By Brian Aldiss
The inhabitants of the planet Myrin have much to endure from Earthmen, inevitably, perhaps, since they represent the only intelligent life we have so far found in the galaxy. The Tenth Research Fleet has already left for Myrin. Meanwhile, some of the fruits of earlier expeditions are ripening.
As has already been established, the superior Myrinian culture, the so-called Confluence of Headwaters, is somewhere in the region of eleven million (Earth) years old, and its language, Confluence, has been established even longer. The etymological team of the Seventh Research Fleet was privileged to sit at the feet of two gentlemen of the Oeldrid Stance Academy. They found that Confluence is a language-cum-posture, and that meanings of words can be radically modified or altered entirely by the stance assumed by the speaker. There is, therefore, no possibility of ever compiling a one-to-one dictionary of English-Confluence, Confluence—English words.
Nevertheless, the list of Confluent words which follows disregards the stances involved, which number almost nine thousand and are all named, and merely offers a few definitions, some of which must be regarded as tentative. The definitions are, at this early stage of our knowledge of Myrinian culture, valuable in themselves, not only because they reveal something of the inadequacy of our own language, but because they throw some light on to the mysteries of an alien culture. The romanized phonetic system employed is that suggested by Dr Rohan Harbottle, one of the members of the etymological team of the Seventh Research Fleet, without whose generous assistance this short list could never have been compiled.
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AB WE TEL MIN The sensation that one neither agrees nor disagrees with what is
being said to one, but that one simply wishes to depart from the presence of the speaker
ARN TUTKHAN Having to rise early before anyone else is about; addressing a
machine
BAGI RACK Apologizing as a form of attack; a stick resembling a gun
BAG RACK Needless and offensive apologies
BAMAN The span of a man’s consciousness
BI The name of the mythical northern cockerel; a reverie that lasts for more than
twenty (Earth) years
BI SAN A reverie lasting more than twenty years and of a religious nature
BIT SAN A reverie lasting more than twenty years and of a blasphemous nature
BI TO SI A reverie lasting more than twenty years on cosmological themes
BI TVAS A reverie lasting more than twenty years on geological themes
BIUI TOSI A reverie lasting more than a hundred and forty-two years on
cosmological themes; the sound of air in a cavern; long dark hair
BIUT TASH A reverie lasting more than twenty years on Har Dar Da themes (cf)
CANO LEE MIN Things sensed out of sight that will return
CA PATA VATUZ The taste of a maternal grandfather
CHAM ON TH ZAM Being witty when nobody else appreciates it
DAR AYRHOH The garments of an ancient crone; the age-old supposition that
Myrin is a hypothetical place
EN IO PLAY The deliberate dissolving of the senses into sleep
GEE KUTCH Solar empathy
GE NU The sorrow that overtakes a mother knowing her child will be born dead
GE NUP DIMU The sorrow that overtakes the child in the womb when it knows it
will be born dead
GOR a Ability to live for eight hundred years
HA ATUZ SHAK EAN Disgrace attending natural death of maternal grandfather
HAR DAR DA The complete understanding that all the soil of Myrin passes through
the bodies of its earthworms every ten years
HAR DAR DI KAL A small worm; the hypothetical creator of a hypothetical sister
planet of Myrin
HE YUP The first words the computers spoke, meaning, ‘The light will not be
necessary’
HOLT CHA The feeling of delight that precedes and precipitates wakening
HOLT CHE The autonomous marshalling of the senses which produces the feeling
of delight that precedes and precipitates wakening
HOZ STAP GURT A writer’s attitude to fellow writers
INK TH O Morality used as an offensive weapon.
JILY JIP TUP A thinking machine that develops a stammer; the action of pulling up
the trousers while running uphill
JIL JIPY TUP Any machine with something incurable about it; pleasant laughter
that is nevertheless unwelcome; the action of pulling up the trousers while running downhill
KARNAD EES The enjoyment of a day or a year by doing nothing; fasting
KARNDAL CHESS The waste of a day or a year by doing nothing; fasting
KARNDOLI YON TOR Mystical state attained through inaction; feasting; a learned
paper on the poetry of metal
KARNDOL KI REE The waste of a life by doing nothing; a type of fasting
KUNDULUM To be well and in bed with two pretty sisters
LAHAH SIP Tasting fresh air after one has worked several hours at one’s desk
LA YUN UN A struggle in which not a word is spoken; the underside of an
inaccessible boulder; the part of one’s life unavailable to other people
LEE KE MIN Anything or anyone out of sight that one senses will never return; an
apology offered for illness
LIKI INK TH KUTI The small engine that attends to one after the act of excretion
MAL A feeling of being watched from within
MAN NAIZ TH Being aware of electricity in wires concealed in the walls
MUR ON TIG WON The disagreeable experience of listening to oneself in the
middle of a long speech and neither understanding what one is saying nor enjoying the manner in which it is being said; a foreign accent; a lion breaking wind after the evening repast
NAM ON A The remembrance, in bed, of camp fires
NO LEE LE MUN The love of a wife that becomes especially vivid when she is
almost out of sight
NU CROW Dying before strangers
NU DI DIMU Dying in a low place, often of a low fever
NU HIN DER VLAK The invisible stars; forms of death
NUN MUM Dying before either of one’s parents; ceasing to fight just because
one’s enemy is winning
NUT LAP ME Dying of laughing
NUT LA POM Dying laughing
