[HN Gopher] "Dune" and the delicate art of making fictional lang...
___________________________________________________________________
"Dune" and the delicate art of making fictional languages
Author : drdee
Score : 95 points
Date : 2024-02-28 18:34 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| metabagel wrote:
| Odd that there is no mention of Belter Creole (lang belta). That
| seems to be the gold standard of a fictional language in movies
| and television.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belter_Creole
|
| Translator here:
|
| https://lingojam.com/BelterTranslator
| asabla wrote:
| They really implemented it so well into the show. Every
| character actually spoke it and not rehearsed the language like
| a lot of other shows and movies does.
| 0x457 wrote:
| Yeah, it was much better than when a screenwriter inserts 5
| Spanish words they remember from school into a script.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Neither that, nor Klingon and the work Marc Okrand did on it.
|
| The article is basically about Dune & Peterson, and the work
| he's done, especially for Dune. It's not _too_ surprising they
| left off other popular conlangs.
| arp242 wrote:
| Mi pensa it was rather under-used; there's tons of scenes with
| Beltalowda talking amongst each other in English rather than
| Belter. There's actually very few scenes where people talk
| Belter rather than English with a few Belter words mixed in.
|
| There's obvious practical reasons for all of this, but I
| wouldn't call it a "gold standard".
| exe34 wrote:
| Sa sa Ke!
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Ya, at least there's enough there there (despite the paucity
| of canon) to communicate and be creative; eg
| https://sites.google.com/view/tinglangbelta/xom
| -- Oh Stewardess, I speak Belter. He's in great pain
| and wants to know if you can help. -- Tili natet
| 'ratna. Im gonya leta-kom *mediting detim im bek fo
| du to gut.
|
| I believe Tolkien's languages remain the "gold standard", but
| I'm not sure if they're as productive for everyday chat and
| memes.
|
| (I have heard that Eliezer Ben-Yehuda made a big mistake in
| not creating any swear words for Modern Hebrew, leading to a
| substantial overlap in comprehensible swearing between jewish
| and arabic communities in J'lem. That said, I understand
| "chinga tu madre ... cabron" perfectly well, so probably any
| language communities in close contact will swear at each
| other perfectly comprehensibly whether they share a
| vocabulary or not)
| empath-nirvana wrote:
| Conlangs are cool and all and I haven't seen the new movie yet,
| but the thing that sort of annoyed me about the first one is that
| the book is _heavily_ inspired by a non-fiction book called
| Sabres of Paradise, about an islamic uprising against the Russian
| Empire:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imam_Shamil
|
| And the book is _full_ of arabic, persian and russian
| terminology, and Islamic cultural and religious references, and
| the director and screenwriter have said that it's basically
| orientalism and ornament and they've gotten rid of it because
| it's distracting, but I don't think it's ornament, and I think
| the Islamic influences on the Fremen are a core part of the
| story, and it's missing a lot without it.
|
| The book is meant to be about _our future_ and the fact that
| Muslims still exist and are important in the future isn't just
| like "flavor", it was an innovative idea at the time in science
| fiction and still is.
|
| It just seems kind of wrong to expend so much thought inventing
| new languages for the movie when it had so much context and
| culture already there to use.
| gherkinnn wrote:
| > have said that it's basically orientalism and ornament and
| they've gotten rid of it because it's distracting
|
| I like the books and the first film, haven't seen part 2 yet.
| But this has to be bullshit. Is it about orientalist ornaments
| or did the studio want to avoid a midwit outrage over the
| frequent use of the term "Jihad"?
| empath-nirvana wrote:
| I'm sure that's part of it.
| jfyi wrote:
| I think largely so, very likely.
|
| Just from memory, there was also the name "Usul" described as
| meaning "the strength at the base of the pillar". In the same
| context, I could see that drawing outrage too.
| arcbyte wrote:
| The connotations to western audiences carried by Arabic words
| and imagery in 1965 is vastly different to the connotations
| conveyed today. It would be incredibly distracting and
| offputting to modern audiences trying to grasp the core story.
| lupusreal wrote:
| When we dumb things down for the lowest common denominator,
| we're just left with slop. I understand the economic
| incentive to reach the widest audience possible, but I wish
| our culture was better at telling idiots to go pound sand.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Connotations aren't an affliction of idiots...
