Syntax. Fremen, due to the morphological simplifications described above, became a syntactically isolating (or root-isolating) language, dependent on word order and prepositions to indicate word-to-word relationships within sentences. The language was verb-medial, i.e., the main verb of a sentence followed the subject noun phrase or clause and preceded the object noun phrase or clause. Fremen was relatively free in its use of syntactic transformations as compared to Arabic, allowing, for example, the deletion of relative pronouns and various other deletions. It had expanded the Arabic construct case (the so-called idafa) to allow full verbal clauses to act as the complement of the head noun, and had expanded the patterns of negation.
Lexicon. The original word-stock of Fremen was, of course, primarily Arabic in derivation; however, it had been supplemented and in many cases superseded by infusions of words from the many languages1 with which the Zensunni had come in contact. Of certain Arabic etymology are such word and expressions as:
adab "insistent memory"
alam "griefs, cares"
bakka "The Weeper" (Fremen legend)
baklawa "dessert pastry"
bled "flat, open desert"
el-sayal "the rain of sand"
figh "law, jurisprudence," (esp. religious law)
ghafla "distractedness, negligence"
ghanima "booty"
hajj "holy journey, pilgrimage'
hajra "journey of seeking"
Ilim "theology, religious tradition"
Jihad "holy war"
Kindjal "curved, double-bladed short sword"
Kiswa "figure or design" (in Fremen maula myths)
la-la-la "cry of grief"
liban "spice drink"
mahdi "he who is rightly guided"
maula "slave"
misr "The People" (Zensunni term for themselves)
qanat "open canal"
ramadhan "the ninth lunar month"
ruh "the spirit world"
shari-a "the ritual, religious ways"
shaitan "Satan"
sihaya "the desert springtime"
umma "member of the brotherhood of prophets"
usul "the base of the pillar, the root"
dar al-hikman "school of religious translation"
kitab al-ibar "the book of tears" (Fremen survival handbook)
kull wahad "I am profoundly stirred!"
lisan al-gaib "The voice from the outer world" (off-world prophet of the Fremen messianic legends)
mu zein wallah "Nothing good, good for nothing" (traditional opening for a Fremen curse)
soo-soo-sook! "water-seller’s cry"
subakh ul kuhar "Are you well? (Fremen greeting)
subakh un nar "I am well. And you? (traditional reply)
These common expressions are found in the Funeral Plain Scrolls, Rakis Ref. Cat. 1-R2345-2348.
The private language of the Imperial House of Salusa Secundus (House Corrino) has contributed many words to Fremen as well as to standard Galach, most of them military terms, e.g., bashar (provincial governor), burseg (commanding general), caid (military governor), hanly (legalized vendetta), sardaukar (elite troops of House Corrino), selamlih (Imperial audience chamber), and siridar (planetary governor). Many Fremen theological or legal concepts are specified by words which can be traced to the language of Ishkal, fourth planet of Sigma Draconis, indicating some kind of Zensunni contact with its speakers, including istislah (a welfare law), khala (spirit invocation), harama (miracle), mushtamal (garden), sadus (holy judges), sarfa (turning from God), and interestingly enough, shai-hulud, which on Ishkal refers to an ancient subterranean network of waterways and tunnels excavated by an extinct species of large amphibious life-forms (hulud). Other terms came from the speech of the dilaubite miners of Rima (as mentioned above), e.g., chaumas, aumas (poison in solid food), ichwan (brotherhood, union), chaumurky, musky, murky (poison in a drink), cherem (a brotherhood of a common hatred), giudichar (a holy truth), kwisatz haderach (shortening of the way), chouhada (purposeful fighters).
Also traced to this language are the Fremen worm-steersman's calls, which on Rima are found in use by the divers of overland dilaubite caravans, e.g., ach, derch, geyrat.
