Chakobsa

Chakobsa is a Northwest Caucasian (NWC) language (possibly in the Circassian subgroup), also called "shikwoshir" or the "hunting language". It was originally a secret language used only by the princes and nobles, and is still used by their descendants. Jacob Reineggs (1796, p. 248) was the first to record any Chakobsa: a list of 19 words. Though the overall appearance of these words seems to be NWC, they have no cognates in any language of that family or any other. In the Bzhedug dialect of Adyghe the language is called /šʿˊakʾ°abza/, literally "hunting language" (/šʿˊakʾ°a/ "hunting" + /bza/ "language"); the modern name "Chakobsa" is based on an earlier form of the word, */čʿˊakʾ°abza/. An informant has asserted that Chakobsa is based on Circassian, encrypted by reordering words and changing phonemes, rather like Pig Latin but more complex. Although not yet confirmed, this seems a reasonable hypothesis.[1]

In his 1965 novel Dune, Frank Herbert named a fictional language, Chakobsa, after the Caucasian hunting language.[2][3] However, the samples of this invented language which Herbert uses in the Dune series of novels are actually a mixture of the Romani language, Serbo-Croatian, and various Arabic terms.[4]

References
  1. Colarusso, John (1988). "1, note 3". The Northwest Caucasian Languages: A Phonological Survey (Jan 21, 2014 ed.). Routledge. p. 11. ISBN 9781317918172. Retrieved 8 February 2018.
  2. Collins, Will (September 16, 2017). "The Secret History of Dune". Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved October 20, 2017.
  3. Blanch, Lesley (1960). The Sabres of Paradise. p. 21.
  4. Simon, Olivier. "Tolk de Chakobsa Phrases in Dune". Conlangs Monthly: 31.


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