| lupusreal wrote:
| Maybe in the general case, but in this specific case?
| Inability to look past islamaphobic 'connotations' and
| prejudices to enjoy something like Dune seems like a
| affliction of idiots to me.
| Lord-Jobo wrote:
| I think this is the strongest reason to avoid it, and I would
| have done the same. It's just going to lead the audience to
| weird places and confusion. And distract from all of the
| other things Dune has going for it. Replicating the EFFECT on
| the audience of a book written in 1965 is really a big
| undertaking.
|
| Even if you ignore the rather blunt stereotyping and
| selective aspects of Islamic cultures that Herbert injected.
| Or carried over from another story, as was highlighted
| earlier.
| Supermancho wrote:
| Relevant? https://youtu.be/YSFyotLlhxA?t=669
| empath-nirvana wrote:
| To be honest I think it makes it more important to keep it.
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| Perhaps artistically, but almost certainly not
| commercially.
| lbrindze wrote:
| This is not a strong justification. If you switched out
| "arabic words and imagery" for say "blackface" would it still
| hold? There was a time where seeing non-white actors in film
| would have been considered distracting and off-putting, but
| we seem to have moved past that as a society, so why are we
| holding on to this justification now?
|
| Moreover, distracting and off putting to whom? This article,
| in part, is responding to how distracting it is for fans of
| the books and readers to see the source material changed in a
| pretty crucial way. As others have said, its not exactly
| obvious to me that the use of these words and language are
| even possible to separate from the core story.
|
| I get that this is a film executive's decision looking at the
| commercial viability of their product if they whitewash the
| story (or not), but at the end of the day we can't really say
| what the commercial success would (or wouldn't) have been if
| this language were preserved. To me this demonstrates more
| the entrenchment of the people who are in the position to
| make these choices rather than what audiences are willing to
| consume.
|
| After all, consider the fact that Dune has remained important
| enough, despite the claim that Arabic (and specifically
| Muslim) imagery is used throughout that someone decided to
| greenlight two feature film adaptations so far.
| bertil wrote:
| I assumed some of that was because they kept, and highlighted
| really, the fact that their religion was the result of
| deliberate manipulation by the Bene Gesserit. I can't
| remember if they explicitly say "planted prophets," but it
| felt more plain than in the book; I can see how making that
| statement when the culture is explicitly Arabic and the
| religion Islam would be more incendiary than science fiction
| is usually trying to be.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| In the book they explicitly say that the Bene Gesserit
| planted stories and prophecies in populations so they could
| exploit them, if needed, later. That's what Paul and
| Jessica do.
| throw4847285 wrote:
| But if you take out those connotations, there isn't really
| much left to Dune. The people who read it as kids and found
| its word-building novel either never watched Lawrence of
| Arabia or know nothing about the history of the Middle East.
|
| That's not to say the book isn't enjoyable, or even great.
| It's just that it mashes together various real people and
| historical incidents and draws much of its power from them.
| If you know the real story, it's impossible not to notice the
| parallels. If you remove the parallels, you lose the story's
| power.
| mr_toad wrote:
| > But if you take out those connotations, there isn't
| really much left to Dune.
|
| Hydraulic despotism. The pitfalls of manipulating religion.
| The trap that both present to those who use them. That's
| what most of the book is about.
|
| If you just focus on historical analogies you're missing
| some major themes of the book. And that's ignoring the
| thematic exploration of precognition and omniscience, the
| ecological themes etc.
| vkou wrote:
| If you remove the window dressing, the rest of the story
| stays.
|
| 1. Colonisation and the relationship of colonisers and
| colonized.
|
| 2. Great leaders and what happens to them (explored further
| in Messiah and Children, with some really horrible
| consequences)
|
| 3. Environmentalism, feudalism, social stagnation, power
| structures, mutually assured destruction...
|
| 4. Exploration of a society that explicitly rejects
| thinking machines, in favor of using people _as_ machines.