NUTVATO Managing to die standing up
NUTVU BAG RACK To be born dead
NU VALK Dying deliberately in a lonely (high) place
OBI DAKT An obstruction; three or more machines talking together
ORAN MUDA A change of government; an old peasant saying meaning, ‘The dirt
in the river is different every day’
PAN WOL LE MUDA A certainty that tomorrow will much resemble today; a line of
manufacturing machines
PAT O BANE BAN The ten heartbeats preceding the first heartbeat of orgasm
PI KI SKAB WE The parasite that afflicts man and Tig Gag in its various larval stages
and, while burrowing in the brain of the Tig Gag, causes it to speak like a man
PI SHAK RACK CHANO The retrogressive dreams of autumn attributed to the
presence in the bloodstream of Pi Ki Skab We
PIT HOR Pig’s cheeks, or the droppings of pigs; the act of name-dropping
PLAY The heightening of consciousness that arises when one awakens in a strange
room that one cannot momentarily identify
SHAK ALE MAN The struggle that takes place in the night between the urge to
urinate and the urge to continuing sleeping
SHAK LA MAN GRA When the urge to urinate takes precedence over the urge to
continue sleeping
SHAK LO MUN GRAM When the urge to continue sleeping takes precedence over
all things
SHEAN DORL Gazing at one’s reflection for reasons other than vanity
SHE EAN MIK Performing prohibited postures before a mirror
SHEM A slight cold afflicting only one nostril; the thoughts that pass when one
shakes hands with a politician
SHUK TACK The shortening in life-stature a man incurs from a seemingly
benevolent machine
SOBI A reverie lasting less than twenty years on cosmological themes; a nickel
SODI DORL One machine making way for another; decadence, particularly in the
Cold Continents
SODI IN PIT Any epithet which does not accurately convey what it intends, such as
‘Sober as a judge’, ‘Silly nit’, ‘He swims like a fish’, ‘He’s only half-alive’, and so on
STAINI RACK NUSVIODON Experiencing Staini Rack Nuul and then realizing that
one must continue in the same outworn fashion because the alternatives are too frightening, or because one is too weak to change; wearing a suit of clothes at which one sees strangers looking askance
STAINI RACK NUUL Introspection (sometimes prompted by birthdays) that one is
not living as one determined to live when one was very young; or, on the other hand, realizing that one is living in a mode decided upon when one was very young and which is now no longer applicable or appropriate s
TAIN TOK I The awareness that one is helplessly living a role
STA SODON The worst feelings which do not even lead to suicide
SU SODA VALKUS A sudden realization that one’s spirit is not pure, overcoming
one on Mount Rinvlak (in the Southern Continent)
TI Civilized aggression
TIG GAG The creature most like man in the Southern Continent which smiles as it
sleeps
TIPY LAP KIN Laughter that one recognizes though the laughter is unseen; one’s
own laughter in a crisis
TOK AN Suddenly divining the nature and imminence of old age in one’s thirty-
first year
TU AN BO LO A class of people one meets only at weddings; the pleasure of
feeling rather pale
TV KI TOK Moments of genuine joy captured in a play or charade about joy; the
experience of youthful delight in old age
TUZ PAT MAIN (Obs.) The determination to eat one’s maternal grandfather
U (Obs.) The amount of time it takes for a lizard to turn into a bird; love
UBI A girl who lifts her skirts at the very moment you wish she would
UDI KAL The clothes of the woman one loves
UDI UKAL The body of the woman one loves
UES WE TEL DA Love between a male and female politician
UGI SLO GU The love that needs a little coaxing
UMI RIN TOSIT The sensations a woman experiences when she does not know
how she feels about a man
UMY RIN RU The new dimensions that take on illusory existence when the body of
the loved woman is first revealed
UNIMGAG BU Love of oneself that passes understanding; a machine’s dream
UNK TAK An out-of-date guidebook; the skin shed by the snake that predicts rain
UPANG PLA Consciousness that one’s agonized actions undertaken for love would
look rather funny to one’s friends
UPANG PLAT Consciousness that while one’s agonized actions undertaken for love
are on the whole rather funny to oneself, they might even look heroic to one’s friends; a play with a cast of three or less
U RI RHI Two lovers drunk together
USANA NUTO A novel all about love, written by a computer
USAN I NUT Dying for love
USAN I ZUN BI Living for love; a tropical hurricane arriving from over the sea, generally at dawn
UZ Two very large people marrying after the prime of life
UZ TO KARDIN The realization in childhood that one is the issue of two very large
people who married after the prime of life
WE FAAK A park or a college closed for seemingly good reasons; a city where one
wishes one could live
YA GAG Too much education; a digestive upset during travel
YA GAG LEE Apologies offered by a hostess for a bad meal
YA GA TUZ Bad meat; (Obs.) dirty fingernails
YAG ORN A president
YATUZ PATI (Obs.) The ceremony of eating one’s maternal grandfather
YATUZ SHAK SHAK NAPANG HOLI NUN Lying with one’s maternal grandmother;
when hens devour their young
YE FLIG TOT A group of men smiling and congratulating each other
YE FLU GAN Philosophical thoughts that don’t amount to much; graffiti in a place
of worship
YON TORN A paper tiger; two children with one toy
YON U SAN The hesitation a boy experiences before first kissing his first girl
YOR KIN BE A house; a circumlocution; a waterproof hat; the smile of a slightly
imperfect wife
YUP PA A book in which everything is understandable except the author’s purpose
in writing it
YUPPA GA Stomach ache masquerading as eyestrain; a book in which nothing is
understandable except the author’s purpose in writing it
YUTH MOD The assumed bonhomie of visitors and strangers
ZO ZO CON A woman in another field