#huttese

What he's trying to do is refer to a particular type of sand, and make a comparative metaphor to the sand on Naboo (iirc theyre looking out over a lake with a shore) and also the cultures of the two places.

However, Huttese and/or Amatakka would have many words for sand of all different kinds (like how Inuit languages have lots of words for snow), so while he is referring to something specific, it just comes out as sand. The descriptors after are course correcting in order to clarify what kind of sand he means.

it says "KARK JABA" or the equivalent of "FUCK JABBA" in Huttese—Disney made me take it out for the final, unfortunately. 😅

i think trying to map the experiences of someone from an ethnic or national minority moving into a more powerful nation as a kid in our world onto anakin is just bound to fail because the culture he’s being taken away from was not his in the first place. it’s a culture from which he was explicitly excluded, a place and system and language that denied his personhood.

it’s not the tragedy of someone struggling to hold onto their roots while a stronger culture threatens to sweep them away, it’s being denied any culture of his own. it’s the tragedy of a mother speaking to her son in the lingua franca of the universe because she knows her own tongue will not be useful to him in the life they live. if she even remembers it, if the memories of her free childhood aren’t too distant and too painful.

At first, it was just a fragment.

A sound without shape.

A memory that refused to stay still.

Anakin heard it the first time the twins were born—not clearly, not fully, just something at the edge of thought. A rhythm. A cadence. A voice that didn’t belong in the present but refused to stay in the past.

It unsettled him more than he expected.

Because he knew it.

Or thought he did.

---

Later, he searched for it.

Quietly.

Carefully.

Not telling anyone—not even Padmé Amidala—because he wasn’t even sure what he was looking for.

Just a song.

A lullaby.

Something his mother used to sing in Huttese when he was small on Tatooine.

But memory is unreliable when it has been buried under war, grief, and time.

So the archives gave him nothing.

No recordings.

No translations.

No written trace of anything that felt right.

Only fragments of Huttese phrases that looked close but sounded wrong when he tried them under his breath.

Eventually, he stopped searching.

Not because he gave up—

but because he was afraid he was losing something that had mattered more than he realized.

---

The nursery is quiet tonight.

Too quiet in the way only sleeping children can make a room feel—like the world is holding itself still so nothing breaks.

Anakin stands near the cradle.

One of the twins shifts slightly in sleep.

The other makes a soft sound, then settles again.

He doesn’t move.

He just watches them.

And something in him loosens.

Not intentionally.

Just enough for memory to slip through the cracks.

---

It starts wrong at first.

A broken sound in his throat.

A half-formed rhythm.

He almost stops immediately.

But the nursery doesn’t judge him.

The room doesn’t demand perfection.

So he tries again.

Slower this time.

Listening more than remembering.

Letting instinct fill the gaps where certainty fails.

A phrase emerges.

Then another.

Not complete.

Not correct.

But familiar enough to hurt.

---

And then—

something shifts.

Like a door finally finding its frame.

The words come back not as they were stored in him…

but as they were felt.

Soft.

Simple.

Huttese, but gentled by memory and time.

The lullaby Shmi used to hum when he couldn’t sleep.

When the heat of Tatooine pressed too hard against the night.

When she would sit beside him and make the world feel smaller in the safest way.

---

Anakin exhales without realizing he’s been holding his breath.

His voice steadies.

Not stronger.

Just clearer.

The song isn’t perfect.

It isn’t complete.

But it exists now.

Fully.

For the first time since childhood, it is no longer something lost.

---

One of the twins stirs.

Not waking.

Just responding.

To sound.

To presence.

To something soft enough to cross sleep without breaking it.

Anakin doesn’t stop.

He keeps going anyway.

Because he understands, suddenly and simply, that this is what the song was always meant for.

Not survival.

Not memory.

But comfort.

---

When he finishes, the nursery is still.

The twins are asleep again.

And Anakin realizes something that sits quietly in his chest:

He didn’t just remember Shmi.

He brought her forward.

Not into war.

Not into grief.

But into this room.

Into this life.

Into something that doesn’t hurt to hold.

And for the first time, he lets himself believe that maybe memory doesn’t have to be a wound.

STAR WARS EPISODE II: Attack of the Clones 00:24:28

The subtitles for this scene read "Wee Shahnit... Sleemo" but if you listen closely, she clearly says the Huttese word Murishani translating to "bounty hunter".

In Star Wars Chronicles: The Prequels by Pablo Hidalgo, he writes that Zam's last words are "murishani sleemo".

The Rise and Fall of Darth Vader by Ryder Windham, a young adult novel from 2007 which retells the events of the Star Wars saga from Anakin/Vader's viewpoint uses the words "Wee shahnit".

R.A. Salvatore's novelization of Attack of the Clones simply omits the line altogether, with "It was a bounty hunter called-" being Zam's last words.

Thanks to @darkblades75 for sharing the script page and also suggesting to check the Attack of the Clones comic adaptation from Dark Horse Comics. Much like the novelization, both the script and comic leave Zam's last words as "It was a bounty hunter called..."

One more source to add, and so far the most recent, adding a little wrinkle to the mix, the 2019 Star Wars By the Numbers video "Every Language in Star Wars Movies" identifies Zam Wesell's last words as being spoken in Clawdite. Here's an archived video on the Wayback Machine, as the original video has now been made private.

😂