| kragen wrote:
| if some social group today finds itself 'put off' by arabic
| words and imagery, does that make it more praiseworthy to
| _omit_ arabic words from a story you are telling them, or to
| _emphasize_ arabic words in a story you are telling them? i
| would tend more towards the latter; i don 't think that kind
| of thing merits coddling
| olah_1 wrote:
| > the director and screenwriter have said that it's basically
| orientalism and ornament and they've gotten rid of it because
| it's distracting
|
| I honestly didn't notice. The Fremen still seem heavily middle
| eastern to me.
| bertil wrote:
| Amusingly, neither Zendaya nor Javier Bardem are Middle-
| Eastern, but they can easily play so because skin color works
| that way. I think the fact that it could just as well be a
| post-El-Nino Chihuahuan desert makes sense too.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Amusingly, neither Zendaya nor Javier Bardem are Middle-
| Eastern, but they can easily play so because skin color
| works that way.
|
| Well, given the history of the Iberian peninsula, there's
| likely a little more to it in Bardem's case...
| shagie wrote:
| While non-cannon (with the writing of the prequels), from The
| Dune Encyclopedia ...
|
| > The earliest history of the native inhabitants of Arrakis
| indicates that they were the sole remnant of a people known as
| the Zensunni Wanderers, originally followers of a "prophet"
| named Maometh, circa 1381 E.G. The Fremen broke away from the
| main sect to establish their own religion based on an
| ultraconservative notion of living life according to "the ways
| of the fathers." Given the Fremen's roots in such a religion
| and the particularly life- threatening environment that Arrakis
| afforded them, the Fremen developed a set of cultural
| institutions unique in their perfect balance between the
| philosophical world view demanded by imposed Fremen faith and
| the harsh reality imposed by Arrakis's nature. These
| institutions remained stable for thousands of years and are
| significantly changed by only two events. The first was the
| arrival of Pardot Kynes as the first planetologist of Arrakis.
| The second was the transfer of the governance of Arrakis from
| the House Harkonnen to House Atreides in 10190 and the
| subsequent emergence of Paul Atreides as Paul Maud'Dib. Kynes
| expanded the cultures of the Fremen to include the hope for a
| second flowering of Arrakis; Paul Maud'Dib forever changed that
| culture, thus, for all intents, the ancient culture of the
| Fremen ceased with his rise to power.
|
| And an example from first page of the section on Fremen
| Language: https://i.imgur.com/jiRQNVv.png and a bit from the
| history of the language: https://i.imgur.com/QQq5gfO.png
| euroderf wrote:
| I've reviewed this kind of Dune background material and I
| still don't quite get how the Zensunnis and others managed to
| get to other star systems before the advent of FTL. I've seen
| no mention of (for example) generation ships.
| shagie wrote:
| In this timeline... FTL was discovered in 13004 BG (before
| guild) and 12200 BG was "The Empire of Ten Worlds" followed
| by 11200 BG which was "The Empire of a Thousand Worlds"
|
| It wasn't until 7593 BG when I.V. Holtzman was born. 5022
| BG was "The Empire of Ten Thousand Worlds".
|
| The order of the mentats was established in 1234 AG. In
| 2800 AG you have the beginnings of the Zensunni Migration.
| 7193 AG was Zensunni on Rossak buying passage from the
| space guild to Arrakis.
|
| Paul Atreides was born in 10175 AG.
|
| ---
|
| FTL existed before the guild, it was mediated by computers
| and wasn't entirely safe.
|
| There are about 10,000 years between the founding of the
| guild (and safe non-computer FTL) and the events of Dune.
|
| ---
|
| A page from the start of the timeline of the Zensunni
| Wanderers history - https://i.imgur.com/Xw8qbpO.png
| euroderf wrote:
| 404 on the imgur
| shagie wrote:
| Works for me... a non-direct link to the .png
| https://imgur.com/a/vddl6z6
|
| If you are interested in it, a number of sources have the
| pdf online which (as you can see from page numbers) isn't
| small.
| belval wrote:
| > and it's missing a lot without it
|
| Could you clarify what it is missing exactly? Genuinely curious
| as I read the books before watching the movie and I didn't
| really feel like the movie was missing anything?
|
| > The book is meant to be about _our future_ and the fact that
| Muslims still exist and are important in the future isn't just
| like "flavor", it was an innovative idea at the time in science
| fiction and still is.