Many Fremen terms were of doubtful etymology, e.g., baraha (miracle worker), and shadout (well-dipper), perhaps from shaduf, a device used for irrigation on Ishia; yali and ya ya yawm are of unknown meaning and provenience. Ingslei ("Fremen Place-Names in the Languages of Salusa Secundus," BNM 72:28-54) ascribes the term sietch to Tamashek of Salusa Secundus, and cielago and hiereg to the ancient language of Harmonthep. The etymology of some Fremen words remains locked in controversy, e.g., ikhut-eigh, Muad'Dib.2
Dialects. There were two major dialects of Fremen, labeled Eastern and Western, identified primarily by phonological differences, certain lexical items, and some morphological variations. The Eastern group extended (in Atreidean times) eastward in longitude from Arrakeen (30° W) to the False Wall-West and the Habbanya Erg (150° E). It included the sietch communities beyond the Plastic Basin and Observatory Mountains, the Rock Outcroppings on the Funeral Plain, Sietch Tabr, Bight of the Cliff, and the sietch communities of the False Wall-West. It was the Eastern dialect which figured in the rise of the Umma Regent, Paul Muad'Dib Atreides. It employed all of the above-mentioned sounds (see Phonology above); the plural markers were -at and -an.
The Western group extended from the Sihaya Ridge (55° W) to the False Wall-South (150° W), and included the sietch warrens of the Sihaya Ridge, Hole-in-the-Rock, Gara Kulon, Pasty Mesa, Chin Rock, and the False Wall-South. This dialect employed many lexical items borrowed from the languages of the smugglers near the edge of the Minor Erg. Its plural marker was -u and adjectives of Arabic derivation retained gender distinctions. The sound g was absent, as was initial kh (e.g., aumas, Eastern chaumas).3
Graphemics. The ancient Arabic script, a naturally cursive script with up to four different forms for each letter (depending on its position — initial, medial, final, or unconnected — in a word), has, through millennia of usage, been streamlined and at times arbitrarily restructured so that it has come to be an alphabetic script with only one form of a letter per sound unit. This latest innovation was attributed to the planetologist Liet-Kynes during his stay on Arrakis with the Fremen tribes. Other prior innovations included the introduction of symbols to represent vowels (ancient Arabic script indicated short vowels only by infrequently used diacritical marks), attributed to Ali Ben Ohasi and later modified by the Fremen in the first copies of their desert survival manual, the Kitab al-Ibar. The Fremen script in use during the time of Muad'Dib is shown below. Many of the values of the old Arabic letters have been reassigned, while some new symbols have been contrived from existing letters, and there has apparently been at least some totally arbitrary assignment of the letters themselves. The script runs right to left, although some Fremen dialects reportedly wrote boustrophedon ("as the ox plows," that is, right to left in the first line, left to right in the second, and so on), such as the Fremen of the Sihaya Ridge.4 The Shadda, or "strengthening" mark indicates a doubled consonant. Note: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ marks the base line of the writing, to show letters with descenders.
The following passage of Fremen and the accompanying transcription and translation demonstrate the usage of the script, as well as affering an example of the actual language. The passage is from a speech by Muad'Dib, given in Arrakis Awakening by the Princess Irulan (Arrakis Studies 15, Grumman: United Worlds).
Transcription:
innatna nishuf al-asir mayyit u hiy ayish. liana zaratha zarati. u gawlha gawli. u tishuf halt al-hudud altnan albaid. aywa libarr adam al-malum tishuf Hani.
Translation:
"Though we deem the captive dead, yet does she live. For her seed is my seed and her voice is my voice. And she sees unto the farthest reaches of possibility. Yea, unto the vale of the unknowable does she see because of me."
The coming of the prophet Paul Muad'Dib raised Fremen language and culture
from its humble Zensunni roots to a short-lived but brilliant eminence throughout the galaxy. It served as the sacred language of Paul's Imperium and theology, as the language of philosophy, law, and education. It was a flowering that surprised everyone but the Fremen.
NOTES
1Many Fremen terms remain controversial. The most famous Fremen linguist, Defa 'l-Fanini, was quite dubious (in Vol. ID of the Taaj 'l-Fremen [Salusa Secundus: Morgan and Sharak]) about the ultimate Arabic etymons of al-Gaib, postulating in this case a Farsi substratum and brace a Kuiturwort. According to a commentary on this passage in the Taaj, Farsi, a major language of the Isfahan-e nou area of Poritrin, became extinct around 7500 B.G.
