Learn Dothraki and Valyrian

Learn Dothraki => Dothraki Language Updates => Topic started by: ingsve on February 07, 2011, 09:29:59 pm

Title: Various affixes.
Post by: ingsve on February 07, 2011, 09:29:59 pm
Dothraki will be full of various affixes. Here are some of the ones that we have seen so far.

First we have an example that was officially mentioned in one of the interviews with David Peterson.

as- -anpositive comparativeasafazhanhotter
os- -annegative comparativeosafazhanless hot
as- -an -azpositive superlativeasafazhanazhottest
as- -an -oznegative superlativeasafazhanozleast hot

Other circumfixes we have seen are:

ath- -zarunknownathastokhdeveshizaroonfrom nonsense
ath- -arderivation?athjahakarpride, prowess (formed from the stem jahak meaning hair-braid)

A couple of the identified suffixes are:

-oonablative casemahrazhoonfrom the man, by the man
-iplural, diminutive, genetivelajakiwarriors

They seem to be both rather common, especially -i. Another suffix is -aan as in arakhaan which is also not known yet. There are also several nouns that end in -asar like for example khalasar, ramasar, fonakasar which suggests that -asar might also be a suffix of some sort.

One thing to keep in mind is that Peterson mentioned in one interview that he has deliberately tried to avoid being straight forward and formulaic when it comes to forming words. He writes:
Quote
"For example, in Dothraki, it’s a simple matter to separate affixes from stems, but it’s not always simple to attach a meaning to a given affix. // Looking at the forms above, the stem afazh (“hot”) can be picked out fairly easily, but assigning a single meaning to each affix becomes either a very difficult process, or a trivial process (i.e. simply restating what’s there). However, it would seem a mistake to treat each form as entirely unrelated to the rest (i.e. as if each one had an entirely different affix)"


Title: Re: Various affixes.
Post by: ShadowedSin on February 07, 2011, 11:41:50 pm
Ablative is probably my favorite case, I use it heavily in one of my own Conlangs. Circumfixes are new to me, but I like the idea of them. I wonder how extensive the case system is and if the cases are regularized with the affixes. If not it could get a bit complicated to learn.
Title: Re: Various affixes.
Post by: ingsve on February 08, 2011, 12:03:09 am
Ablative is probably my favorite case, I use it heavily in one of my own Conlangs. Circumfixes are new to me, but I like the idea of them. I wonder how extensive the case system is and if the cases are regularized with the affixes. If not it could get a bit complicated to learn.

I'm not entirely sure but I think there is supposed to be 4 cases in dothraki. Proper use of affixes and cases could potentially be one of the trickier things to learn given what Peterson wrote in the article quoted above. I'm also interested in knowing if he has applied the same type of irregularity to verb conjugation or if it will be very straight forward. I should go through the released words and see if there are any conclusions that can be drawn about conjugations already.
Title: Re: Various affixes.
Post by: Lajaki on February 08, 2011, 03:44:40 am
I think DP has also dropped somewhere (The russian interview?) that we're going to have an Allative case, as well. I haven't run into that before.
Title: Re: Various affixes.
Post by: ingsve on February 08, 2011, 04:13:13 am
I think DP has also dropped somewhere (The russian interview?) that we're going to have an Allative case, as well. I haven't run into that before.

Ya, that was the russian interview. A likely candidate is probably -aan since it is similar to the ablative -oon.
Title: Re: Various affixes.
Post by: ShadowedSin on February 08, 2011, 02:16:42 pm
Interesting just wikied the case notes and it seems weird to have that instread just a locative. I wonder if he'll have something like the Russian Preposition Case.