Author Topic: Hrakka vs Hrakkar  (Read 13865 times)

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Hrakkar

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Hrakka vs Hrakkar
« on: May 18, 2011, 04:47:23 pm »
I just got back from a train trip to/from Denver, Colorado (train broke down in the middle of nowhere-- both engines failed! Stock without power for 11 hours, until we were towed into Elko, NV by a freight engine.) I used this time to read GoT cover-to-cover, so now I can more fully understand what is discussed here.

One question though-- The word for 'white lion' given in the dictionary is hrakka The word in the book (2 places) is hrakkar. What is the difference? (no clue on the grammar page) Is one word right over the other? Should my user name be Hrakkar instead of Hrakka?
« Last Edit: May 18, 2011, 11:40:14 pm by Hrakka »
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ingsve

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Re: Hrakka vs Hrakkar
« Reply #1 on: May 18, 2011, 05:49:46 pm »
Good question. It would seem that the spelling might have been confused with hranna so that the /r/ was dropped at some point. We would have to ask Lajaki about that: Was that just a mistake or did you get the word hrakka from somewhere else where the /r/ is dropped?
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Hrakkar

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Re: Hrakka vs Hrakkar
« Reply #2 on: May 18, 2011, 11:39:42 pm »
Hrakka is from Lajaki's dictionary. I just checked the wiki dictionary, and it is hrakka there as well.
« Last Edit: May 18, 2011, 11:53:10 pm by Hrakka »
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ingsve

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Re: Hrakka vs Hrakkar
« Reply #3 on: May 19, 2011, 12:17:08 am »
If you look at the Original Corpus page on the wiki: http://wiki.dothraki.org/dothraki/Original_Corpus you'll see that he uses the word hrakkar so it might be a mistake that has been repeated from one place to another.
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Hrakkar

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Re: Hrakka vs Hrakkar
« Reply #4 on: May 20, 2011, 01:33:20 am »
How would one go about getting this corrected? Also, it it easy to change ones' username?
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ingsve

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Re: Hrakka vs Hrakkar
« Reply #5 on: May 20, 2011, 01:46:14 am »
How would one go about getting this corrected? Also, it it easy to change ones' username?

Well, we can ask David about it.

I think you should be able to switch your username in your profile settings.
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ingsve

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Re: Hrakka vs Hrakkar
« Reply #6 on: May 20, 2011, 04:12:30 am »
David confirms that it should be hrakkar.
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Hrakkar

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Re: Hrakka vs Hrakkar
« Reply #7 on: May 21, 2011, 02:04:32 am »
David confirms that it should be hrakkar.

That was easy to fix. (I am assuming that this would syllabify as hrak-kar?
Thanks for asking DP about this.
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ingsve

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Re: Hrakka vs Hrakkar
« Reply #8 on: May 21, 2011, 02:42:24 am »
David confirms that it should be hrakkar.

That was easy to fix. (I am assuming that this would syllabify as hrak-kar?
Thanks for asking DP about this.

I would guess so depending on how you would pronounce that. I don't think you hear the /k/-sound twice as in a stutter. It's more like a long /k/-sound if that makes sense.
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Qvaak

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Re: Hrakka vs Hrakkar
« Reply #9 on: May 21, 2011, 03:50:45 am »
Quote
I don't think you hear the /k/-sound twice as in a stutter. It's more like a long /k/-sound if that makes sense.

Yeah. We double consonants like p, k and t in Finnish (Finnish is very close to Estonian, which I think Peterson has mentioned as one of the inspirations) and it's likely that goes the same way in Dothraki. More than stutterlike real doubling it's just a very short pause and then the plosive sound, like hra'kar. Only not quite. Actually you close the air flow, then give a shortest pause and then release the plosive, so yeah, it's pretty accurately described as a long k-sound.

At least this is how I think I do it. I'm no phonologist and can not quickly find any source to corroborate my explanation.
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Re: Hrakka vs Hrakkar
« Reply #10 on: May 21, 2011, 10:38:39 am »
Quote
I don't think you hear the /k/-sound twice as in a stutter. It's more like a long /k/-sound if that makes sense.