Quite controversial as well is the long-running debate in all known commentaries on the Taaj over the Fremen greeting formula. The school of Basrah has attracted the majority of supporters for its contention that ul kuhar derives from Arabic khayr (i.e., /xayr/), "good" or "goodness," via metathesis and ablaut (apophony). The Kufa school still finds favor in some scholarly circles, with the minority viewpoint that ul kuhar is a direct calque of hieroglyphic root khr meaning "splendid view" or "view from serendip."
The traditional response un nor is an archaic biconsonantal root about which chapter 8 of Vol. III of the Taaj deals. Its complexities are much too detailed for discussion here, but suffice it to say that nor can be viewed as a derivative of root nr, which could also yield nur, nir, ner, etc.
2Some scholars are of the opinion (for example, 'l-Kisaa'ii, in his 'l-Kitab 'l-baari' fii-l-tughah (Salusa Secundus: Morgan and Sharak); trans. I.L. Grivit, Kisaa'ii's Lexicon (Topaz; Carolus Univ. Press]), that ikhut-eigh is related to an ancient Arabic root meaning "sibling." The transition of "sibling" to "water-seller's cry" is unparalleled in linguistic literature, hence the warranted skepticism concerning its linguistic change and history. Its internal semantics is synchronically justified, however.
On the other hand, all authorities believe muad'dib must be Arabic in origin, but no Arabic source verifies its Atreidean meaning of "adapted kangaroo mouse of Arrakis." 'l-Fanini (in Vol. IV of the Taaj) says that most probably it is a vulgar corruption of the Arabic dib, "wolf." Semantic shifts in animal terminology are known from all the sietch warrens of Dune, such as cielago from an older Harmonthepic compound ciel, "water," plus lako, "fowl."
A competing explanation is that offered by Grivit in Kisaa'ii's Lexicon that muad'dib is the result of a different semantic shift. Grivit notes that a legend originating on Gamma Vertis VII concerns the apotheosis of the hetman Sharkala; in the story, the ruler is transformed at his death into the constellation called Sharkala or, from his fame as a law-giver, The Preceptor. Speakers of Tailara worked beside the Fremen on Bela Tegeuse, and the Fremen translation of 'preceptor' is mu'addib. When the Fremen were transported to Rossak, they retained the name of the constellation, and when later they moved to Arrakis, they named the kangaroo mouse after the constellation. Grivit notes collections of ancient Fremen sayings that direct children to observe and imitate the desert-wise ways of the mouse.
3The r/s dichotomy, quite well known in historical dialectology and the subject of a lengthy study by Hoont Kauriip ("Rhotacism in pre-Atreidean Fremen," Fremen Studies 5:109-150) is demonstrated in Fremen by such pairs as musky vs. murky. In fact, Kauriip uses this pair as one of the determiners of the isoglosses in his dialect maps of Arrakis.
4Nomadic Fremen (called Bedwine in their own dialect) reversed Fremen m and u; in Appendix B of the Taaj, 'l-Fanini states that the nomads had preserved the original shape of the Arabic letter (grapheme) which for some unknown reason became reversed in what developed as the standard language. This obvious error has been frequently challenged.
A.K. and J.Q.
Further references: 'Abd 'l-Zubaidii, 'l-Wadiih: An Introduction to Fremen, Arrakis Studies 3 (Grumman: United Worlds); Ibin Ahmad 'l-Khalil, Kitaab 'l-amaalii: Written Atreidean Fremen (Salusa Secundus: Morgan and Sharak).
FREMEN LANGUAGE. History
It is rightly said that the history of a language is the history of its people. In the language are preserved their victories and defeats not so much on the field of battle, but in the quieter yet more important struggles of life from day to day. The language may bear no trace of kings or ministers, but it does tell us of people — what they ate, what they wore, what they worried over, and what they rejoiced in. And this hidden history can often be found only in the language.
