#Chakobsa

[letsduneit]

i just found out that jessica's face tattoos translate to the litany against fear which... wow. (for those curious, david j peterson, the linguist behind the chakobsa in dune part two, posted it to his twitter account. edit: i've been informed he also has a tumblr account @dedalvs check him out)

we can see jessica recite this litany during the water of life scene in dune part two, but also during paul's gom jabbar scene and the desert storm scene in dune part one. it goes as follows:

"i must not fear. fear is the mind-killer. fear is the little-death that brings obliteration. i will face my fear and i will permit it to pass over me and through me. and when it has gone past, i will turn the inner eye to see its path. where the fear has gone there will be nothing. only i will remain."

here are her tattoos:

and here is the chakobsa translation:

david j peterson is also the dude behind a bunch of other popular conlangs, like the dothraki and valyrian languages from game of thrones. i was so hyped to hear he'd partnered on with denis villeneuve for the dune movies and he did not disappoint! you can thank him for the realism of paul's chakobsa scenes in part two, especially his final grand speech.

[chalamet-chalamet]

Timothée talking about speaking Chakobsa in ‘Dune: Part Two’. He also speaks about filming his final speech in Chakobsa and English.

IG credit to funny_tchalamet, YouTube: Mashable

[dedalvs]

Just saw the Dune: Part 2. What do you think of the empire and fremen languages seen on screen?

I wish they would have let us do something ourselves for the Harkonnens (we could've created a badass Harkonnen language), but we certainly can't complain, given how much screen time our Fremen language got. We translated and delivered over 500 lines of dialogue for Dune: Part Two, and MOST of it ended up on screen. That is absolutely astonishing for a film. I invite you to go through the dialogue for previous films I've worked on—including Dune: Part One—and add up all the lines we've translated, and then see how much of it ended up on screen:

There's more Castithan in Defiance than language work in all the other movies I've worked on combined. For films, in general, they ask for little and use less, and err on the side of not subtitling where possible. Dune: Part Two is extraordinary in the amount of conlang dialogue that actually appears on screen. The only thing to compare it to, honestly, is Avatar (the first one, not the second, where they decided everyone should just speak English most of the time, which is lame).

So, yeah, Jessie and I were very pleased.

Oh, and by the way, those who follow my Tumblr may remember how disappointed we were that only I was credited on Pixar's Elemental, despite the fact that my wife Jessie and I worked together to create that language. Not so with Dune: Part Two! We are both credited. Furthermore, they really treated us right—especially Jessie, as she didn't work on the first film with me. I'd understand if they were a bit hesitant, given the fact she wasn't there for part one, but they welcomed her, treated her as part of the team, credited us both, and even credited her as Jessie Peterson, despite the fact that she hadn't yet changed her name (we were engaged but not married when the credit roll was locked).

And, let me tell you, Jessie was responsible for most of the brilliant semantic work that went into translation for this second film. We've done a lot of press of late, and we often get asked what are interesting words/idioms we've come up with, and every time we find one, invariably, it was Jessie who came up with it. I may have come up with the flesh and bones of Chakobsa, but Jessie gave it the heart that pumps its blood.

[space-blue]

OMggggg reading the Chakobsa script for Dune 2, you can see what Chani yells at Jessica over Paul's body. The translation is 'you're insane' in the subs, but the real meaning is "you drink sand"!

See?! SEEEEE??? A little bit of hidden depth in your worldbuilding goes a long way!!

[quothalinguist]

A useful word for daily life is akshahi, which means “friend” in Chakobsa. This word is featured in an expression we created for this language: vaashaaha belal akshaaha, which translates as “it is dry but for friends.” In other words, life is better with friends!

[deuterosapiens]

Flag I designed for Animal Crossing, which involved painstakingly measuring my space and becoming very annoyed with how much the editor does not like curves. I should have known better after recreating one of the Heptapod logograms from Arrival, but I apparently desire suffering.

So, shout-out to Denis Villeneuve's Dune, and the Chakobsa language as designed (and expanded on) by Jessie and David Peterson.

The word intended was *noqij, one of the words for "sand worm". I do legitimately hope it reads as well as a thirty-two by thirty-two pixel representation can be expected to read. Again, I despise curves in Animal Crossing.

[sillysanddweller]

letter doodles

theres chakobsa here and some of a script my friend @ermine-57047 made 👍👍

[ranahan]

As much as I appreciate Peterson’s work in general, I can’t help but think something important was lost in the translation here.

I don’t know enough about Arabic language and Islamic culture to judge whether Herbert’s mishmash of Arabic deserved to go. But getting rid of the Islamic references altogether also doesn’t sit right with me.

[homenecromancer]

found an article where someone analyzes Chakobsa (based on the book)

...and because it's in a conlang journal, it's written entirely in a fucking conlang

so uh if you want to go reverse-translate this thing, it starts on page 28 here, and i am not fucking doing any of that before i go to work today

[allpromarlo]

looking back on it i’m glad i watched dune 2 in german both times bc if i had to sit there and hear one of them mfs say “atreydees” idk what i would’ve done

[blupcretia]

yknow how a ton of star trek nerds learned klingon. i wanna do that but with chakobsa

[chalamet-chalamet]

“Those speeches are fully committed to memory now.”

-Timothée Chalamet speaking Chakobsa

Twitter credit to timotheeupdates

[dedalvs]

Hi! About two months ago, someone rebinding a copy of Dune in a leather cover engraved some Chakobsa on it, and I thought you might want to see (if you haven't already). I don't know if Tumblr will eat my ask if it has a URL, but the YouTube URL after the v= is eosPZ-qaz5s&t=919 (so it will skip directly to the relevant part at 15 minutes and 19 seconds). The link should take you to a video by Four Key Books Arts from May 31, 2024 called "Rebinding DUNE - FINALE - Transforming A Vintage Book: Leather Endbands, Tooling & the Final Reveal!". Thanks for bearing with the ask format!

Cool! You can watch the video here, and it's just as described above. He inscribes the litany against fear in the binding. Very nice!

[space-blue]

New Tattoo!!

Fresh and raw... I'll share better pictures once it has healed! Fantastic design and execution by the artist. It's meant to lay flat and neat while I write or draw. It's the Chakobsa dinlih for "The spice must flow", incorporated into the symbols on Paul's crysknife he kills Feyd with. Very giddy over how well it turned out!

The personal meaning, besides the tongue in cheek super nerd concept as a Dune fan, is that the creative brain juices must flow. He who controls the hyperfixation, controls the universe. I'll look at this as reminder in times of block.

The text is O Veyz Shiidhaga

And the designs were taken from this blade :

[fuckyeahisawthat]

had to make up SO many Fremen names for Chapter 4 of Maybe I'll Show You the Way and then Chapter 5 was like psst hey now you need to name all these background fedaykin as well

[quothalinguist]

The word jarib means “story” in Chakobsa. It is built on the root that gives us the verb jara meaning “to tell, to say” and carries the instrument derivation—a story is an instrument by which you tell things to other people.