|
| Respectfully I think this is reading too deep into it. Herbert
| borrowed Arabic words and concepts to build a hardy middle-
| eastern-adjacent culture, it's hardly the focus of the book.
| empath-nirvana wrote:
| > Respectfully I think this is reading too deep into it.
| Herbert borrowed Arabic words and concepts to build a hardy
| middle-eastern-adjacent culture, it's hardly the focus of the
| book.
|
| https://reactormag.com/the-muslimness-of-dune-a-close-
| readin...
|
| It's more than that.
| regentbowerbird wrote:
| Very interesting read, thank you.
| dingnuts wrote:
| I always thought the Arabic references in Dune, and also
| the desert planet that produces the fuel by which commerce
| operates, was a downright obvious social commentary on oil
| and the geopolitics at the time the book was published
|
| Honestly I always thought the metaphor was borderline heavy
| handed, to the point that I never continued reading after
| the first book because the metaphor was boring to me
|
| Now I feel positively gaslit. Did I imagine all this?
| empath-nirvana wrote:
| You didn't imagine it, but he didn't draw all his
| references from the arabian peninsula and islamic culture
| is more than saudi arabia.
| bertil wrote:
| No, the reference to Arabic oil is heavy-handed at least,
| but Frank Herbert has denied this was intentionally just
| that, without denying there were obvious elements. He's
| claimed they represent a wider yearning for freedom.
| philwelch wrote:
| I'm not sure the timing actually works out for that. Arab
| oil production was significantly behind the United States
| and Russia during the Second World War, but represented a
| major share of oil production by 1973, as seen in the
| effects of the embargo imposed in response to the Yom
| Kippur War.
|
| Dune was written in the 1950's, but the geopolitical
| metaphors are a few decades older than that; the
| character of Paul Atreides is clearly a parallel to T.E.
| Lawrence, which places the geopolitical context firmly
| within the First World War. That's a different part of
| the Middle East (the Levant as opposed to the Hejaz and
| Gulf), a different strategic value relating to long
| distance travel (the Suez Canal as opposed to oil), and a
| much older world of competing colonizers. And not to put
| too fine a point on it, the Ottomans also had a padishah
| emperor!
| kragen wrote:
| opec was formed in 01960; dune was published as a serial
| in 01963 and as a book in 01965, in the usa, by an author
| from the usa
|
| https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-
| produc... says that in 01960 the usa produced 8.11
| million barrels of oil per day and consumed 9.80, with
| net imports of 1.61. (not sure what happened to the other
| 0.08.) net imports had grown dramatically over the
| previous decade, and oil was already a significant factor
| in usa political involvement in the middle east, in
| affairs such as the iranian coup. also, petroleum was a
| major strategic resource in the second world war; the
| usa's naval blockade against japanese oil imports is
| commonly cited as a major factor in japan's decision to
| attack the usa
|
| by 01965 us net imports were up to 2.28 million barrels
| per day, so it was an issue of growing geopolitical
| importance, but still only a fraction of the importance
| opec and oil imports would have in the 01970s
| stvltvs wrote:
| The Fremen follow the Zensunni religion (exactly what it
| sounds like), so continuity with real world cultures is a big
| part of the story. Another example, the Bene Gesserit are
| called Reverend Mother.
| kevvok wrote:
| And presumably 'Gesserit' is meant to be a distortion of
| 'Jesuit'
| babyshake wrote:
| The Russian element is interesting, as it stood out to be on my
| last rewatch of the 2021 film that the main villain (Stellan
| Skarsgard) is named "Vladimir Harkonnen".
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| And the Padishah Emperor is called Shaddam IV.
|
| Dune the novel, is where I learned the word "jihad" long
| before it was commonly known. It wasn't used in the film
| much, since as noted, the world has moved on.
| realfeel78 wrote:
| The world has moved on from Jihad? What world are you
| living in?
