Something that’s occurred to me while witnessing the Do Clones Speak Mandoa discussion is that a lot of people headcanon clones as getting wayyyy more one-on-one training than I do. I saw them in the movies all sitting in front of their terminals by the millions doing their flash training. Doing their drill in formations of thousands. The idea that any trainer was involved enough in any substantial way to teach them a whole extra-curricular language is… not impossible but feels unlikely. And doing it for enough of them for them to start teaching each other and for it to spread? I feel like either mandoa was in the curriculum or it wasn’t.
Coincidentally I’ve been reading the Republic Commando books recently, and this is mentioned a little in Triple Zero (the second book in the series).
First we have one of the commandos – who were taught fairly closely by a mando trainer – noting:
Sicko had much the same neutral accent as most of the infantry trooper clones. They’d learned Basic from flash-instruction and had rarely been exposed to outsiders with interesting accents.
Which implies that Basic is the rank and file troopers’ first language, and that they learn almost all their language from flash training rather than other people.
Then later we have that same commando talking to Sicko and this exchange:
“Vor'e, brother.”
“You’re welcome.”
Where Sicko clearly understands enough Mando'a to know “vor'e” is “thanks”.
I think the conclusion we can draw from this is that the rank and file clones do know some Mando'a, but not a lot. If it wasn’t taught in flash training, they wouldn’t have enough close contact with trainers to pick it up (since they didn’t have enough contact to pick up accents in Basic!), so anything they do know has likely been picked up piecemeal and passed around.
Think about what you’d learn of a language if you were about to travel there for a bit. Yes, no, thanks, that sort of thing. That’s about as much Mando'a as I’d expect from the clones.
