Those 28 words for melange...

[SandChigger]

"There are twenty-eight different words for melange in common Galach. They describe it by its intended use, by its dilution, by its age, by whether it came through honest purchase, through theft or conquest, whether it was the dower gift for a male or for a female, and in many other ways is it named. What do you make of this, Moneo?"

This one will be fun to work on, once we get to Lanthanian Galach.

Let's see what we've got here....

Categories:

• Intended use
• Dilution
• Age
• Method obtained:
  • Honest purchase
  • Theft or conquest (two cat's, the latter to include things like gambling?)
• Dower gift for a male or for a female

I think that in this FH was indirectly referring to the myth about Eskimo words for snow (they don't really have hundreds), asserting that cultures have more words for important objects or concepts.

Anyway, that's five categories. Suggestions for additional categories and subcat's?


*** Evolving List ***

• Intended use
  • Ingestion
    • As flavoring/food additive
    • As geriatric treatment
    • As narcotic/hallucinogen
  • Debt payment
  • Stockpiling
• Dilution
  • Weak
  • Medium
  • "I can see the back of my head" (Obviously I could use some help here!)
• Age
  • Raw (fresh with sand?)
  • Refined (separated from sand?)
  • Aged (varieties of blue?)
• Method obtained
  • Honest purchase
  • Theft or conquest (gambling?)
  • Dowry gift
    • for female
    • for male
  • Barter
  • Horde discovery
  • Bequest
  • Yearly allotment
  • From an illegal mining operation

[Omphalos]

Intended use

I dont think we should go too far with this one. It was mostly for ingestion, payment of debts, or stockpiling. That's pretty much it.


Dilution

Probably only a few recognized/colloquial potencies, such as for new users, rich users, and addicts. Like crack, coke, and "the good stuff." Was there any concentrated spice in the original books?


Age

Does spice change color as it oxidizes? I dont have quotes handy, but IIRC it turns bluer as it gets older. If so, that is what we should use as a basis to describe different ages, because we have no idea what happens to the potency or flavors as time goes on, as with wine or spirits.


Method obtained

Honest purchase
Theft or conquest
Barter
From an illegal mining operation
Horde discovery
Bequest
Yearly allotment
Dowry/mahr


Dower gift for a male or for a female

This should be part of the last category. Dower is the right a woman has to assets after her husband dies. Dowry is what a woman's family gives when someone marries a girl child. Mahr is the opposite. It looks to me like FH made the classic blunder of mistaking the words "dower" and "dowry."

[Liege-Killer]

"There are twenty-eight different words for melange in common Galach. [....] What do you make of this, Moneo?"

Moneo should have answered "not much." This happens with lots of words where there is a main general term and lots of related words that are more specific. For example, glancing at a thesaurus I get 38 words for specific types of rain; 23 for rock; 18 for spice; 31 for dirt. What should Moneo make of this?

Anyway.... on to more productive matters....

I'd think there'd be a word for the raw spice harvested from the sand, and another word for the refined product after it is separated from the sand.

Also, different words for ingested forms: one for the form you take directly for its mind-altering effects. Another for a less-concentrated form used as a food additive (in spice coffee, spice beer, etc.)

Other than that, I'm blanking out right now. I'll cogitate on it some more.

[SandChigger]

Cool. I'll incorporate your suggestions into a new version of the OP later!

[Omphalos]

Cool. I'll incorporate your suggestions into a new version of the OP later!

That is a very good idea, so users dont have to look all over the thread to get the complete picture.

[SandChigger]

(Looks like I forgot to post here to note that I had updated the categories per suggestions yesterday. )

[Liege-Killer]

I think the subcategory "from an illegal mining operation" is a good one.

It's rather like the way law enforcement or most ordinary citizens might use the word "marijuana" while those who grow it and sell it might use a variety of other words.

So those illegal spice miners would almost surely have their own slang terms for melange.

[SandChigger]

I think the subcategory "from an illegal mining operation" is a good one.

Omph's is the legalistic mind.