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| The _word_ can't be used casually like that any more. The
| world has moved on from using the word casually as exotic
| unfamiliar flavour, without inviting unwelcome ignorant
| reflexive antagonism. For an example of that, I refer you
| to your own comment.
| samatman wrote:
| The Fremen jihad isn't exotic unfamiliar flavor. It's
| jihad.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| Whoosh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use%E2%80%93mention_
| distinctio...
| samatman wrote:
| Are you a professional doofus, or is it more of a thing
| you do online for fun.
| kybernetikos wrote:
| I assumed he was talking about the Butlerian Jihad, which
| is an idea that feels particularly fresh and relevant
| today. "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of
| a human mind"
| omnibrain wrote:
| I would not say that Jihad was used casually in Dune. But
| when you read only the first part it looks like the hero
| is promoting Jihad as something good. When the truth,
| considering all parts of this sentence, is way more
| complex if you read on and even reread it.
|
| I think the studio (execs) just were afraid of having a
| blockbuster with a hero that promotes Jihad.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > I think the studio (execs) just were afraid of having a
| blockbuster with a hero that promotes Jihad.
|
| Agreed, they will use an different equivalent term such
| as "holy war" for the reasons given above.
|
| The meaning of that fictional cataclysm is not casual,
| but the word choice in Dune the 1965 novel, using an
| unfamiliar middle-eastern term for it, I think was. These
| are separate things, and I refer you again to this: https
| ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use%E2%80%93mention_distinctio..
| .
| bertil wrote:
| The Emperor is very obviously coded as the Shah of Iran.
|
| I'm not sure how much Herbert differentiated Persian from
| Arabic culture --I don't think he would conflate the two--
| but at the time of the Shah was seen as the most decadent
| ruler, independently of religion: in 1971, six years after
| the first book came out, he threw the biggest party ever
| (literally). I don't know if Herbert approved of Salvator
| Dali as the Emperor in Jodorowsky's version but that makes
| more sense to code him as excessive and dangerous because
| unpredictable (something Christopher Walken will do
| amazingly well; Jeff Goldblum could have been great too)
| than conflating him with Muslim references.
|
| The references are beyond specific houses: Jihad is also
| used for the "Butlerian Jihad" which is started by the
| viceroy of the League of Noble, and a Harkonen ally, not
| something coded with the Freemen, who seemingly don't know
| about it, or the Emperor who only takes over much later and
| at Harkonens' expenses.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| I like that he's the Padishah, an Iranian word.
|
| Fun fact - a rock band from NZ named themselves "Shihad"
| after a member had read Dune and got the word jihad wrong.
| When they tried to break into the US market, they renamed
| themselves "Pacifier" because, well, you know, Shihad/jihad
| wasn't a great connotation post 9/11. And the name was
| appropriate because their music as Pacifier rather sucked.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Harkonnen is actually a real-world Finnish surname.
| huytersd wrote:
| Completely agree. Seems like a lot of people are taking this
| nonsensical complaint of "cultural appropriation" to basically
| peer pressure people into self segregating. The negative
| experiences of African Americans during slavery/post slavery
| when it comes to the specific issue of cultural appropriation
| really doesn't apply to most other ethnicities who view someone
| else adopting their culture with genuine happiness.
| jhbadger wrote:
| Technically the Fremen aren't exactly Muslim (although they
| seem to be Muslim-coded) -- they are members of a new religion
| called Zen-Sunni, which was formed when Zen Buddhism and Sunni
| Islam merged at some point in the future. And the other major
| religion Orange Catholicism presumably likewise is a merge of
| Protestantism ("Orange") back into Catholic Christianity.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| I wish there was more background on this. What was original
| concept with putting Zen Buddhism and Islam together?
|
| Did Herbert have a plan for this combo, or was he just making
| up some future backstory? Like sometimes happens when authors
| aren't really sure there will be a sequel at all, and just
| scatter some future references around.
| wirrbel wrote:
| If i recall correctly zensunni in the book also used/read
| the orange-catholic bible.
|
| Overall I think the topic of religion stays vague apart
| from Herbert making use of the trope of a Messiah and using
| syncretism as a symbol that major shifts happened in the
| human societies that brought opposing religions together.
| simonh wrote:
| In particular the OC Bible was compiled as a synthesis of
| all the major existing religious traditions of the time
| after the Butlerian Jihad, which united humanity in
| revolt against the thinking machines. The resulting total
| ban on computational devices as heresy lead to the rise
| of the Spacing Guild's monopoly on interstellar
| navigation.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| It was set dressing for a syncretic far future. All of this
| stuff is in the appendix where it is not very much explored
| because it's meant to be evocative more than illustrative.
