Author Topic: A Dothraki pregnancy announcement  (Read 6479 times)

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KingAlanI

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A Dothraki pregnancy announcement
« on: March 27, 2014, 08:16:50 pm »
In this scenario, Doreah is with child by a young man named Harvest. She tells Daenerys, who tells Irri and Jhiqui.
As I often ask, did I use the words right?

Zhey Irri! Zhey Jhiqui! Doreah me mesile. – Irri! Jhiqui! Doreah is pregnant.

Is it a proper use of zhey to get their attention here?

The verb is mesilat, to be pregnant. I'm not sure if the stem is mesi or mesil; infinitives ending in lat often seem to be confusing like this. If I assume the stem is mesi, the third person singular is mesie, which just sounds weird, so that's why I assumed the stem is mesil and thus the third person singular is mesile. I make sure to not drop the pronoun 'me'.

Hash Doreah ma akemoe Harvest? – Will Doreah marry Harvest?

That seems to be the right future tense third person for kemolat, to marry. (in the sense of the spouses - kemat, to marry, is in the sense of the officiant)
kemolat is supposed to be used with ma - is that still true in that conjugation, and is that the right place to put it?
Using her name, do I need to use a third person pronoun as well?

Is the question word 'hash' enough to convey the sense of 'will she?'

Hash mori zinthi affin – Maybe when they are six-and-ten

Can I simply use the number word to refer to the age? Is affin the right form of 'when' here? As with my last sentence, is the question word hash enough to convey it as possibility rather than a definite statement?
« Last Edit: March 27, 2014, 09:22:34 pm by KingAlanI »

Qvaak

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Re: A Dothraki pregnancy announcement
« Reply #1 on: March 28, 2014, 11:11:37 am »
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Is it a proper use of zhey to get their attention here?
Absolutely. Or at least very much so. Well, kinda. Anyways, yes.  :P

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The verb is mesilat, to be pregnant. I'm not sure if the stem is mesi or mesil; infinitives ending in lat often seem to be confusing like this. If I assume the stem is mesi, the third person singular is mesie, which just sounds weird, so that's why I assumed the stem is mesil and thus the third person singular is mesile.
The guess was legitimate, but wrong. The third person singular is indeed mesie. Better get used to weird sounding vowel sequences as they are common in Dothraki. When in doubt, go to internet and to the Wiki's vocab page (http://wiki.dothraki.org/Vocabulary). You'll usually find that a word like mesilat has a line saying something like "past SG: mesi". Past singular is either the bare stem or the stem + epenthetic /-e/. From that you can easily deduce the rest. Unfortunately our pdf dictionary does not offer this (yet).

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I make sure to not drop the pronoun 'me'.
Drop? The English line does not have any pronoun to be dropped, so I guess you try to think independent from English. Or is your native language something else and both English and Dothraki translated from there?. You could say "Doreah, she is pregnant." in English, and I guess you might manage to use a similar construction in Dothraki: "Doreah, me mesie." But that's iffy.
The simple way is simple. Doreah is the subject of the sentence. You don't need to worry about dropping the pronoun, just never add it: Doreah mesie. - Doreah is pregnant.

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Hash Doreah ma akemoe Harvest? – Will Doreah marry Harvest?

OK. I'll give you some right-ish answers and you can then wonder why the heck they work the way they work :)
If we accept Harvest to decline as a Dothraki word:
Hash Doreah akemoe ma Harvestoon? - Will Doreah marry Harvest? (Harvest and Doreah are the spouses)
Hash Doreah nem akema ma Harvestoon? - Will Doreah be married to Harvest? (practically the same question as above, a bit different wording)
Hash Doreah akema Harvestes? - Will Doreah marry Harvest? (Doreah officiates the marriage, Harvest is one of the spouses, the other is not mentioned - there is a lot of iffy stuff in this one)
But we probably should not accept Harvest to decline as a Dothraki word. It seems Dothraki don't like to assimilate foreign names. This is why these probably should go like this instead:
Hash Doreah akemoe haji Harvest?
Hash Doreah nem akema haji Harvest?
Hash Doreah akema haji Harvest?

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Using her name, do I need to use a third person pronoun as well?
Hey, you did ask about that! No. Names are basically nouns. You don't usually say in English "Doreah she killed her Irri." or "The warrior he killed him the foreigner." You just say "Doreah killed Irri." and "The warrior killed the foreigner." Just the same way you say Doreah addriv Irries. and Lajak addriv ifakes.

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Is the question word 'hash' enough to convey the sense of 'will she?'
Hash and the future tense. Yes. Should be.

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Can I simply use the number word to refer to the age?
I have no idea. My guess would be no.

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Is affin the right form of 'when' here?
Maybe if you rearranged the sentence. Maybe not anyway. It's basically (but not completely) a question word, and you probably are not interested in knowing when they are sixteen.

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As with my last sentence, is the question word hash enough to convey it as possibility rather than a definite statement?
Too much. I think you're just asking "Are they sixteen, when?"

How did you end up with zinthi? Sixteen is zhindatthi everywhere where I look... oh. Except on the pdf dictionary.  :(  damn, damn, damn. Gotta get to Hrakkar on that.

