Fremen for Dunies

[SandChigger]

Glad I have my own private hoard, then...

[Freakzilla]

Korba stuck his penis in the communal spice again.

Well, if it's going to be THAT kind of party...

[SandChigger]

...let me run back and get some socks to smoke?

[Freakzilla]

Sock smoker? Sockhead? I don't think I like the sound of it. Besides, if you could get high off them I'm sure I'd know about it.

[Nekhrun]

You have damp nacnuds.

[Freakzilla]

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/nanus

[SandChigger]

an achondroplastic dwarf whose small size is the result of a genetic defect; body parts and mental and sexual development are normal

That's what I'm talkin'!





(You realize I just post this stuff in hopes that some day it'll come back to me in a strange and wondrous form, right?)

[Freakzilla]

(You realize I just post this stuff in hopes that some day it'll come back to me in a strange and wondrous form, right?)

[SandChigger]

La taghfir abadan! La tansa abadan! "Never forgive! Never forget!"

(ghafara "he forgave"; GH-F-R should be familiar from ghufran.)

[MrFlibble]

La taghfir abadan! La tansa abadan! "Never forgive! Never forget!"

(ghafara "he forgave"; GH-F-R should be familiar from ghufran.)

Cool! I mean, mumtaz!

(BTW, I thought the original quote was "Never to forgive! Never to forget!")

[Freakzilla]

La taghfir abadan! La tansa abadan! "Never forgive! Never forget!"

(ghafara "he forgave"; GH-F-R should be familiar from ghufran.)

Cool! I mean, mumtaz!

(BTW, I thought the original quote was "Never to forgive! Never to forget!")

You are correct, sir.

Far down the corridor, an image-voice screamed: "They denied us the Hajj!"
Jessica saw the slave cribs on Bela Tegeuse down that inner corridor, saw
the weeding out and the selecting that spread men to Rossak and Harmonthep.
Scenes of brutal ferocity opened to her like the petals of a terrible flower.
And she saw the thread of the past carried by Sayyadina after Sayyadina--first
by word of mouth, hidden in the sand chanteys, then refined through their own
Reverend Mothers with the discovery of the poison drug on Rossak . . . and now
developed to subtle strengthen Arrakis in the discovery of the Water of Life.
Far down the inner corridor, another voice screamed: "Never to forgive!
Never to forget!"
~Dune

[SandChigger]

(BTW, I thought the original quote was "Never to forgive! Never to forget!")

It is indeed, as Freak has already shown with the quote.

The problem, though, is what the hell kind of phrase is that, and how would you translate it?

My intuition is that it's some kind of vow of oath, with the performative part left off:

"(I vow/I swear) never to forgive, never to forget!"

Which would of course be the same as "... to never forgive, to never forget" in more normal conversation (if you don't mind splitting your infinitives), but that doesn't have the same catchy rhythm.

Arabic doesn't have infinitives, and I haven't found any alternative other than using negative imperatives. (Literally it says something like "Not you-forgive(jussive) never!") I'll keep looking, though, and if I find something more pleasing, I'll change it.

[MrFlibble]

My intuition is that it's some kind of vow of oath, with the performative part left off:

"(I vow/I swear) never to forgive, never to forget!"

Which would of course be the same as "... to never forgive, to never forget" in more normal conversation (if you don't mind splitting your infinitives), but that doesn't have the same catchy rhythm.

Yeah, it had also occurred to me that "Never forgive, never forget!" sounds more rhythmical, and can be used as a battle cry or something (although "Taqwa!" is more cool IMO)

[SandChigger]

Yeah, taqwa serves for the heat of battle; the other is more a rallying cry, to gather the troop.

Here are a couple more vocabulary items, of particular relevance in jihadna!

muwafiq consistent, concordant; suitable, fit, appropriate; agreeable, acceptable

mutadarib conflicting, irreconcilable, incompatible; contradictory, discrepant, inconsistent

Both require maa with (pron: ma-a, as two syllables, not a long "a" vowel).

muwafiq can also be negated by prefixing it with ghair- (or gheir-): ghair-muwafiq inconsistent.

