Ttyjukl

I have noticed that a lot of the languages in Star Wars are based on languages in the real world, such as Chalmuk forming the basis of the Ewok language.

Do you know what language Yoda's way of speaking was based on? To me it seems a bit Shakespearean.

In an article addressed, this subject was.

“Surprisingly, there are a very few languages—it seems to be in single digits—that use OSV [Object Subject Verb] 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 at it linguistically, we can see that Yodish is a form of OSV - the word order is Object-Subject-Verb. This differs from typical English grammar, as most English sentences follow the "Subject-Verb-Object" order; for example

"I love cookies".

versus the Yodish/OSV:

"Cookies, I love"

However, see into George Lucas' mind, we can not. Yodish, though to other languages similar is, based off it is not.

“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.’”

So, another language based off, it perhaps was not. Instead, only from George Lucas' mind conceived, it was.

There is some evidence to suggest that Yoda's speech is based on, well, English.

In this The Week article (I suggest reading the whole thing, the argument seems pretty convincing to me), Yoda's speech is compared to that which might be found in Shakespeare:

Round about the cauldron go; in the poison entrails throw.

Else the Puck a liar call.

For them the gracious Duncan have I murdered.

I like him not.

The article also offers some examples of what Yoda might sound like if his speech actually was based on other languages:

Is planet lost at Master Obi-Wan. (Gaelic)

I not you will-teach more today. (French)

I will my own counsel on them, who trained become, keep. (German)

As you can see, even using languages similar to English might come out too confusing for the average moviegoing audience. On the other hand, using archaic English associated with Shakespeare and the King James Bible is accessible enough to be understandable, while alien enough to set Yoda apart.

Not only that, but connecting Yoda to things like Shakespeare and the King James Bible goes a long way to make him seem more ancient and wise. In another answer on this site, I used this to explain why Darth Sidious talked the same way in Revenge of the Sith; Yoda's sentence structure reminds audiences (perhaps unconsciously) of school and church, which works to solidify Yoda's role as a religious teacher.

That said, it seems like another source of Yoda's unique speech is overenthusiasm. In the original trilogy, Yoda speaks normally almost as often as he doesn't:

"A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack."

"If you end your training now — if you choose the quick and easy path as Vader did — you will become an agent of evil"

"There is another Skywalker"

"That is why you fail"

However, it was the abnormalities of his speech that stood out more than the normality. Talking like Yoda turned into the equivalent of talking like a pirate or talking like Shakespeare: you take the things you know sound strange ('yarr matey', adding 'est' to the ends of verbs, etc), and use them as often as possible so everyone can tell what you're doing. Know, you will, when talking like Yoda I am, and the voice I don't even have to do. It seems like this explains most of the cringe-worthy later examples of Yoda's speech: it's based on Yoda's original speech, which is based on antiquated English that most people don't understand how to use.

To add to Mikasa Pinata's excellent answer...

Whilst OSV (object-subject-verb) order is not the standard form for most languages, that does not mean it is not an "available option". In English it sounds distinctly alien whilst still being intelligible (hence Lucas's use of the form), but in other languages, it is a perfectly valid construction. A prerequisite for this is generally that the language grammar must allow the subject and object to be distinguished independently of their position in the sentence.

German is the example I know best. In German, position early in the sentence gives emphasis, and subject/object is distinguished by the various forms of the definite or indefinite article (der/die/das, ein/eine/ein, etc.).

So in English, "the dog bites the man" only has one possible interpretation. In German, "der Hund beisst den Mann" is a direct translation. However "den Hund beisst der Mann" means "the man bites the dog", with an emphasis on the dog, simply by changing which is "der" (definite article, male, subject) and which is "den" (definite article, male, object). In English, an equivalent construction requires the passive tense ("the dog was bitten by the man") because that's the only way the language allows the subject/object order to be changed. German can do this as a basic feature of the language - but at the cost of a complex set of rules about definite and indefinite articles.

The same construction is also possible in Latin, where the endings of nouns change depending on whether they are subject or object. Again though, this comes at the cost of complex rules about exactly how those endings work.