So.Where to begin.

What you should know is, this isn’t my fault. It’s @misskirby who is to blame for this. She has this AMAZING fic, it’s called Benediction. I like to read it weekly, for sustenance. Go read that first if you want...literally any of this to make sense.  So there’s this passage which stole every marble I had, wherein Anakin is explaining the etymology of the Huttese he uses to refer to his children (with a really thorough explanation on Luke’s name. 

Anakin scrubbed the back of his neck. “Huttese doesn’t have—words of love. It doesn’t have… benedictions. It’s kind of a cruel language. There’s a whole case for groveling and then—there’s really only the word for love.”

“And that’s abiya?” Obi-Wan said.

Anakin’s grin was crooked. “No. That’s luke. In the Tatooine dialect, at least, it’s luke. We used—things, mostly, to—you know.”

“Luke,” Obi-Wan said, tasting the word, looking down at the sleeping child he’d just been holding, one who carried his parents’ love for him in his name. For the first time in all his life, he wondered what his own name meant, and who it was who had given it to him.

“Abiya is the milk from a flowering cactus,” Anakin said. “It’s very sweet. And rare. I only ever had it once, with my—my mother.”

Obi-Wan turned to look at Anakin again. The expression on Anakin’s face was raw, intense, but Obi-Wan forced himself to look at it, out of respect for the memories of a woman he owed all of Anakin to; the one who had protected him, loved him, when Obi-Wan hadn’t known he had existed at all.

“It also means the morning rain,” Anakin said, waving a hand. “A lot of words in Huttese have many definitions. Abiya, though—it’s a relief. A respite. Pure joy.”

Obi-Wan swallowed around the burning in his throat. “I see,” he said, strangled.

Anakin looked away, his throat bobbing. “Luke only has the one definition, though. There’s only one word derived from it, too, lukkali. Noun and a verb. A krayt dragon whelp, or—krayt dragons, the mothers, their carry their whelps in their mouths, because there’s no place on Tatooine that’s safer, so it’s also the act of doing that.”

I LOVE this passage. I love all of the work it does emotionally, narratively, etc. It’s the best. And yesterday morning, I zeroed in on a specific line. “In the Tatooine dialect” Except hold on, I thought to myself. Anakin was born a slave. What if, when he says the Tatooine dialect, what he means is...the dialect of the slave class? 

So here’s the thing. The Hutt society is based on the idea that the Hutts are the prime race, there was the whole Hutt empire thing, I mean the holiday the Boonta Eve Classic is supposed to commemorate is literal holiday that commemorates a Hutt ascending to godhood, during the process of which all of his slaves renew their vows of fealty. It’s not just a class system, where you can you know, in theory move between classes. This is a strict caste system, which you are born into or are captured into. Which got me thinking - what if the language of Huttese has a dialect system...based on caste? We see examples of this sort of socio-linguistic pattern in actual real life!! Tamil and Arabic are some pretty famous examples where certain historical societies who use that language break down that language based on caste, with their different varieties having all sorts of different meanings and cultural connotations, but there’s a ton of them. And in fact, there’s tons of societies which base their dialects on social or other cultural factors.

There’s even a name for it: diglossia, where a society as a whole uses one language but different parts use radically different dialects and forms of that language in different circumstances. Now, strictly historically, how diglossia typically works is that one dialect is seen as a low (L) dialect and one is seen as a high (H) dialect. And get this - in diglossic societies which also contain really severe social inequality - in some cases the dialects can seem almost unintelligible to those who speak the opposite dialect And then based on that passage I posted above, I thought...what if the unintelligibility in this certain case, specifically the unintelligibility between “high” huttese and the dialect spoken by slaves wasn’t surrounding the actual words or structure...what if it was /context/.

So basically in the last thirty six hours I’ve....I’ve made an entire headcanon on Huttese as a trifold diglossic dialect system. I’m putting it under the cut because God its, its a lot guys. Its a lot. Also? It’s written as though its an entry in sociolinguistic glossary of sort, because of course it is. Who wrote that glossary? Space nerds. Nerds in space. Nerds in space from Coruscant University who need research credits for their space masters degrees. 

For the purposes of this glossary, the modern caste system of the Hutt Clan has been recorded below. 1. Masters 2. Servants* 3. Slaves The reader should be aware that there is technically a high caste called “Grand Masters”, which historically was comprised of members of the Grand Hutt Council and their families. This caste used a dialect usually referred to as “Archaic Huttese”, and is the source dialect of Huttese, originally developed on the Hutt home planet of Nal Hutta. However, this language has long fallen out of common use.  The reader should also note that belonging to the Servant caste does not imply any quality of servitude per se. Rather, this is the caste of all ordinary free people who live under Hutt Rule. This designation is believed to have originated in the understanding within the ancient Hutt empire that any being who lived under Hutt dominion was by rights a servant to any Hutt who should need them.  The dialects of the castes are as follows.  1. The dialect of the master class is also known as “High Huttese”. The common dialect of all high-born Hutts, and widely adopted by non-Hutts who own slaves or hold positions of authority within Hutt society. This dialect is used in all interactions involving a master, whether between a group of masters or a master and a lower-caste member. With Hutt families whose bloodlines have been regarded as a part of the master class for several centuries, there is a curious strain of monolinguism in an otherwise highly polylinguistic society, with many high born Hutt families refusing to learn even the fundamentals of standard Basic. The reasoning for this seems to be a cultural belief held by the masters that any person of a lower caste bends to the needs of the masters, rather than the other way around. The historical risk of a master’s displeasure upon improper address has led to this dialect becoming the default in conversation unless you are absolutely sure of another person’s caste, since historically the risk of offense should you choose wrong was often very high. There are at least three different cases of blood feuds between members of Hutt Master families which involved the use of a lower caste dialect as a cause of offense. 

