Those sent to Bela Tegeuse were better treated, but after their experiences, ever watchful. They grouped together in their own communities both for protection and for preservation of their ways. One of their leaders, 'l-Riyas, forever settled the controversy over how much interaction the Zensunni would have with their neighbors on Bela Tegeuse by resorting to proverbial wisdom: al-raqs quddam alumi majhudan la yura amal-u (dancing in front of the Mind is an effort that goes unseen). But their watchfulness did not prevent still another forced migration; once again, Sardaukar invaded and conquered the Zensunni, transporting them to Rossak (or as the Zensunni called it, maqbara, "graveyard") and Harmonthep. Rossak, a bitter and barren glacier of a world, made Bela Tegeuse worth yearning for. But the Zensunni as a people did not look back; in the first winter on Rossak, when thousands died of pneumonia and thousands more of starvation, the mention of the crops of Bela Tegeuse was invariably met with ash-Hal takul sayint tusbih (no matter how much you eat, you wake up fasting).
As is now well known, the Zensunni on Salusa Secundus eventually fared better. In 5295 Ezhar VII released the Zensunni on that planet and provided them with transportation to Ishia, the second planet of Beta Tygri. As always, their language expressed their distrust of attempts at governmental benevolence. A popular saying on this trip was man la yarifjadd-ak la yarif-akfi waqd-ak (whoever didn't know your grandfather won't know you). The Zensunni name for the planet was Albudeite (scarce water); Ishia was no Caladan, but neither was it a Rossak. The Zensunni adapted to the planet and lived there in relative tranquillity.
The language was more than an identity and a consolation: it also expressed the humor of the Zensunni — sometimes grim but always effective. For example, the siridar of Salusa Secundus in 4495 was named Hanln Famun; as was the custom among his class, he added the tribal name of his wife, Dart, between his own personal and tribal name. When his appointment as siridar was announced, the Fremen were much amused to hear the proclamation that their new ruler was Hanln, Dart Famun, because of its similarity to the Zensunni phrase aynayn darratfi hamman, meaning "the eyes of one who breaks wind in a bathhouse." Succeeding siridars never questioned why the Zensunni referred to them as "the eyes," but the Zensunni knew. It was the same Siridar Famun who employed a chamberlain with a notorious speech impediment. In 4501, the Siridar's son was preparing to lead a group of Sardaukar novices on a blooding raid, and the various subject peoples on the planet were commanded to witness the departure, timed to coincide with the bringing of the annual tribute. As each national group approached the reviewing stand, they would offer the tribute and add a compliment or blessing for the na-Siridar. The chamberlain would then trumpet the good wishes, first in the native language and then in translation. The Zensunni were prepared. After presenting their tribute, they told the chamberlain that their wish was sallamaka al-lahu wa-nasaraka (May God protect you, and grant you victory). The Sardaukar interpreter verified this meaning, and the chamberlain turned to the throng and proclaimed, thallamaka al-lahu wa-natharaka! The interpreter valued his life, and therefore did not report what the Zensunni knew and what he should have foreseen — that the chamberlain's lisp had given it a different meaning: "May God split you and scatter you all over."
THE DISCOVERY. Although their language was the pride and mainstay of the Zensunni, they were powerless to prevent its slow change over time. Zensunni speech was much different in 6000 than it had been in 2800. For example, a phrase such as "The Governor is a strong man" had this form when the Zensunni were on Terra: 'amma l-hakimu farajulun qawiyun; but by the time of their arrival on Rossak, the centuries had turned this into kopao legi vrochlu kefeisu. The Zensunni did not know that the speech they had guarded so zealously would have been unintelligible to their ancestors. On the contrary, they rejoiced in the "purity" of their language.
