Messages

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Beginners / Re: Jasi's Journal [The Riddle Game]

« on: March 26, 2013, 10:17:38 pm »

Sorry; haven't been on in more than a week.  I've been using a brain hack, and I'm crazy bitchy that I wasn't using it before (I used it for my anatomy terminology in my EMT class)!  It's called Spaced Repetition, or the Leitner System.

Here's what I've been doing.  I made flashcards of the A section of the English-to-Dothraki Dictionary, and 3 boxes marked Every Day, Every Two Days, Every Three Days.  Six days ago I studied the flashcards for an hour and then went about my day.  Five days ago I went back through the cards again.  If I got them right I put them in the Every Two Days box.  If I got them wrong, back into the Every Day box they went.  For the rest of my week I went back to the cards for about 10 minutes/day.  If I got the word right it went up a box.  If I got it wrong it went back to the beginning.  You'd think it'd be hard to keep track of, but it isn't: I just keep a calendar on my phone.  For my anatomy terms I had it at Every Day, Every Week, and Every Month, but that's only because I'd taken anatomy before and needed a refresher.  For learning new stuff, the 3-day system is working like a charm.

I'm using it to expand my vocabulary, but I should probably be doing it for my grammar. 


EDIT: I wanted to share this with you guys because Cracked ran an article about it recently, and I love that site and any excuse to promote it.

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Beginners / Re: Jasi's Journal [The Riddle Game]

« on: March 14, 2013, 04:04:15 pm »

Anha astak.  Ajjin me samva.  Fini me? works, but
Anha astak.  Ajjin me samvoe.  Fini me? works too, and only changes the meaning slightly.

But me samvoe means pretty much exactly "it breaks". That's a bit different from "it is broken". Can you say "it is broken" in the sense that it was used in "When I speak, it is broken"? Yep, you actually can. We have the third verb form, assamvat, "to cause to break" (which can be in English expressed with just "to break", but this is actually English craziness: don't expect such freedom in Dothraki). So "I cause it to break" is Anha assamvak mae, and when we remove the anha and subjectify me through passivization, we get me nem assamva, "it is broken". Thus
Anha astak. Ajjin me nem assamva. Fini me? might be a bit clumsy and over-complicated, but it's also probably the most literal translation of how "I speak. Now it is broken. What is it?" is usually understood in English.

So nem is added as an auxiliary to the passive assamva.  But how do you arrive at assamvat from samva?  I tried figuring it out on my own, but I don't think I got there.  Does it get the as- (or a-) tacked on the front because... it's now in the future tense (while samva, on it's own, is in the present)?  It will break if the first thing (the speaker speaking) has already occurred?

The reason I kept pressing samvae with the e at the end is because on the Wiki there's a table that shows that the second and third person of a present tense verb ending with a vowel ends with e.

Is samva is an ablative partitive verb? Because you can break something, but you can also not break it all the way.


... I overcomplicate graddakh.  I don't say it to question your knowledge; it's just how I learn. I don't build from a foundation: I'm like Spiderman, flinging out webs until graddakh starts connecting together.


Why is graddakh graddakh!? 

GAAAAAAAH!!!

P.P.P.P.S. Maybe my username should have been Idiot...

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Beginners / Re: Jasi's Journal [The Riddle Game]

« on: March 14, 2013, 02:58:40 pm »

Thanks for your compliment Hrakkar; I totally heard the sound from Legend of Zelda when you open a chest in my head.

I either mistyped Anha vos akkelenok or my auto-correct got in the way (I'm on an iPad and have had to go back twice already because it turns vos into "vow" and akkelenok into "allele ok" (which is still retarded; who puts those two words together)?

You're right about maybe taking on a task too large for a beginner. I actually thought riddles would be easier than song lyrics (which also came to mind), but I don't know the language well enough to play around with it like I am (and like you said, the language has a limited vocabulary).  Hrm...

What if I just grab a book and start pulling quotes from it? So I can keep trying to get the grammatical structure right, but don't have to agonize so much over whether or not I've kept the whimsy intact.  Perhaps a book that every one of us owns... 




Annnnnnnd it just clicked, ingsve (thank you, and thank you for the link)!  I've been trying to get to the roots of these words by dropping the last few letters. But I forgot about the beginning...

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Beginners / "No sooner spoken than broken. What is it?"

« on: March 14, 2013, 08:09:56 am »

I put it up earlier, but I'll ask again. After the corrections above, does this work?

Anha astak.  Ajjin me samvae.  Fini me?

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Beginners / Re: Jasi's Journal [The Riddle Game]

« on: March 13, 2013, 11:17:41 pm »

It's singular because the subject is a single entity rather than for example a group which would make it plural (we, they etc).

