OR Quote 1: History of Wutan in Trondheim

all quotes are from the book Speaker for the dead, written by Orson Scott Card

"The Nordic Language recognizes four orders of foreignness. The first is the otherlander, or utlänning, the stranger that we recognize as being a human of our world, but of another city or country. The second is the framling- Demosthenes merely drops the accent from the Nordic främling. This is the stranger that we recognize as being a human, but of another world. The third is raman, the stranger that we recognize as human, but of another species. The fourth is the true alien, the varelse, which include all the animals, for with them no conversation is possible." (Pg. 32; Ch. 2)

The importance of this quote is that it describes the 4 words used throughout this book to describe the aliens known as the piggies, who are a newly discovered race of seemingly intelligent beings. Without these descriptions, it would be very confusing to read those parts of the book when it is debated whether the piggies are raman or varelse.