Speaker for the Dead

Yiddish ch .
    Vowels: Single vowels are pronounced more or less as follows: a as in father, e as in get, i like the ee in fee, o as in throne, and u like the oo in toot . (This is a gross oversimplification. since there are really two distinct a sounds, neither of which is really like the a in father, three meaning-changing ways to pronounce e — é , ê , and the quick e at the end of a word--and three meaning-changing ways to pronounce o--ó, ô, and the quick o at the ends of words.   But it's close enough to get you through this book.)
    Consonant combinations: The combination lh is pronounced like the lli in William; nh, like the ni in onion.   The combination ch is always pronounced like the English sh .   The combination qu , when followed by e or i , is pronounced like the English k ; when followed by a , o , or u , like the English qu; the same pattern is followed by gu.   Thus Quara is pronounced KWAH-rah, while Figueira is pronounced fee-GAY-rah.
    Vowel combinations: The combination ou is pronounced like the ow in throw; ai, like igh in high; ei, like eigh in weigh.   The combination eu is not found in English; it is pronounced as a very quick combination of the e in get and the u in put.
    Nasal vowels:   A vowel or vowel combination with a tilde--usually ão and ã --or the combination am at the end of a word are all nasalized.   That is, they are pronounced as if the vowel were going to end with the English ng sound, only the ng is never quite closed.   In addition, the syllable with a tilde is always stressed, so that the name Marcão is pronounced mah-KOWNG. (Syllables with ^ and ´ accent marks are also stressed.)
    If I told you that when t comes before the i sound it's pronounced like the English ch , and d follows the same pattern to sound like the English j , or if I mentioned that x always sounds like sh except when it sounds like z , you might well give up entirely, so I won't.

Prologue
     
      In the year 1830, after the formation of Starways Congress, a robot scout ship sent a report by ansible: The planet it was investigating was well within the parameters for human life. The nearest planet with any kind of population pressure was Baía; Starways Congress granted them the exploration license.
  So it was that the first humans to see the new world were Portuguese by language, Brazilian by culture, and Catholic by creed. In the year 1886 they disembarked from their shuttle, crossed themselves, and named the planet Lusitania-- the ancient name of Portugal. They set about cataloguing the flora and fauna. Five days later they realized that the little forest-dwelling animals that they had called porquinhos -- piggies-- were not animals at all.
      For the first time since the Xenocide of the Buggers by the Monstrous Ender, humans had found intelligent alien life.
      The piggies were technologically primitive, but they used tools and built houses and spoke a language. "It is another chance God has given us," declared Archcardinal Pio of Baía. "We can be redeemed for the destruction of the buggers."
      The members of Starways Congress worshipped many gods, or none, but they agreed with the Archcardinal. Lusitania would be settled from Baía, and therefore under Catholic License, as tradition demanded. But the colony could never spread beyond a limited area or exceed a limited population. And it was bound, above all, by one law: the piggies were not to be disturbed.

1
     
    Pipo
     
     
      Since we are not yet fully comfortable with the idea that people from the next village are as human as ourselves, it is presumptuous in the extreme to suppose we could ever look at sociable, tool-making creatures who arose from other evolutionary paths and see not beasts but brothers, not rivals but fellow pilgrims journeying to the shrine of intelligence.
      Yet that is what I see, or yearn to see. The difference between raman and varelse is not in the creature judged, but in the creature judging. When we declare an alien species to be raman, it does not mean that they have passed a threshold of moral maturity. It means that we have.
     
      --Demosthenes, Letter to the Framlings
     
      Rooter was at once the most difficult and the most helpful of the pequeninos. He was always there whenever Pipo visited their clearing, and did his best to answer the questions Pipo was forbidden by law to come right out and ask. Pipo depended on him-- too much, probably-- yet though Rooter clowned and played like the