Positive grade is just the normal form where everything works just as expected. It's the negative grade that introduces some additional inflections. In Dothraki when a sentence is expressing the negative there is also a marking added to the verb. In English you don't see a difference in the verb between "I'm riding" and "I'm not riding" other than the added negator "not". In Dothraki you would also change the verb in the negative so Anha dothrak would become Anha vos dothrok. This is true for most verb conjugations in the negative but not all. For example in the present tense in the third person (he, she, it) when the verb stem ends in a consonant the conjugation would be -i in both positive and negative grade. Me adakhi "She is eating" and Me vos adakhi "She is not eating"

Okay; I get both of those. I actually saw the negative form examples on the Wiki, but I didn't make the connection until now. 

So for a word like Akkelenat (to decide, to judge), would the root word be akkelen?  And if it was, would you say Anha akkelenak? And the negative would then be Anha vos akkelenot?

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Beginners / Re: Jasi's Journal [The Riddle Game]

« on: March 13, 2013, 10:52:13 pm »

It's really interesting that the drawn out form of these verbs begins with a v but isn't (to me, anyway) an obvious prefix.

It's actually a circumfix that looks like this v(i)- -(e)r. The vowels in parenthesis are only added if the original root starts or ends in a consonant.

The root of astat is ast so when you add the circumfix it becomes vaster and then the verbending -at is added to form vasterat.

If you look at the other example Qvaak gave then you have tihat "to see" where the root is tih. When you add the circumfix it becomes vitiher + at = vitiherat

That's neat. Does it work for all verbs, or only a select few (I imagine there's probably some it wouldn't work for)?

You guys are really helpful; I hope I'm not bothering anyone, fool that I am.

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Beginners / Re: Jasi's Journal [The Riddle Game]

« on: March 13, 2013, 06:37:58 pm »

Both Dothraki and English are non-pro-drop languages, so you can't generally go "Love the shoes. Where did buy them?", you need to use the pronouns "I love the shoes. Where did you buy them?". This is not an absolute rule though, and for example in both English and Dothraki you can in straightforward situations drop a repeating subject, thus saying "I'll hunt rabbits and make food" instead of "I'll hunt rabbits and I'll make food." There are a lot of colloquial and poetic freedoms too, and actually English "Love the shoes." is quite alright given the right discourse. "No sooner spoken than broken." is a radically pro-dropping sentence (or sentence fragment?). You might hope it works for the same slogan-like quality in Dothraki, but if you want to go even slightly on the safe side, add pronouns - at least the first one.

I didn't initially know what a non-pro-drop language was, but your examples helped me figure it out.  Like many riddles it tends to be a fragment (like song lyrics or poems) but I introduced it as a sentence all its own.  I guess the other ways to ask would be, "It's no sooner spoken than broken," or, "This thing is no sooner spoken than broken." You might even go further and say, "When you speak this thing is broken." But then the riddle loses it's mystique.

What about the verbs? You can't write much dothraki without worrying about what exactly the verbs are doing, because in Dothraki verbs conjugate way more than in English. The first sentence is not "No sooner it spoke", it's "no sooner it is spoken" - it is a passive sentence (and a positive grade present tense third person singular, to be exact), but the copula got dropped with the subject. Dothraki passive works different than English. It uses a particle thingie I like to call verbal auxiliary. It's rather unlikely you'd manage to maintain anything about the passive if you dropped it. If you desperately wanted to arrive at some kind of truncated form, you might borrow the trick from participles and smash it to the front of the verb, but I doubt you aspire to such adventurous stylistic depths.

In Dothraki the normal place for adverbs (ajjin here works as an adveb) is sentence final, but they can be fronted for emphasis and here I think the placement is easily defendable.

... I have no idea what a positive grade present tense third person singular is.  I know the tense and what person it's in, but what makes a sentence a positive grade versus a negative grade (and is it singular because there's only one subject, or what)?  I'm not coming at this from the perspective of someone who's familiar with the nuances of English grammar.

"Adventurous stylistic depths," are beyond my reach at this time, though I'd like to come back when I've learned more and see how I would say it then as opposed to now.  The placement of ajjin was a mistake on my part, though I'm happy it worked out.

...I'm cutting this short here, as I gotta go, but we are arriving towards Ajjin me nem asta, me nem assamva, though I wasn't exactly gonna stop there.

Anha vasterak.  Ajjin me samvaan.  Fini me?

This works pretty well too, though of course I'd recommend astak instead of vasterak and samvaan is just some bizarre misunderstanding, as allative is noun case and won't work for neither verbs (verb would be needed there and should be samvalat, though samva looks a bit irregular, so I can't swear on that) nor adjectives.

I'll have to go back and look up nem (I must have missed it).  I understand your reservations about samvaan; I was under the wrong heading. If it's, "Now it breaks," would it be, "Ajjin me samvae?" It's present tense because "it" is breaking now, as a result of speaking. It ends with e because that's the way you end a third person verb that ends with a vowel in the present tense.

