.

I can’t go there.                                                              Go there, I cannot.

Shakespeare’s sentences often sound like Yoda’s.  Here are some examples:

YODA                                                                           SHAKESPEARE

Much to learn you have. The Phantom Menace           The castle of Macduff I will surprise.                                                                                                                                       Macbeth

Around the survivors, a perimeter create.                    Round about the cauldron go. In the poisoned entrails throw. Attack of the Clones                                                       Macbeth

Strong am I in the Force. Return of the Jedi                 Rude am I in speech . . . Othello

Agrees with you, the council does.                               Look I so pale, Dorset, as the rest? 
The Phantom Menace                                                    Richard III

Need that, you do not. The Phantom Menace               Repays he my deep service with such                                                                                                                                       contempt? Richard III

The shadow of greed, that is. Revenge of the Sith        Crowns in my purse I have . . .                                                                                                                                                The Taming of the Shrew

The boy you trained, gone he is. Revenge of                A gallant knight he was. Henry IV Part 1
the Sith

If into the security recordings you go, only pain           From that place I shall no leading need.
you will find.  Revenge of the Sith                                  King Lear

Syntax inversion is a literary device that pre-dates Shakespeare.  Translations of Homer’s Iliad use it:  “Proud is the spirit of Zeus-fostered kings.”  Inversion is common in the King James Version of the Bible:  “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither.”  The Star Wars screenwriters use syntax inversion to characterize Yoda as an ancient Jedi Master.   Inversion also makes Yoda’s lines stand out from all the other characters’ lines, reinforcing his superior wisdom and status.

By Mary Jane McKinney