These assertions are true of Fremen, despite a unique difference in the history of that language. Formerly, the language of Dune represented something of a puzzle for the philologist, because for many years it appeared not to have had a history at all. Part of the problem was the scarcity of records: as the Zensunni traveled the planets of their forced migrations, from Terra to Poritrin, to Salusa Secundus and Bela Tegeuse, to Rossak and Harmonthep, they often found worlds on which all their energy was required for survival. What documents survive from those times are few, written as they were under harsh conditions, sometimes forbidden by law, by hostile neighbors or masters.
The marginal economies of the Zensunni left little room for writing and almost none for publishing. The language of an oppressed group is always the hardest to trace: it reaches no popular audience, it receives no scholarly attention, it commands no critical respect. Its speakers are branded as ignorant, their innovations called corruptions, their pronunciation derided as vulgar or slovenly. If such attitudes persist in the most democratic of societies, what was to be expected in the caste-ridden Imperium? For most of the thousands of years before 7000 B.G., someone possessing the materials to study Fremen would have lacked the desire. Yet within centuries after moving to Arrakis, the Fremen had an extensive literature both oral and written, embodied in a language that baffled the historians.
The reason for their puzzlement is not hard to see; compare the quotations below from Arabic and proto-Galach, two languages roughly contemporary, and their developments in Fremen and Atreidean Galach, again contemporaries:
Proto-Galach: A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Atreidean Galach: baradit nehiidit beed gwarp tau aubukt.
Ancient Arabic: kuntu sa'idan fi shababi.
Atreidean Fremen: kuntu saghidan fi shababi.
One need not be a linguist to see that while the Galach has changed radically over this long period, the Fremen appears to have changed hardly at all. The Fremen themselves did not explain the apparent stability of their language for three reasons: first, on Arrakis, mere survival occupied much time and energy, even if the Fremen now worked for themselves instead of for masters. Second, the scholarly interest of the Fremen tended toward theology and literature or jurisprudence, not toward linguistics. Third, and most important, the form of their language was bound up with their faith; hence off-worlders were denied access to the information that would have clarified the situation.
It was only with the discovery of the Rakis crystals that an answer could be posited to this most intriguing of philological oddities. It is now clear that Atreidean Fremen did not evolve from the language the Zensunnis spoke on Poritrin or Bela Tegeuse, but is rather the ancestor of that language, recaptured and learned as a badge of nationhood.
FREMEN ATTITUDES TOWARD LANGUAGE. To understand fully what happened and why it happened, one must first become aware of the Fremen emotion for the language they spoke. As a scorned and enslaved people, they had little to take pride in or to distinguish them from other slaves except their language. Consequently, the language became invested not only with the aura of the religion whose ritual it enshrined but also with the identity of the Zensunni as a people. Nowhere is this feeling better illustrated than in the dying worlds of 'l-Akiim, one of the leaders of the resistance on Bela Tegeuse: "Our speech is the most precious treasure our fathers left us; it puts a shirt on us when our bodies are smitten; it is the soul of the Zensunni. Can a body live without a soul, or a soul live without a body? It is the strong rope of the Zensunni which does not sl
acken; it is the flag we follow."1
For the Zensunni, their language was the language of Paradise, the language of Nilotic al-Ourouba. To spurn it by using other tongues was a sin. Its guardians — poets, grammarians, memorizers, readers — were the foundation of the society, held in esteem among the people and consulted on matters of grave import.
In the sayings of the language was preserved the wisdom of the fathers; no matter how widely the Zensunni were scattered, they would have all recognized the proverbs that expressed their people's stoicism and resilience. And they would have treasured them. When half the population of Poritrin was uprooted for transporting to Salusa Secundus, the impoverished, frightened wretches crowded in the heighliners consoled themselves with this thought: in kan madat al-hawatim baqat al-asabi (if the rings are gone, the fingers are left.)2 They knew well that their destination, Salusa Secundus, was the breeding and training planet of the Sardaukar who had slaughtered so many of their kinsmen. A proverb like al-lubb ay ma yawi ma yadi (wolves do not cause harm in their dens) may seem to some like whistling in the dark; but to the thoughtful it will seem a welcome attempt to stave off despair.
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