How about Kash mori ray hezhahi zhindatthi firesof, ishish. ... to use the newly found old hezhahat  ;) And no, I don't know how to use tense in that kind of sentence. Ray + present tense conjugation is a gamble.
Game of Thrones is not The Song of Ice and Fire, sweetling. You'll learn that one day to your sorrow.

KingAlanI

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Re: A Dothraki pregnancy announcement
« Reply #2 on: March 28, 2014, 01:26:56 pm »
Yeah, 'zhey' seems flexible enough to fit here.

I admit I was confused by those -lat infinitives being explained on the wiki but not in the dictionary

English is my native language, indeed the only real-world language I speak. I was simply trying to not assume Dothraki is too close to English. You often have told me to not drop a pronoun when conjugating a verb. But as I said later in this post, I was already using a name instead of a pronoun. So I unknowingly answered my own question. :)

Doreah and Harvest are the two spouses, so I want the first or the second one. I knew to marry was different for spouses and officiant, and I mentioned that, but I forgot to make absolutely clear which category these two fell into.

Hash conveys question - do I still need to use a question mark in 'hash' sentences

Yeah, my last sentence is a mess.

Your suggestion looks like "Maybe when they have found their sixteenth year" ("Maybe when they're sixteen" as a non-literal English translation, Mayhaps when they’ve had six-and-ten namedays in ASOIAF-style archaic English)

Maybe asshekhqoyi (birthday) instead of firesof (year) - I don't see why not.

Qvaak

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Re: A Dothraki pregnancy announcement
« Reply #3 on: March 28, 2014, 03:56:45 pm »
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Your suggestion looks like "Maybe when they have found their sixteenth year" ("Maybe when they're sixteen" as a non-literal English translation, Mayhaps when they’ve had six-and-ten namedays in ASOIAF-style archaic English)

Maybe asshekhqoyi (birthday) instead of firesof (year) - I don't see why not.
Note that it's not "sixteenth year" in Dothraki, it's "sixteen years". "Sixteenth" would be said differently. And the way I constructed the sentence zhindatthi firesof is a straight object, so it's in accusative, so if you change firesof to asshekhqoyi, it'll be assekhqoy.
Game of Thrones is not The Song of Ice and Fire, sweetling. You'll learn that one day to your sorrow.

KingAlanI

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Re: A Dothraki pregnancy announcement
« Reply #4 on: March 28, 2014, 06:55:08 pm »
Very well then, thank you for pointing out yet another thing. :)

KingAlanI

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Re: A Dothraki pregnancy announcement
« Reply #5 on: May 22, 2014, 06:00:27 pm »
On a similar note:

A word for pregnant wom(a/e)n?

mesilat, to be pregnant, seems to be the only related word in the dictionary/vocabulary. I thought of the usual trick for turning a verb into an related noun:

mesilak, or is that mesik? Either way, how would you pluralize that? Stick an i on the end?

Qvaak

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Re: A Dothraki pregnancy announcement
« Reply #6 on: May 23, 2014, 11:19:41 pm »
Ya. No surprise pitfalls here. AFAIK the usual trick is the most promising trick, and you got it right, too.

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mesilak, or is that mesik?
When you know, what part of the word is suffix and what stem, you'll know which one is right. In the vocab entry this can be seen from the past SG. inflection. Works every time on /-lat/ versus /-at/ problem. Or you could check my previous post on this thread. We discussed mesilat.

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Either way, how would you pluralize that? Stick an i on the end?
First you need to know if your newly derived word is animate or inanimate, because if the new word is inanimate, you won't (visibly) pluralize it in any way whatsoever. So look into our derivation page entry on agentive suffix to find out, if we might know what kind of word this is. We know! yay!
Then, if you found out that your word is indeed animate, check the noun declension table (I find the example tables below easier for a quick check, but what ever floats your boat) and if the gods are with you, you'll see, how to pluralize.
Spoiler: you will not be surprised :P
Game of Thrones is not The Song of Ice and Fire, sweetling. You'll learn that one day to your sorrow.

KingAlanI

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Re: A Dothraki pregnancy announcement
« Reply #7 on: May 27, 2014, 10:04:59 pm »
Due to our past conversation, I figured it was probably 'mesik'

so mesliat is inanimate, so the derivation is not pluralized either?

Qvaak

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Re: A Dothraki pregnancy announcement
« Reply #8 on: May 28, 2014, 04:09:31 am »
You're on some mobile device that makes opening links a pain, aren't you?

Mesik, yes.

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so mesliat is inanimate, so the derivation is not pluralized either?
1) Mesilat is a verb (a word of doing), animacy concerns nouns (words for things), so mesilat is generally neither animate nor inanimate.
2) Verbs can sometimes (though rarely) be used as nouns, and then they actually are animate.
3) When you derive words they don't inherit the animacy of the root. The animacy is determined by the type of derivation.
4) Agentive suffix (that /-(a)k/ you added to the word) generates animate words.
Since mesik ends in a consonant, the pluralization is mesiki, as you originally guessed. That's why I said "Spoiler: you will not be surprised"
Game of Thrones is not The Song of Ice and Fire, sweetling. You'll learn that one day to your sorrow.