| empath-nirvana wrote:
| I think he was just riffing on the general idea of
| religious syncretism -- all religions are syncretic to an
| extent, some more obviously than others.
| bigger_cheese wrote:
| >Did Herbert have a plan for this combo, or was he just
| making up some future backstory?
|
| It has been a very long time since I read all the novels so
| I can't recall all the details. It is a major plot point in
| book 5 "Heretics of Dune" zensunni leads to the alliance
| between the Bene Gesserit and the Tleilaxian's. The
| Tleilaxu follow a strict interpretation of the religion in
| secret and during a meeting between the faction leaders one
| of the reverend mothers is able to deduce this from their
| speech patterns and manipulate them into an alliance which
| has some ramifications.
|
| Considering the Tleilaxu aren't introduced until book 2 (I
| think) I assume it was planned out ahead of time by
| Herbert.
| rukuu001 wrote:
| On the one hand I imagine that Russian and Arabic viewers would
| find inclusions from their languages very distracting, but then
| the story is so clearly about Americans and Russians squabbling
| over colonized Arabic territory, and all of them getting
| screwed over by 'larger forces', that I don't think changing
| the language makes a real difference.
| empath-nirvana wrote:
| A lot of the story and setting is taken almost _word for
| word_ from Sabres of Paradise, which takes place in the
| Caucuses, before the soviet union existed and before America
| got involved in the middle east.
|
| https://arnoldkhan.medium.com/how-the-sabre-of-paradise-
| insp...
| mr_toad wrote:
| The Harkonnen are stereotypical medieval despots, almost
| cartoonishly so.
| nverno wrote:
| > It just seems kind of wrong to expend so much thought
| inventing new languages for the movie when it had so much
| context and culture already there to use.
|
| It did all work great in the books, and would certainly have
| worked in the movies as well. But, the effort and care they've
| put into this additionally world-building seems totally in the
| spirit of the original Dune to me. There were a number of
| things that I had imagined differently when reading the books,
| but this was a rare case where I think they've done an
| excellent job bringing their version to the screen.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| "and the fact that Muslims still exist and are important in the
| future isn't just like "flavor", it was an innovative idea at
| the time in science fiction and still is."
|
| But, think of the alternative.
|
| The Fremen are an 'extremist' religious group, that easily kill
| any foreigner, and are manipulated into a 'jihad'.
|
| If the Movie doubled down to making them "Islamic Flavored".
| Then the movie and director would get crucified for portraying
| Muslims in an un-favorable light.
|
| The book might have used Islamic Flavor, but it does not do it
| to show Islam favorably. It shows them as radical brutal desert
| dwellers.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| On the contrary, as the Fremen are shown to be the oppressed
| indigenous, the movie would be stoned for casting jihad in
| too positive a light, as an admirable ideal! The book hardly
| shows the Great Houses nor the Imperium as any better than
| the savage freedom fighters. If anything the series isn't
| really sympathetic towards any particular subgroup of
| humanity.
| renewiltord wrote:
| They were just trying to avoid jihad and all that because of
| present geopolitical positioning. You can't have the hero be
| threatening to go ISIS on the universe. You'll get canceled.
| mr_toad wrote:
| Paul was trying to avoid the Jihad too. It was a fairly major
| plot point.
| rstarast wrote:
| I mean it's basically just Rambo 3 in space innit?
| lukan wrote:
| "The book is meant to be about _our future_ "
|
| The book is meant to be about _one_ possible future. It is
| explicitely not meant as a prediction how humanity will
| develope.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Within the lifetime of the universe, all futures are
| possible. I don't find it particularly interesting whether
| that future is directly a result of us, or some completely
| identical hominid that evolved the same way on the other side
| of the galaxy.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| The OP covers that in some detail. Search for "Why did Herbert
| Arabize the Fremen?"
