> From Matt Pearson
>
> A couple corrections:
>
> >shadout mapes - housekeeper (or was that a name?)
>
> "Mapes" was the character's name, "shadout" was her title,
> hence "the Shadout Mapes". (It's been years since I read the
> book, but I still remember Linda Hunt hamming it up as the
> Shadout Mapes in that wonderful/awful David Lynch movie.)
The title Shadout translates as "well dipper" They provided a very
important ceremonial function involving extracting the moisture from the
breath of a dying sandworm. Although the Shadout Mapes was a spy.
> >The Semitic and Arabic words are not all strictly from Arrakis -
> >Kwisatz Haderach is a word planted by the Bene Gesserit. The
> >Semitic/Arabic origin may have been intended (by Herbert or "by" the
> >Gesserit) to refer to Jesus, or Mohammed, or any of the number of
> >prophets from that area.
>
> In the Dune Encyclopedia, it is explicitly claimed (or very
> strongly implied, I can't remember which) that the Fremen language
> is a direct descendant of Arabic.
Its explicit. "The Fremen Language can be traced to the ancient Terran
language 'Arabiya.."
> is a direct descendant of Arabic. The common speech of the Galactic
> Empire (represented by English in the books) is Galach, which the
> glossary at the back of "Dune" claims to have "mixed Anglo-Slavic
> roots", or some such. There was an article on Galach in the Dune
I don't remember this claim! Proto-Galach was definitely English.
> roots", or some such. There was an article on Galach in the Dune
> Encyclopedia, which listed the phonetic and morphological changes
> leading to the development of Galach from Standard English. The
> only specimen of Galach text that was given, though, was a translation
> of the phrase "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush". All I
> remember was that the first part was "baradit" (a bird) and the last
> part was "tau nubukt" (two in the bush), but I don't remember the
> middle bit.
Proto-Galach: A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Atreidean Galach: baridit nehiidit beed gwarp tau nubukt.
Ancient Arabic: kuntu sa'idan fi shababi
Atreidean Fremen: kuntu saghidan fi shababi
David