A Sayyadina on Rossak, one known to tradition only as "Yarbuz," was driven by hunger to fill her stomach with an indigenous plant. The massive dose of poison which she ingested unlocked within her the memories of all the Sayyadinas in her ancestry. This was not only an event of the first importance to the religion of the Zensunni, but also an epochal event for the language they spoke. Successive Reverend Mothers, repeating the experience, found exactly how far their language had strayed from its ancestral form, and began to educate the people to return it to the sounds of the language of Paradise. The pious were horrified at the news from the Sayyadina; even though some of them may have initially resisted learning what was then essentially a foreign tongue, they dared not reject this unexpected gift of sacred knowledge: man yata-shi wa-yaba-h yatlub wa-lis yuta-h (who is given and refuses will seek and not be given).
Over the next several generations, the Zensunni on Rossak, under the guidance of their Sayyadina, rolled back 16,000 years of language change. Like an academy of language, the Sayyadina ruled on the meanings and sounds of words —halalhu, "it is lawful," or haram hit, "it is forbidden." Of course, the language they made native once again was not the exact form which Terran Arabic had possessed as a literary medium, but the demotic, the speech of the people. But return the language to this source they did, and although the task was a long one, kull mansuj manfud (all weaving has an end). When they were reunited with their sisters and brothers from Ishia, they taught them this new-old sacred language. The nefij, the exile, was over and umma tamut wa-umma tanbut (one nation dies and another is born) on Arrakis.
FREMEN ON ARRAKIS. The language of the Zensunni, now properly called "Fremen," had resources equal to the task of finding a home on this new planet, whose Fremen name probably derives from araq (sweat). To take the most noticeable example, the life of the Fremen often depended on awareness of desert and weather conditions, and a recognition of the types of terrain traversed. "Sand" was not enough to describe the substance that winds could use to strip the flesh from the bone in one form, or that a sandworm could use to locate its prey in another form. Various kinds needed to be distinguished and hence needed to be named. Within a few decades, instead of one name, Fremen had provided themselves with many for this most important fact of their ambience:
alazor: old, oxidized sand, yellow to reddish-brown in color;
atmirez; new sand, usually the gray color of mortar;
atambal: impacted sand whose surface amplifies and transmits any sound blow with a distinct drumming sound; found on the windward face of dunes;
bidriyah: coarse silica grit;
el'sayal: a rain of sand; dust carried to medium altitudes, frequently bringing moisture in its fall;
galbana: pea-sand, treacherous under foot, requiring slow and deliberate movement;
garrufa: pebble sand; reliable footing;
idras: 'sand-teeth,' the most dangerous sand when wind-driven;
kaymun: sand so finely ground as to be a powder; the most irritating to traverse, since it was almost impossible to keep it entirely out of the stillsuit;
matar: a rain of sand from high altitudes.
Speakers of Fremen showed their own adaptability and that of their language with proverbs too. A saying on Poritrin warned against haste with the words Ida rayt al-tin abshir b-al-tin (when you see the fig season, then you can announce the muddy season). But on Arrakis there were neither fig trees nor rains. But the proverb was not forgotten; rather, it was adapted, substituting words so that it became "When you see the Coriolis storm, then you can announce the el-sayal." Similarly, children were chided for overeating with the words ida lam taktafil anta fil (if you cannot be satisfied, you are an elephant). To simply substitute the word for the most enormous beast they knew, the sandworm, for that of elephant would have destroyed the meter of the proverb. Instead, since no confusion was possible because elephants did not exist on Arrakis, the Fremen shifted the meaning of the word, applying it to the sandworm in its activities as an eater.
The Fremen practice of naming — personal names, tribal names, nicknames — continued to show its traditional vigor and color. A high degree of concreteness marked the bes
t examples of their naming customs. The name of the famous Fremen warrior in the Atreidean jihad, Midri, means "winnowing fork." Paul Muad'Dib's resourceful lieutenant in the battles of Topaz, Akrab, bore a name that means "scorpion," and his elite troops, the iday alakrab, were "the hands of the scorpion." The Fremen Medical Corps, Abma, showed a rare instance, is Fremen of the formation of an acronym: its name stands for Anamilan Bariyya Min Al-dam (fingers innocent of blood).
