Jᴀᴄᴜʀᴜᴛᴜ - Tʜᴇ Cᴀsᴛ Oᴜᴛ

Reading Children of Dune at the moment. Leto and Ghanima comunicate in one of the "ancient languages". I'm no linquistic expert but it seems to be anciant Egyptian seeing as they refer to the language's orginators feared Isis (or somthing along those lines). Also makes sense seeing as Leto conversed with Harum in GEOD who was an anciant Egyptian King?

Frank wrote Dune in the days before the internet, when if you wanted to know something you trawled through a library or asked somone who knew. Where did he accumulate these obscure tidbits of information?

I'm going to go back to the chapter tonight so I will get the exact quotation (if one of you dosen't before me).

The language is supposed to be Ancient Egyptian but it's all reconstruction with a LOT of guesswork. I'm just guessing on this, but at that time FH probably referred to the works of E. A. Wallis Budge, which have largely been superseded since then. Barring time travel or "time eavesdropping", we'll never know what the language really sounded like.

This naturally raises the old question of how you pronounce Secher Nbiw (sp?).

SadisticCynic wrote:This naturally raises the old question of how you pronounce Secher Nbiw (sp?).

I try not to.

SadisticCynic wrote:This naturally raises the old question of how you pronounce Secher Nbiw (sp?).

If you get the FH recordings by Caedmon, its on there in his own voice.

Omphalos wrote:

SadisticCynic wrote:This naturally raises the old question of how you pronounce Secher Nbiw (sp?).

If you get the FH recordings by Caedmon, its on there in his own voice.

Can you spell it out phonetically?

I heard somewhere FH spent some time in Pakistan as a reporter and social and ecological studies advisor (I don't know when) so I always assumed thats where he learnt his Arabic.

McAvoy pronounces it in the Children mini-series, too. I think it's on YouTube. It's fast and not really clear, and I don't know how it compares to FH's pronunciation.

Maybe this is heresy, but after the "Chani=Cheney" one, I'm not really all that interested in knowing how FH pronounced things.

As for Pakistan, Wikipedia says:

[Dune] was not an instant bestseller. By 1968 Herbert had made $20,000 from it, far more than most science fiction novels of the time were generating, but not enough to let him take up full-time writing. However, the publication of Dune did open doors for him. He was the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's education writer from 1969 to 1972 and lecturer in general studies and interdisciplinary studies at the University of Washington (1970 – 1972). He worked in Vietnam and Pakistan as social and ecological consultant in 1972.

The date overlap makes it sound like he had a lot of irons in the fire at one time, and that he spent less than a full year in Pakistan. I'm not really sure about how much Arabic he really knew.

FH's pronunciation is practically a whisper. I wish those fuckers would come out with that stuff on CD, like they promised they would.

Get me the audio and I will make it clear, I can normalize volumes, enhance vowels or consonants (whichever is necessary), I can slow it down, etc. If it's there, I can make it clear.

Is it on one of the 4 records I own? I can find it there if so.

SandChigger wrote: after the "Chani=Cheney"

Yeah, what's up with that? That's not how you pronounce "Chani"...

That's how FH pronounced it, like Dick Cheney's surname:

http://www.usul.net/books/audio/chani.wav" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

After a lifetime of hearing it mentally as CHAHnee (sorta rhyming with Johnny, not Janey), when I heard FH say it that way, he sounded almost like some kind of uncultured hick.

And trust me, I know hick.

Yeah, I had the audiobook FH narrated, and then also saw all the hype about the FH pronunciation notes associated with the audiobooks. I like the audiobooks* but some of those pronunciations were distracting, especially Chani.

Is anyone else disturbed by Alia ("a-LEE-ah")?

Both of those are exactly how I always pronounced them to myself.

I pronounce Alia like that (AL-lee-ah) but with less emphasis on the 'LEE'. With Chani I say Chah-nee but not to rhyme with Johnny. To me that would be Chaw-nee. I say the 'ah' in Ch-'ah'-ni the same way I say the 'ah' in 'Ah'-li-'ah' But maybe this is one of those accent things, eh Chig.

Yeah; that's why I wrote "sorta rhyming".

(My dialect distinguishes between "cot" and "caught", but I vary on what vowel ends up in the latter. )

The 'ah' sound in "father", maybe? CHAH-nee.

'Father' sounds right to me.

I distinguish between 'cot' and 'caught' but not so much by the sound as by the length of the middle vowel i.e. they both come out like 'cot' with me but 'caught' sounds longer.

My accent is weird.