Examples:

Kutub al-ibn (hiya) mutadariba maa kutub al-ab! "(The) books of the son [she=they] are inconsistent with (the) books of the father!"

Plural non-human objects are treated as singular feminine; hence the -a ending on the adjective. Maker only knows why. There's no present tense form of the "be" verb in the language, so sometimes a pronoun gets thrown in and acts like a copula. In the example above, since "books" = non-human plural = feminine singular agreement, the pronoun of choice is hiya she. The effect is something like topicalization but with a subject pronoun still expressed: "The books of the son, they're inconsistent...." Except that it doesn't sound unnatural like the English does.

Mention of the Maker reminds me: I've pretty much kinda sorta settled on as-Sani for the translation. For now. Which opens the door to interesting things like...

Inshaassani! Maker willing!

Alhamdulissani! Thank the Maker! (lit. Praise to the Maker!)

Bismissani! In the name of the Maker!

(Um... you probably won't want to use those around any devout Muslims, btw. )

And finally...

Baraka fi-s-Sani wa-Mahu. Bless the Maker and his Water.

[SandChigger]

La tashrab al-ma. Tamuha min turab wa-sharaj!

Don't drink the water. Its taste (is) of dirt and anus.

[Tleszer]

Nice! Mumtaz!

[SadisticCynic]

La tashrab al-ma. Tamuha min turab wa-sharaj!

Don't drink the water. Its taste (is) of dirt and anus.

Is that literally 'The taste is from dirt and anus.'? Since min = from as in aina min anta? = where are you from?

[SandChigger]

Aywa.

Also means "of". It's rare for meanings to correspond completely across languages, of course. Fi usually corresponds to English in, but in Achlan fi-sietchna it's more like to (Welcome to our sietch!). And in Baraka fi-s-Sani Bless the Maker, there's no equivalent at all.

[SadisticCynic]

Hmm, had to check aywa I know it as na'am. Cool.

I recognise some of achlan fi-sietchna. Obviously achlan = ahlan and I've seen fi before. Is sietch a completely made up word? I couldn't find it on your resources page. If I recall correctly possession is usually indicated by adding the long vowel 'ee' after the word, so is the addition of 'na' a plural possession?

(Sorry if you've covered this earlier).

Also, I have very little Arabic at the moment so please bear with me if I screw it up. In other words: atakalam al arabia kaleelan

Edit: SP.

[SandChigger]

Mish mushkila!

Sietch is Chakobsa (ultimately Russian or other-Slavic in origin, in the real world), so I haven't included it on the Fremen Arabic page. In-universe, it's a loanword in Fremen. (I'm wondering what to do about the BT Arabic now—stuff like Masheikh, etc.—since they weren't Fremen.)

Achlan ('ahlan in real Arabic) is an example of one of FH's "sound changes" (H > CH), but it's not one he applied throughout the Arabic examples in the books. So I'm treating it pretty much as an idiosyncratic change limited to the words in the greeting (the same applies to sachlan < sahlan).

As I mention on the resources page on HToD, FH didn't really create a Fremen language, with systematic sound change rules. He basically just dropped the extra diacritics (dots or lines) showing different consonants and vowel length. And he got kinda "happy" with his spellings, too. ("Brother" is akh [appears as akhak "Your brother" in CoD], for example, plural ikhwan. But of course FH spelled the latter as ichwan. CH and KH should be different sounds, but they're kinda jumbled. I'm choosing to interpret that as evidence of another, ongoing consonantal merger. )

[SandChigger]

Some new things:

Ayadinak mablula! "You have damp hands!"

Gheir-arif ma qulta-hu, qulta-hu. "Not knowing what you said, you said it."

[merkin muffley]

Some new things:

Ayadinak mablula! "You have damp hands!"

Gheir-arif ma qulta-hu, qulta-hu. "Not knowing what you said, you said it."

Nice, two of my favorites.

[SandChigger]

I just like saying the word mablula. From the verb balla "to moisten, wet, make wet".

[Robspierre]

I just like saying the word mablula. From the verb balla "to moisten, wet, make wet".

Jabecca to Kieth: "Hey! You're suppose to balla down there first asshole!"

[SandChigger]

Would that fall under giving water to the dead?