Nor did Fremen lose its flair for humor and invective in the assignment of names. Count Glossu Rabban was especially well endowed in this respect: he was of course known as "Beast" Rabban, and called mudir nahya (Governor Cobra), a term that shows a contact with Indi speakers on Rossak, since it is a borrowed word, deriving from the ancient Hindu nag (snake). In addition to these, he was known in graffiti as tawalil (wart) during his term as governor of Arrakis, specifically, a wart on his uncle Vladimir Harkonnen, al-atanin (the jowl), sallat Allah bi-kaswatay-h al-jaam (may God give him mange in his genitals).
Atreidean Fremen proved equal to all the labors that a hostile humanity and an indifferent nature could lay on it and on its speakers. But what it could not survive was the hothouse care of the millennia-long rule of Leto II. When the Fremen became "Museum Fremen," the old ways were preserved, but preserved lifelessly, like a fly in amber. The Sayyadina no longer watched over the language, no longer brought the memories of their ancestors to ward and guide the speech of the people, and Fremen went through a period of rapid change. It descended to the level of a school-learned language, used for empty ritual shows for tourists. Some Fremen, it is now believed, saw this fate coming; one such was al-Baz, "the falcon," Naib of Sietch Hagga. As usual, his comment was proverbial, and one cannot but wonder if he intended a reference to Leto II when he said, akir man yamut malak al-mut (the last to die is the angel of death).
W.E.M.
NOTES
1Cited in Daiwid Kuuan, Monuments of the Zensunni Migrations (Salusa Secundus: Morgan and Sharak), p. 112.
2To avoid placing unnecessary difficulties in the reader's path, all examples, unless otherwise noted, have been cited in the form they would have had in Classical Fremen, that of about 9500 B.G., regardless of the stage in the development of the Zensunni language they were originally composed in.
Further references: ZENSUNNI MIGRATIONS; V. Koryain, A History of the Fremen Language (Paseo: Institute of Galacto-Fremen Culture), from which are taken the examples found in this summary; Õfor G. Chēsi, Fremen Inscriptions from Rakis 1-R2346, Arrakis Studies 22 (Topaz: Carolus Univ. Press).
FREMEN LANGUAGE. Philosophy of language
Language is so bound up with our own humanity and our individual identities that it is the face we present to the world and at the same time the eyes in that face — the window into our minds. It is a grid impressed on the flux of reality that allows us to perceive, to measure, and to control the quanta of experience. Groups which understood its nature entered the struggle for power with a potent weapon.
THE BENE GESSERIT. Paul Atreides noted that his mother often observed that "tongues are the Bene Gesserit's first training."1 Their study served two purposes in The B.G. regimen: first, language was the key to understanding others — both what they expressed and what they hid. The B.G. novice learned to listen closely and observe keenly, to take careful note of the sounds and signs by which a mind reveals itself. She studied the great galactic languages and their dialects, identifying the characteristics that put the fingerprint, so to speak, of the speaker upon the utterance, regardless of the language in which it was expressed.
One subject of study was "Language-Thought Orientation," the way in which language and patterns of thought intermingle. For example, suppose a native speaker of Galach speaks in Bodrian, a major language of Placentia. Bodrian has over 300 kinship terms describing age, sex, lineal descent, generation, and degree of distance from the most prestigious family member, plus more terms used when status is unknown or doubtful. These terms come automatically to those who have grown up speaking Bodrian, but one used to the simpler system of Galach shows a characteristic hesitation when translating. Thus the B.G. derived the Fifth Principle of Semantic Nets: Classification is simpler than Division, expressing the observation that it is easier to proceed from the more specialized Bodrian term to its Galach equivalent than to go from, say, fuuwaree, the Galach word for male parent, to one of the twenty or so words in Bodrian that may be demanded by the situation and context.
