FAQ
What is Lexember?
Lexember is a social media event where for the month of December, participants coin new words (lexemes) in their constructed languages.
Lexember is a little like NaNoWriMo: the point is to have fun and get the creative juices flowing. You’ll have the rest of the year to tinker with and polish the finished product, so don’t worry overly much about perfection.
What is Mando’a?
Mando’a is the language of the fictional Mandalorian people in the Star Wars universe. It is a constructed language, originally created by the composer Jesse Harlin for the soundtrack of Star Wars: Republic Commando video game and developed into a functional language by the novelist Karen Traviss in the Republic Commando novels and supplementary materials. Mando’a has also made appearances in other Star Wars media, including The Clone Wars, Rebels and The Mandalorian.
Traviss stopped working on Mando’a in 2009 when she stopped writing for Star Wars, leaving the language incomplete. Many fans have since continued to expand the lexicon and develop the language.
What is Mando’a Lexember?
Mando’a Lexember is a fandom event where, for the month of December, participants coin a new word in Mando’a every day.
Mando’a Lexember is in part aimed to rectify the problem of incomplete lexicon—and in part aimed to bring the fans together to have fun!
Mando’a Lexember will run for the first time in 2025. If it’s a success, hopefully we can do it again next year. 🤞
Who can participate?
Anyone! The more the merrier.
How do I participate?
Follow along the daily prompts (or not—you can also do something else if inspiration strikes), make a post on your blog, and remember to tag #mandoxember to share it with others! We’d love it if you wrote a little explanation of how you came up with your word.
Follow the #mandoxember tag to see what others are doing. Remember to share, like and comment on other’s posts! If you don’t want to participate in creating words, you are welcome to participate in just this way too.
Please do remember to tag your posts with #mandoxember so other participants can find them! Several of the prompts ask you to find another participant’s word to use as your starting point. You can also tag #lexember, if you want to share your posts with the wider conlanging community on Tumblr, or follow the #lexember tag for ideas!
Do I have to know Mando’a?
It helps! But you can also learn as you go—the first few prompts will all have you digging through existing dictionaries to get started. There’s no need to know grammar for the purposes of this event.
It is helpful to have some familiarity with who the Mandalorians are as a people and culture. However, you don’t have to have consumed all (or any) of the Star Wars media—a quick romp through Wookieepedia will get you up to speed on most things. But if you want to give Mandalore a skip and, for example, create your own clone trooper specific dialect of Mando’a, that’s fine too!
Here are more Mando’a resources you can explore!
Do I have to have previous conlanging or linguistics experience?
No. There will be a prompt with instructions for every day. This event will also function as a sort of a Mando’a specific mini course in word creation.
If you have questions about the prompt of the day, you can ask them in the notes or replies. I’ll try to answer as I have time, but participants are also welcome to help each other out & discuss the prompts together!
Here are more conlanging resources you can explore!
Do I have to know and/or use the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)?
No. Nice if you do, but no, this is not a phonology course. You do have to think about how the words will sound, but it’s fine to just do your best attempt to put it in writing. You can leave phonetics out altogether, but if you want to make an attempt, it is also fine to ask help, or even make a recording instead of IPA representation.
Phonology & romanisation resources & sounds of Mando’a
Do I have to do all 31 days?
No. Do as many or as few as you want and have time for. It’s supposed to be fun, not a chore. The more, the merrier though!
Some of the prompts build on the previous prompts. If you haven’t done the previous prompt, you can always do the previous prompt instead or pick another one.
Do I have to use the prompts?
No! You can also do something different if the inspiration strikes you. Or you can use another day’s prompt. You can answer a prompt several times, they won’t wear out anytime soon.
Why are all the prompts so technical?
Because the rules for word formation in Mando’a are not clearly laid out & this event does not presume previous conlanging experience, so we kind of have to give some basics along the way… so this year lays out how to. If this event runs the next year, we’ll probably do more thematic prompts, because we’ll have already built up a good “library” of tools.
I disagree with the prompt’s explanation?
Great!
Mando’a is a pluricentric language. The canon Mando’a itself has two versions—Harlin’s and Traviss’s. Fans have created several more. There’s no one true way of doing Mando’a, so you’re welcome to do it your way instead & we’d love it if you shared your interpretation with others too!
This event is run and the prompts written by @ranahan, so the prompts naturally privilege their dialect. But you are free to use any dialect at all or do your own interpretation.
Can I use other people’s words?
Short answer: Yes. This event has several prompts that will have you deriving words from other participants’ words.
Long answer: It’s good form to link back to the creators from whom one gets their ideas to share the love. This is another reason why we hope you will tag your posts—it will make them easier to find and link back to in the future!
However, we can’t enforce crediting the original creator. Words aren’t quite like other creative works—they aren’t covered by copyright. You don’t need to cite your English teacher or a dictionary every time you use English, do you?
Language is at its core a cooperative creation. It’s all about communication, after all! So let’s share our words and ideas with each other—hopefully they will be adopted by other Mando’a enthusiasts and live on.
I don’t want my words to be copied by others?
Frankly the point of this event is to share words with others—if you aren’t okay with that, this event probably isn’t for you.
Who are you?
Mandoxember is run by @ranahan.
Who made your icon and header?
Icon is the hammer and tongs by @starwarsbookclub to represent creation, with the nonbinary colours adjusted to represent the conlang flag. Header is this photograph by Vincentiu Solomon, also chosen for its resemblance to the conlang flag.
I have another question?
Leave it in the notes or comments of this post, or throw it in the askbox!