Wouldn't it be fairly rare for words from the argots of illegal miners and smugglers to gain wide acceptance among the general populace? (Brings up the question of popular media in the Duniverse, eh!)

Just thinking out loud....

[Omphalos]

I think the subcategory "from an illegal mining operation" is a good one.

Omph's is the legalistic mind.

Wouldn't it be fairly rare for words from the argots of illegal miners and smugglers to gain wide acceptance among the general populace? (Brings up the question of popular media in the Duniverse, eh!)

Just thinking out loud....

I wonder if there was a youth culture around illegal (or legal, for that matter) spice? If there was, then the number of terms for it is likely to be much, much higher, and I could see source references coming in. Consider whether you would rather buy "Detroit Back-Yard Special" or "Jamacian Mind-Fuck" if you were given the choice. For us its all part of the coolness factor, but there can be other reasons too for adoption of illegal providers terms for product.

FH always (at first, anyway) used drugs as vehicles for the expansion of consciousness and mind, and concentrated on older, wiser users. But in reading this thread I was struck by the question of how immature people used spice. It had stimulant and hallucigenic properties, so Im sure that they did.

[A Thing of Eternity]

Maybe they just kept going through all the other "ancient" language words for "mix".... like masala and so forth.

[SandChigger]

Wouldn't the price factor tend to work against the development of use of the spice as a recreational drug among all but the filthy rich? Not to mention the withdraw aspects of REAL addiction?

Semuta and the elacca drug seem the more likely candidates for youth abuse, maybe?

[Omphalos]

Wouldn't the price factor tend to work against the development of use of the spice as a recreational drug among all but the filthy rich? Not to mention the withdraw aspects of REAL addiction?

Semuta and the elacca drug seem the more likely candidates for youth abuse, maybe?

Good point. What would you call the crack form of spice? Mixture? Hodgepodge?

[The Phantom]

the fremen kids would all be addicted from a young age, but i'm sure it was more a way of life than a form of entertainment for them...

the rich kids of noble houses would probably be able to afford to pay people off for a hit every once ina while

[Freakzilla]

the fremen kids would all be addicted from a young age, but i'm sure it was more a way of life than a form of entertainment for them...

I'd think Fremen babies would be addicted from conception via the mothers ubilicus(sp?) chord.

[SandChigger]

Um ... bilicus?

Think of it, babies born with blue eyes that never fade or change!

[The Phantom]

the fremen kids would all be addicted from a young age, but i'm sure it was more a way of life than a form of entertainment for them...

I'd think Fremen babies would be addicted from conception via the mothers ubilicus(sp?) chord.

maybe.. though you'd think the placenta would filter it out of the fluid exchange as it does with other contaminants

[SandChigger]

Well ... there is that, too.

But there are drugs that do get through, too, no?

Hmm ... little blue-eyed "crack babies"?

[The Phantom]

Well ... there is that, too.

But there are drugs that do get through, too, no?

Hmm ... little blue-eyed "crack babies"?

left outside a random sietch door... become "wards of the sietch" ... destined to live as second-class-sietchizens

[SandChigger]

OH THE HUMANITY!!!

[Omphalos]

Pardon me sir...May I have more?

[ionah]

in "La parole inuit" By Louis-Jacques Dorais, p144 one can read (in french) that some Inuit (population from north of Québec) language have 25 wording for snow

see page 145
http://books.google.com/books?id=brOggb ... 1-PA147,M1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

so 28 words for Spice Mélange, i guess Moneo should have known it... or could be that Leto II mention it for the purpose of the Stolen Journals. as a kind of legacy for the future, to help remembering how diverse and rich might the Fremen culture have been....

[SandChigger]

Such lists of "words" always worry me, with a language like Inuktitut.

[ionah]

it "worries" you ? what do you mean ?

[Freakzilla]

the fremen kids would all be addicted from a young age, but i'm sure it was more a way of life than a form of entertainment for them...