Suppose further that the speaker is posing as a native of Placentia and has intensively practiced such semantic networks as kinship terms, where a mistake would reveal the deception. The Bene Gesserit learned also to observe physical signs — the flexure of facial muscles, the pulsebeat in the neck, the dilation of the pupils, and the like — for subtle sighs of tension. The involuntary signs among these reveal slight increases in adrenaline caused by the speaker's successful huddling of the linguistic barrier presented by a difficult translation. But the voluntary signs alone betray a clever imposter. The Bene Gesserit counter then might take two stages: the first was a withholding of recognition signals, those small sounds and movements that tell the speaker that the listener is attentive and understanding, that communication is succeeding. From the B.G. interrogator would come no nods of the head, no murmurs of assent, no lifting of the eyebrows, no frowns, no smiles, nothing. The speaker could see that his questioner was watching him closely, yet the withholding of recognition signals produced its desired effect: the speaker knew that something was wrong, yet did not know what, and his tension increased markedly. Once the imposter was unnerved, the conversation would be led through a variety of topics called "Diagnostics," designed to present hesitation points from a range of languages to probe the deception further.
An important Diagnostic, as cited in Liber Ricarum, was the speaker's field of specialization: "Languages build up to reflect specializations in a way of life. Each specialization may be recognized by its words, by its assumptions and sentence structures. Look for stoppages. Specializations represent places where life is being stopped, where the movement is dammed up and frozen."2
Specialization. "Specialization" has a particular meaning in this context, one so important to the understanding of the Fremen that it warrants more detailed examination. To begin with, whatever their language, all peoples divide living creatures into hierarchically organized groups, for example:
1. Fundamental name: plant, animal
2. Inclusive name: tree, herb, vegetable
3. Generic name: fogwood, oak, elacca, elm
4. Specific name: Bradford fogwood, lake fogwood, Tzu-lei fogwood, spotted fogwood
5. Varietal name: mountain Bradford fogwood, northern Bradford fogwood
Terms at all levels are mutually exclusive — nothing is both a tree and a herb — and belong to a group on the next higher level — trees, herbs, and vegetables are all plants. Level 3 is the largest (for the nonspecialist) and the most basic, having about 500 categories in every known language. It is more specific than level 2 and useful in more contexts than levels 4 or 5. Note also that terms in level 3 are simple, but those of 4 or 5 are complex and usually derived from level 3 terms. Level 3 divides up experience in a way shared by speakers of all languages, a way more "natural" and easier to distinguish for all observers.
But a forester, one who specializes in trees, begins to think one level down, treating tree as a fundamental name, fogwood, oak and elacca as inclusive names, and Bradford fogwood, lake fogwood, and spotted fogwood as generic terms. But generics should be simple terms, so the forester speaks of bradfords, lakes, and spots instead. He also increases the size of the specific level by adding new names: Snow Mountain bradfords, snap-needled lakes, shagbark spots. Specialists distort their worlds by magnifying their own areas of specialization and the words in them out of all proportion. Outside the specialty, life is too often stopped by being ignored, movement is frozen.3
None of this knowledge was kept secret by the B
ene Gesserit: their advantage lay in talent, commitment, and practice. The method of playing the baliset is no secret, yet few do it well. Moreover, B.G. members were free to share their knowledge and willing to do so. Princess Irulan readily put her learning in the service of the empire her husband ruled, telling the Arrakeen War College, for example, how language change can signal social unrest: "In all major socializing forces you will find an underlying movement to gain and maintain power through the use of words — In the maintenance of such a power structure, certain symbols are kept out of the reach of common understanding — Symbol-secrecy of this form leads to the development of fragmented sub-languages, each being a signal that its users are accumulating some form of power. With this insight into a power process, our Imperial Security Force must be ever alert to the formation of sub-languages."4
The Path of Understanding. The Bene Gesserit had a second objective in their study of languages: the liberation of self. In this more advanced study, the first step was to turn the light of the awakened mind on the hidden assumptions of one's language. As the anonymous writers of The Panoplia Propheticus expressed it, "If you believe certain words, you believe their hidden arguments. When you believe something is right or wrong, true or false, you believe the assumptions in the words which express the arguments. Such assumptions are often full of holes, but remain most precious to the convinced."5
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