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| Even if it were just ornament, it still should have been
| included. Ornament is aesthetics, it's beautiful. Their
| reasoning is bullshit.
|
| The director omitted those things not as an artistic decision,
| but because of his and his group's modern political dogmas.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| Arabic just wouldn't survive all that time, but Atreides, Gurney
| Halleck, Reverend Mother, and Duncan Idaho - that stuff's built
| to last!
| nwhnwh wrote:
| Boring bait.
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| Is it? Atreides is not a made up word, it directly references
| the descendants of Atreus from the greek myths -- Agamemnon
| himself (well, his voice) makes an appearance! "Reverend
| mother" is a (catholic) religious term. So these particular
| terms survived, but jihad didn't? Arabic, like op said,
| didn't? OP made a good point.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I don't know that I made a good point,
|
| I figured just sort of an obvious point that the Arabic
| wouldn't have lasted but all these other things would have
| explanation doesn't pass the smell test.
|
| Arabic is problematic for various reasons so they cut it
| and then figured they also needed to make up a bunch of
| bull about cutting it, companies got to spin their
| investment but it devalues the art of the whole to me.
|
| If they had said hey it's problematic for lots of reasons
| so we cut it, sorry. I'd be like yeah ok. But the
| explanation is just not believable coming from a language
| designer of some intelligence who would have had the same
| thought I did only probably much stronger, quicker, and
| deeper.
|
| To paraphrase - it's difficult to get a man to make a
| truthful argument when the big bucks depends on him lying -
| but he still knows he's lying for pay.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| Science fiction is always really hard, because when you think
| about it, many of the cultural references of today would be
| baffling to people 200 years ago. But when we write a story that
| takes place 200 years in the future, the references can't be
| baffling to the reader, first because then the story wouldn't
| make sense, but also because nobody is so creative that they can
| invent 200 years of actual culture. So, they pretty much always
| use events and themes from current and past events and then re-
| interpret them in creative ways. Dune is no different- and I love
| the book but is there another resource you can think of that is
| found buried in the desert that is needed for transportation that
| western powers fight wars over?
| ddoolin wrote:
| I was thinking about this recently while reading the fourth
| book in the series and you put my thoughts into words tidily.
|
| Tangentially, I also think the time gap between the third and
| fourth books (some 3,500 years) necessitated some more
| creativity with changes to the culture but I got the impression
| that the author _still_ reused a lot of the same references
| despite the gap which felt kind of lazy, like humanity was just
| TOO stagnant for that long. That 's when I started thinking
| that it must be a difficult endeavor to just invent a lot of
| new culture, especially when you've got to do service to the
| previous books in the series. The fifth book appears to follow
| the same trend despite another 1,500 years of time.
| ska wrote:
| All fiction is anchored in "its" time to some significant
| degree. SF & Fantasy give the author more freedom to place a
| story, but as you note the author is incapable of entirely
| divorcing themselves from their context. Intentionally or
| otherwise, most fiction has allegorical elements reflecting
| _current_ stories or ideas. Often this is intentional I think,
| with (some) authors in these genres engaging in ongoing social
| /political/whathaveyou issues in a way that sidesteps
| constraints and perspectives you would have in a "present day"
| setting.
| languagehacker wrote:
| Here's my take as a person with two linguistics degrees, one of
| which had a big computational focus on historical change:
|
| The person who constructed the languages eschewed using the
| literary influences because he didn't believe that the phonemic
| inventory would be consistent over tens of thousands of years due
| to prior information that we have about diachronic change in
| language families.
|
| What he fails to take into account is the fact that the wide
| availability of audiovisual distribution of language has a
| conservational effect that we've not really seen before. So for
| instance, while there is a large variety of English dialects in
| the US, "Broadcast English" and "General American" are quite
| stable and broadly available.
|
| What they've done with the constructed languages of Dune would be
| like if they made a new Clockwork Orange movie without any of the
| Nadsat dialect. It robs something from the original text, all so
| a hobbyist can make something internally consistent that he's
| personally satisfied with and that may be marketed to future
| consumers. That sucks.
| euroderf wrote:
| But then again there is the Mentat language that we hear Thufir
| Hawat use in the Lynch version. Has anyone bothered to analyze
| this and maybe expand upon it ?
| granzymes wrote:
| On the other hand, the characters in Dune have almost no
| information about Earth. Over the mindbogglingly long time
| scale between our present day and the events in the
| books/films, it's not only possible but likely that almost all
| of those audiovisual aids have been lost.
