of a puzzle for the philologist, because for many years it appeared not to have had a history at all Part of the problem was the scarcity of records as the Zensunm traveled the planets of their forced migrations, from Terra to Pbntrm to Salusa Secundus and Bela Tegeuse, to Rossak and Harmonthep, they often found worlds on which all their energy was required for survival What documents survive from those times are few, written as they were under harsh conditions sometimes forbidden by law, by hostile neighbors or masters The marginal economies of the Zensunm left little room for writing and almost Done for publishing The language of an oppressed group is always the hardest to trace it reaches no popular audience, it receives no scholarly attention, it commands no critical respect Its speakers are branded as ignorant, their innovations called corruptions, their pronunciation dendcd as vulgar or iloveoly If such attitudes persist in the most democratic of societies, what was to be expected in the caste-ridden Impermm? For most of the thousands of years before 7000 B G , someone possessing the materials to study Fremen would have lacked the 4esiit Yet within centimes after moving to Arrtkis, the Fremen had an extensive literature both oral and written, embodied in a language mat baffled the historians The reason for their puzzlement is not hard to see, compare the quotations below from Arabic and proto-Galach, two languages roughly contemporary, and their developments in Fremen and Atreidean Galach, again contemporaries Proto-Galach A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush Atreidean Galach baradit nehndit beed gwarp tati aubokt Ancient Arabic kuntu sa'idan fi shababi Atreidean Fremen knntu saghtdan ft shababi One need not be a linguist to see that while the Galach has changed radically over tins long period, the Fremen appears to have changed hardly at all The Fremen themselves did not explain the apparent stability of then- language for three reasons first, on Arrakis, mere survival occupied much time and energy, even if the Fremen now worked for themselves instead of for masters Second, the scholarly interest of the Fremen tended toward theologj and literature or jurisprudence, not toward linguistics Third, and most important, the form of their language was bound up with their faith hence off-worlders were denied access to the information that would have clarified the situation It was only with the discovery of the Rakis crystals that an answer could be posited to this most intriguing of philological oddities It is now clear that Atreidean Fremen did not evolve from the language the Zensunnis spoke on Poritrm or Bela Tegeuse, but is rather the ancestor of that language, recaptured and learned as a badge of nationhood FREMEN ATTITUDES TOWARD LANGUAGE To understand fully what happened and why it happened, one must first become aware of the Fremen emotion for the language they spoke As a scorned and enslaved people, they