This default status of this dialect means that when a person in the Republic references “Huttese”, they are almost always referencing the master dialect. The master dialect is what is taught in the schools of the Republic. This has led to a sort of self-perpetuating cycle. As interactions with the rest of the galaxy have shifted to singular dialect, the use of the master dialect has become more solidified within common Hutt Society, even when the speaker is aware that Low Huttese would be acceptable. 

It should be noted that this exception applies only to free people. Slaves are required by Hutt law to use this dialect when speaking Huttese to any non-slave they interact with, even if that person does not belong to the Hutt caste system. The Hutt law imposing this requirement famously reads, “Because all beings are above a slave, a slave should speak to every being in the tongue of their masters.” The penalty for a slave addressing a master in anything but the high dialect is often some sort of physical punishment. A rather gruesome tradition which is kept in force to this day.  2. The servant dialect is also called “Low Huttese”. While originally it was relatively distinct from both the dialect spoken by the masters and the dialect spoken by the slaves of Hutt Society, it has since suffered a bit of stagnation. There are many factors which could cause this to occur. As the Republic opened up more and more channels of commerce to Hutt Space, and the Master dialect has become the norm outside of Hutt Society, true enforcement of the linguistic standard for non-enslaved beings has fallen much to the wayside in the last two standard centuries or so. Modern Low Huttese dialect is thus mostly similar to the Master dialect in grammar and generally accepted vocabulary. However, a remaining diversion exists which is based on pronunciation, and a significant reliance on rather course slang on the part of those who speak Low Huttese. It has been said by Huttese linguistic scholars that while High Huttese is a an excellent dialect for threats, Low Huttese is an excellent dialect for swearing.  3.  The slave dialect has no name in any official Hutt or Republic record. It is not recognized by any authority in either written or spoken form. In fact, generally the only beings who know or speak the slave dialect are those who are or who once were enslaved, and their loved ones. The dialect differs rather severely from high huttese - though primarily through meaning and cultural context, rather than actual structure. 

It seems that this “hidden” diversion was born of necessity, rather than choice. The masters didn’t like the idea of their slaves having a way of communication the masters were not privy to, and so would punish any slave caught speaking a dialect which was immediately recognizable as being outside of the master dialect. The slave class in the ancient Hutt empire adapted to this by taking the dialect forced upon them, and manipulating a large portion of it for their use. Rather ingeniously, they seem to have developed an entire dialect specifically ordered so that they could express themselves freely without being automatically targeted by a passing master or authority figure. This is the vital distinction: words in the master dialect often have vastly different or even opposite meanings when used in the slave dialect. Added to this complexity are the wide range of connotations and contexts for each word. An interesting note to the slave dialect is that generally, the more abstract a word is, the fewer meanings or connotations it has, whereas often the most culturally impactful words and concepts are taken from simple or every day words. There is only one word for love in the slave dialect - “Luke” - because it is seen as pure, and when given, unconditional. When this word is used, there is no linguistic distinction between platonic or romantic love - the slave class instead relies on idioms or proverbs to express the difference in feeling. In direct contrast, there are nine different ways a person can use the verb which means “to attach”, ranging from the mundane (“Attach these two machine parts together”) to the taboo (“to cause another person to be enslaved”) There are some words which are unique to this dialect, however. One example is the word for “freedom”, which in the slave dialect is “telena”. 

The master dialect’s word for freedom is the same as their word for authoritarian power. Freedom within the master caste, then, was specifically associated with the ability to exercise dominion over the world around them. Members of the slave class, as individuals who constantly suffered under that same authoritarian power, showed a collective repugnance for the association between freedom and the very dehumanization they themselves suffered. Drawing from the use of the anakin plant as one of the most culturally and spiritually significant symbols in the caste (See entry on Anakin, a flowering plant which originated in the deserts of Tatooine but which has since been domesticated throughout the Outer Rim) they instead chose to develop a word based off the Hutt verb “to bloom” One common expression amongst the slave class is “Telena telen ali anakin” - “Freedom blooms with the anakin” Those interested in the study of this dialect, then, are well warned that they should take great care in attempting to communicate in this dialect (if they can find a teacher, that is - many slaves or even those who were formally enslaved are understandably reluctant to give up what is likely one of the only means of expression of not only agency, but of caste solidarity. I have seen two former slaves go from total strangers to kindred spirits in the space of five minutes, upon discovering by means of dialect each others mutual experience.)