I'd think Fremen babies would be addicted from conception via the mothers ubilicus(sp?) chord.

maybe.. though you'd think the placenta would filter it out of the fluid exchange as it does with other contaminants

IF that were so, Leto and Ghani would not have been pre-born.

[The Phantom]

the fremen kids would all be addicted from a young age, but i'm sure it was more a way of life than a form of entertainment for them...

I'd think Fremen babies would be addicted from conception via the mothers ubilicus(sp?) chord.

maybe.. though you'd think the placenta would filter it out of the fluid exchange as it does with other contaminants

IF that were so, Leto and Ghani would not have been pre-born.

hmmm good point

[SandChigger]

The d'uh factor, B.B.

it "worries" you ? what do you mean ?

(What the hell, I went back to get examples and now it says "Pages 144-145 are not part of this book preview"?! )

Anyway, I meant only that Inuktitut is a massively agglutinating language; everything (the "word parts", morphemes) gets clumped together and incorporated into itself, and one "word" can actually be the equivalent of a complete "sentence" in English or French. Rather than just a list of Inuktitut forms with equivalents, I'd rather see a morpheme-by-morpheme breakdown and gloss, more like with the examples on p.146-7:

pi-araq "enfant, jeune animal" [child, young animal]
chose-jeune [thing-young] "une jeune chose" [a young thing]

Only then can you see which morphemes really have something to do with "snow" in and of themselves. (Think of how skiers use "powder" to refer to a type of snow in English. [What do you call it in French, la poudreuse?] "Powder" originally didn't have anything to do with snow.) I've read that there are only three or four "true" snow morphemes in the language, at least in the eastern or western variety.

That's all I meant.

Strong Whorf is too strong. Language is more a sheepdog for Thought, not a fence. Especially for the wooly kind, like mine.

[ionah]

ok, i guess i see what you mean : the word should be "dedicated" to the designated thing and not "borrowed" from another meaning/things.

[SandChigger]

Well, yeah, kinda. At least, I think it should be made clear whether the word is "dedicated" or "borrowed".

If we were to compile a list of snow words for English or French, we would be able to tell immediately that "snow" and "neige" are the former and "powder" and "poudreuse" are the latter. (Actually, poudreuse is different from "powder" because it's "dedicated" and only used for a type of snow, right? ) With a language like Inuktitut that isn't widely known (I'm assuming that you're not holding out on us and that you're not a speaker ), we can't tell just by looking and have to rely on the person reporting the data in a paper, etc., to provide those glosses.

Failure to do this is why we have people still believing that the Eskimo have hundreds of words for snow.

[ionah]

i follow and agree with your reasoning.

unfortunately, poudreuse is then a "borrowed" word. in that case, we said of light snow freshly felt from sky and which looks like powder (poudre) while skiing into it , that it is poudreuse.

but looking into the dictionary, i discovered what poudreuse really was :

POUDREUSE, subst. fém.
A. Petit meuble servant à la toilette féminine. (small table for lady to do their make-up)
B. Vieilli. Récipient cylindrique, à couvercle perforé, dans lequel on met du sucre en poudre pour en saupoudrer certains mets. (a perfored can to spread powder sugar on dishes)
C. AGRIC. Instrument utilisé pour répandre sur les plantes ou sur le sol des matières pulvérulentes insecticides et anticryptogamiques. (almost same as above but for agricultural use : spreading DDT and else...)

nothing to do with snow

[SandChigger]

Ah, but how is it used more often these days, in one of those senses or as "powder snow"?


(Btw, does anyone know how the Google books thing works? Why was the interesting page part of the preview when ionah first posted the link but not afterwards? )

[ionah]

well indeed, most of people skiing would refer to "powder snow" while saying poudreuse, and maybe they are not aware of the original meaning as i was until now

(concerning Google book , well i still land on pagr 147 while clickng on the link ...)

[SandChigger]

(Me, too. But when I click back to see p.145, it goes 146, 143. I could see p.145 the first time I clicked the link. I'll try again tomorrow from the office. )