So...

Anha astak.  Ajjin me samvae.  Fini me?

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Beginners / Re: Jasi's Journal [The Riddle Game]

« on: March 13, 2013, 04:57:12 pm »

Thanks for your input and thanks for your advice for the future (breaking down the text to its most basic form).  I tried not to approach it like an English-to-Dothraki key (which is why my end result is so far removed from the original riddle) but it seems I've got work to do in that direction.

I looked at disse but ultimately dismissed it when I was flipping through the dictionary for words to use.  Astat is one that I missed completely (thank you for that).    It's really interesting that the drawn out form of these verbs begins with a v but isn't (to me, anyway) an obvious prefix.

I'll be back in an hour or so; I need time to absorb this... @___@  But average, for a first try? 

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Beginners / "No sooner spoken than broken. What is it?"

« on: March 13, 2013, 02:00:04 pm »

These are the words I've compiled that I think I'd need:

(samvolat) to break
(samva) broken
(vasterat) to converse, to speak with
(ajjin) now
(vos) (negator)
(fini) what (question word, when speaking of an inanimate object)
(me) it, he, she

This was my first try at it:

Ajjin vaster, me samvaan.  Fini me?

Which to me sounds like, "Now speak, it is breaking.  What is it?"

As I chew it over I wonder if it would be, "Ajjin vaster, me samvaan.  Fini me?" or, "Vaster ajjin, me samvaan.  Fini me?"  The latter sounds better in English ("Speak now, it is breaking.  What is it?"), but then it would be, "Vaster.  Ajjin me samvaan.  Fini me?" ("Speak.  Now it is breaking.  What is it?")  And that's if I have my Dothraki grammar right in the first place.

If it were the third option, vaster would no longer be acceptable, would it?  Sooo...

Anha vasterak.  Ajjin me samvaan.  Fini me?

Does that work?  It's vastly different from the original ("No sooner spoken than broken.  What is it?") but it conveys the same meaning, doesn't it..?

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Beginners / Jasi's Journal [The Riddle Game]

« on: March 13, 2013, 01:49:52 pm »

So... I really want to learn this language properly (and not just reading and writing in it, but speaking and thinking, too).  I've decided to start my own thread documenting my attempts.  As a starting point I thought it would be fun to invite everyone to a game of riddles (in the fashion of Tolkien).  I'll be trying to translate some very basic ones into Dothraki, and will document my thoughts as I make my attempt.  Feel free to jump in at any time and add your own!

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Introductions / Re: Athchomar chomakea. Hake anne Jasati.

« on: March 13, 2013, 01:40:14 pm »

Furthermore this is a situation where another verb is used instead of nesolat. When speaking of languages one uses the verb shilat "to know (a person), to be familiar with" so the verb used here would be shilolat "to get to know"

Hahh. This sudden activity is so fun. I just commented on this same shilat instead of nesat situation in the other thread.

lol It's probably my fault; I've posted more today than most people who've been registered for months. 

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Introductions / Re: Athchomar chomakea. Hake anne Jasati.

« on: March 13, 2013, 01:39:35 pm »

Thanks for correcting me.   Here I was thinking I was awesome.  Still awesome, only slightly diminished. 

If I could change my username I would; instead I'll roll with Jasi for what people can see and gnash my teeth every time "Jasati" pops up.  It'll act as a reminder for where I come from when I've gotten better at Dothraki.  What's funny is that my name is Josie, so it works that way too.

Josie --> Jasi

Soooo... davra instead of erin.  I missed it below erin, but I can see what you mean in that it'd be better suited in there.

With your corrections it would be...

Athchomar chomakea.  Hake anni Jasi.  Anha jasak hajinaan m'anha zhilak asti davra.  Anha, zhey Jasati, ashilok lekhes Dothraki.

I understand why lekh would be necessary; I suppose if the Dothraki were explaining their language to someone else they'd need to differentiate between their people and their language.

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Beginners / Re: Critically important vocabulary for beginners

« on: March 13, 2013, 12:22:11 pm »

Great.   Question: did I get my introduction in the Introduction thread right?  Not so subtly guiding you there... 

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Beginners / Re: Critically important vocabulary for beginners

« on: March 13, 2013, 12:14:43 pm »

When I read, "You have discovered a typo," I heard the item-found sound from The Legend of Zelda.   

It's nice to know where they come from, at least.   I guess, treat them as interchangeable until such time as their differences become apparent?

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Beginners / Re: Help needed for a senior thesis

« on: March 13, 2013, 11:49:58 am »

Probably my fault, Qvaak.  I talk far too much. 

 

And there you go, jojinu!  There's your answer!