1977 Vertex (MacKenzie) Interview
http://tau.solahpmo.com/viewtopic.php?f=615&t=1220" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

How do you pronounce "Atreides"?

What's the difference how you say it? Pronunciation changes. Language is a very volatile subject. Spoken language, yes. Written language, not as much. But written language also changes. But the spoken language, my god. Accent, variations on pronunciation - a very volatile thing. So what's the difference how you pronounce it? The only thing I go by is I pronounce a man's name the way he pronounces it. I figure he should know. {laughs} Atreides is Atreus - the family Atreus out of Greek mythology.

{Pronunciation}... That's missing the point.

SandRider wrote:1977 Vertex (MacKenzie) Interview
http://tau.solahpmo.com/viewtopic.php?f=615&t=1220" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

How do you pronounce "Atreides"?

What's the difference how you say it? Pronunciation changes. Language is a very volatile subject. Spoken language, yes. Written language, not as much. But written language also changes. But the spoken language, my god. Accent, variations on pronunciation - a very volatile thing. So what's the difference how you pronounce it? The only thing I go by is I pronounce a man's name the way he pronounces it. I figure he should know. {laughs} Atreides is Atreus - the family Atreus out of Greek mythology.

{Pronunciation}... That's missing the point.

That's very interesting because the people who did the audiobooks made a huge deal about the fact Frank Herbert had notes about pronunciation. You mean to tell me that even though FH had notes about pronunciation, he didn't feel that it was important and that pronunciation is "missing the point?" Are you suggesting that writers write and throw away thousands upon thousands of pages of notes, and that it would be foolish to hold them accountable for any of these unpublished notes? Are you, therefore, saying that it would be ludicrous to isolate, say, some outline somewhere, and claim you could use that outline to predict what they would've done with a published work if they hadn't died?

Because that interview quote you've cherry-picked suggests that Frank Herbert didn't think his pronunciation notes were important, which is not only culturally-insensitive to fictional people, but it also suggests that the outline Brian Herbert found by channeling his dead mother wouldn't mean shit even if it did exist, which is insensitive to dead people. No wonder you've been banned from Dunenovels.

please.
I wasn't banned from the OCD forum .... I was prebanned ...
the SandRider account is still sitting there, waiting for activation ....


and right, just because an author made some notes on something doesn't make it important;
of course Frank made notes about language and pronunciation, but, atleast at the moment of
this interview, he wasn't too concerned with how his readers would pronounce something, or
perhaps at this point he was weary of questions like that, instead of questions about the story
itself ...

there are many, many places in the Middle Earth books by Christopher Tolkien where a scrap of note
or annotation on a manuscript is discussed, with Christopher clearly and repeatedly stating that he
is just not sure how important the note is, and what value should be assigned to it ....

"This is the correct pronunciation." "This is how Frank Herbert said it on the recordings." "This is the way to say it according to the notes Brian Herbert gave Scott Brick for the audiobook recordings." "I read the books all the way through every year and this is the twentieth time I've read Dune!" "I've memorized all the books and can tell you on what page blah blah blah."



That all boils down to "My DICK is bigger than yours. See?"

Just another way of creating an elite, just another scrabble to see who's alpha male & top dog.

(yawn)

If people understand who and what you're talking about, who cares about how you're saying it? Now back to the C-H!

I think it (can be) an interesting discussion ... but a minor one .... more important (and interesting) to me
is the work you do in sussing out the origins of the names and terms Frank used .... which is what this
thread was originally about, yes ?



[edit]

BTW, my dick is much, much bigger than yours;
and don't bother me for pix, PM the HoneyTrap ....

[/edit]

Silly me! I forgot: It wasn't just your legs we had to clairby!

You got Merkin's sarcasm right? Just want to make sure, he had me going for a minute myself...

A Thing of Eternity wrote:You got Merkin's sarcasm right? Just want to make sure, he had me going for a minute myself...

I'm pretty sure he did... I'm not actually a big supporter of the outline and, in fact, I would like to take every opportunity to insult the outline and all the phony significance they've assigned to it.

If only they could all be like Christopher Tolkien...

SandChigger wrote:That's how FH pronounced it, like Dick Cheney's surname:

http://www.usul.net/books/audio/chani.wav" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

After a lifetime of hearing it mentally as CHAHnee (sorta rhyming with Johnny, not Janey), when I heard FH say it that way, he sounded almost like some kind of uncultured hick.

And trust me, I know hick.

I always said it (in my head) the way FH pronounced it, without ever hearing him say it... but I am an uncultured hick!