| mr_toad wrote:
| The Butlerian Jihad which destroyed all computers probably
| wiped out most audio visual media.
| jrks11o wrote:
| Archive link anyone pls?
| nobody9999 wrote:
| https://archive.is
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| I do object to calling them languages. They're real languages
| that happen to have been created for a work of fiction.
|
| If someone in a Dune created a new kind of cookie, and a real
| baker had actually written a recipe for and baked said cookies,
| you wouldn't write the article "'Dune' and the Delicate Art of
| Making Fictional Cookies". You'd write the article "The
| Controversial Cookie from 'Dune'".
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| I accidentally a word.
|
| > I do object to calling them _fictional_ languages.
| samatman wrote:
| Too bad, because that's what they're called, in conlang
| circles and everywhere else:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictional_language
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| God I wish I had drink a Ratkajino
| edaemon wrote:
| This is only slightly related but I noticed in Dune (2021) that
| the Sardaukar spoken language seems dubbed over the actor's
| voice. I've wondered if it the language's inclusion was a late
| production choice. It looks like they're saying the English
| subtitles but we hear dubbed audio:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWK3nkJhneE.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Rather shallowly researched article, doesn't even mention
| 'Chakobsa':
|
| https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/%22Neo-Chakobsa%22_(2020s_film_...
| ametrau wrote:
| Pushing that marketing campaign now with the new release.
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| HailCorporate!
| dhosek wrote:
| Reminds me of a woman I dated in my twenties who had invented a
| language while in college. She had written a few sentences on a
| classroom blackboard to show it to a friend but didn't erase it.
| A day or two later, she showed up at a linguistics class to hear
| the professor and one of her classmates trying to grasp the
| structure of this language they had never seen before.
| lukan wrote:
| "Of the Arabic excisions in the new "Dune" films, two in
| particular stand out. One is of jihad, Herbert's term for the
| fervent crusade led by Paul Atreides with the Fremen against the
| oppressive interstellar regime. Herbert saw jihad as the
| embodiment of messianic and religious passion--a force that is
| socially transformative and potentially liberating, but also
| dangerous and to be feared: "The ancient way, the tried and
| certain way that rolled over everything in its path." Though now
| the word is overwhelmingly associated with Islamic extremism and
| terrorism, the original "Dune" offers a nuanced consideration of
| the concept that goes beyond simplistic and negative portrayals."
|
| I do not think the original Dune books did not portray the jihad
| in a good way. It was the way that led Paul to triumph over the
| Imperator, but it was also the path, that lead him to burn worlds
| and establish a cruel theocracy. Which was only hinted at in the
| first books, but showed completely in Dune Messiah. Which is why
| many did not like it anymore as the glorious hero was dismantled.
| legohead wrote:
| I read all the books, and in one of the forwards by his son, he
| mentioned that Frank wanted to make Paul an antihero. He knew
| his audience wouldn't like it, but that's kind of the point of
| his books in the first place. Basically, you can't have nice
| things because that's what it means to be human.
| lukan wrote:
| That was the foreword to Dune Messiah.
|
| "Basically, you can't have nice things because that's what it
| means to be human."
|
| But I would disagree to this conclusion. I rather think his
| goal was (among many others) to show that you cannot have
| nice things, when your "heros" of the culture stand for
| glorious war. No matter if it was a "good war" at first.
| gunnaraasen wrote:
| I really enjoyed the first Dune movie by Villenueve and decided
| to read Dune for the first time in anticipation the second movie.
|
| Reading the book, I was surprised by the focus on mysticism and
| Islamic references, which were only a minor background element in
| the first movie. I do think the religious elements add depth to
| the story beyond the typical SciFi space opera and is a likely a
| strong contributing factor to Dune's enduring cultural impact.
| It's unfortunate the movies shied away from those references
| despite the potential consternation it may have stirred up.
|
| For those that have recently read the book, this article by
| Harris Durrani on the probable influence of muslim theological
| development on Frank Herbert's Dune world is engrossing.
|
| https://reactormag.com/the-muslimness-of-dune-a-close-readin...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-02-29 23:00 UTC)