The Fremen Language

[Guest LtTitan]

Does anyone have or know where I can get something on the Fremen Language? I have always been fascinated with the Fremen. I have also liked the language they speak, but only know a word or two, such as 'bila kaifa' and 'ya hya chouhada.' So I am asking if anyone knows the Fremen language or can give me something that I can learn the Fremen language.

[Vanguard3000]

The Fremen language is pretty much the same as Arabic, from what we see in the books.

[Duke_Atreides]

With some hebrew touches.

[Gunseng_Harkonnen]

Ya, a lot from their words are taken from Arabic, like fedaykins (their are similar to fedayind word), jihad, mahdi and few other. Becouse Herbert took their culture from arabic culture, he gave them similar language.

[Caid Ivik]

Fremen language is based on some nomad dialect of arabic. If you want their font, download attachment. It's like arab, so write from right.[attachment archived by Gobalopper]

[Khan]

If you want ot understand it you should beable to find some kind of dictionary somewhere

[Emperor Harkonnen]

a dictionary won't be enough to learn arabic

[Khan]

You could do some translations though.

[Emperor Harkonnen]

yeah but you do need some kind of cd if you want to learn to talk. you also need to learn the alphabet, and translate the dune words written in latin to arabic

[Muad dib]

In the back of the first dune book there are translations of the fremen language.

[Caid Ivik]

No, it's just description of some terms used in Dune (there are also words of galach language, planet names, sci-fi tools etc.).

[nemafakei]

You'd be surprised how far you can get with a dictionary... certainly if you have a grounding in languages, more so if those languages are similar to the one in which you're interested.

[Emperor Harkonnen]

but it takes time to learn new alphabets. it certainly took me time to learn the cyrillic alphabet

[Caid Ivik]

Cyrillic is easy, but arabic alphabet is based on syllabes, so it's some kind of other coffee...

[Emperor Harkonnen]

yeah cyrillic is easy...now. It was difficult to learn because many letters looked so much like latin. Phonecian was easy though

[Caid Ivik]

Just you need to be careful with soft and hard signs, jeri and double-letters (ia, ie, iu, io, sch). How looks phoenician alphabet?

[Davidu]

Well, it's older than the greek alphabet, so it must be simpler.

Emperor, can you show us a sample?

[Emperor Harkonnen]

sure thing guys. it just so happens that I have a picture of the phoenician alphabet, there are several versions I have seen. but the differense are only a few letters. I'll post the easy one[attachment archived by Gobalopper]

[Davidu]

Cool, I know only the greek alphabet, so...

[nemafakei]

That makes some sense. wau becomes digamma in greek.

[Emperor Harkonnen]

you can see the resembing between it and greek yes. Our alphabet is based upon this alphabet. But they did not have any vowels

[Caid Ivik]

Most mediterranean nations didn't use vowels. That was why i.e. jewish Jhwh (He, who is - name of God) was misspelled in medieval times as Jehova, altough everyone knows they read it as Jahve.

[Emperor Harkonnen]

and the phonecian word meaning wall, Gdr is pronounced Gedaar

[Davidu]

Is there a site about phoenician writing and language?

[Emperor Harkonnen]

u might try phoenicia.org

don't remember the site I found that other picture on