Yeah. We double consonants like p, k and t in Finnish (Finnish is very close to Estonian, which I think Peterson has mentioned as one of the inspirations) and it's likely that goes the same way in Dothraki. More than stutterlike real doubling it's just a very short pause and then the plosive sound, like hra'kar. Only not quite. Actually you close the air flow, then give a shortest pause and then release the plosive, so yeah, it's pretty accurately described as a long k-sound.

At least this is how I think I do it. I'm no phonologist and can not quickly find any source to corroborate my explanation.

Hmmm... every conlanger seems to like Estonian! I have a good friend at work who speaks Estonian fluently. I'll ask him about that. In any case, this is helpful. (The extra r at the end of hrakkar makes for a much more challenging pronunciation!)
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Qvaak

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Re: Hrakka vs Hrakkar
« Reply #11 on: May 21, 2011, 11:35:48 am »
Quote
The extra r at the end of hrakkar makes for a much more challenging pronunciation!
Hahh. The rolling r is a common phoneme in my mother tongue and it still took me ~10 years to get it right. My brother still struggles with it after a quarter of a century. Now, though, I have much more trouble figuring the starting h out.
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Verak

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Re: Hrakka vs Hrakkar
« Reply #12 on: May 23, 2011, 03:36:53 pm »
Quote
I don't think you hear the /k/-sound twice as in a stutter. It's more like a long /k/-sound if that makes sense.

Yeah. We double consonants like p, k and t in Finnish (Finnish is very close to Estonian, which I think Peterson has mentioned as one of the inspirations) and it's likely that goes the same way in Dothraki. More than stutterlike real doubling it's just a very short pause and then the plosive sound, like hra'kar. Only not quite. Actually you close the air flow, then give a shortest pause and then release the plosive, so yeah, it's pretty accurately described as a long k-sound.

At least this is how I think I do it. I'm no phonologist and can not quickly find any source to corroborate my explanation.

/k/ /t/ /p/ are all stops, so by definition they STOP. I think it makes much more sense to syllabify it as /hrak.kar/ or /hraʔ.kar/. It seems correct to me as it appears in the dictionary as of today. Other double things that are not stops /s/ /l/, etc. can be LONG because their sounds can be sustained and the nasal stops /n/ /m/ /ng(ŋ)/ can be optionally sustained by 'humming'. I think for these it's good to listen to DP from the relay text reading from the LCC4 audio. There are some double consonants in the general talk on verb classes too.


« Last Edit: May 23, 2011, 11:02:23 pm by Verak »

ingsve

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Re: Hrakka vs Hrakkar
« Reply #13 on: May 23, 2011, 07:56:14 pm »
/k/ /t/ /p/ are all stops, so by definition they STOP. I think it makes much more sense to syllabify it has /hrak.kar/ or /hraʔ.kar/. It seems correct to me as it appears in the dictionary as of today. Other double things that are not stops /s/ /l/, etc. can be LONG because their sounds can be sustained and the nasal stops /n/ /m/ /ng(ŋ)/ can be optionally sustained by 'humming'. I think for these it's good to listen to DP from the relay text reading from the LCC4 audio. There are some double consonants in the general talk on verb classes too.

Ya, I guess /hraʔ.kar/ is actaully how I usually pronounce them, just didn't know how to describe it. 
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Qvaak

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Re: Hrakka vs Hrakkar
« Reply #14 on: May 24, 2011, 08:20:49 pm »
/k/ /t/ /p/ are all stops, so by definition they STOP. I think it makes much more sense to syllabify it as /hrak.kar/ or /hraʔ.kar/. It seems correct to me as it appears in the dictionary as of today. Other double things that are not stops /s/ /l/, etc. can be LONG because their sounds can be sustained and the nasal stops /n/ /m/ /ng(ŋ)/ can be optionally sustained by 'humming'.
Having done some thinking, voice practising and reading (all to little avail)...
Aye. Stops cannot really be sustained. That is quite clear. I don't think I said anything different. But silence can be sustained. These stops are two-parters. First you close the air flow, then you release it. Normally you do the second part practically instantly after the first, but if you like, you can remain silent for a while - very short while, if you're speaking fast. As this pause is in the middle of a 'phoneme', I don't think it's that silly to speak of a long consonant. From start to finish it can easily take as long as any other sustained phoneme. ...Might be a little bit figurative, s'true.

Now on the other hand, even though the release part is usually the part with the clearest sound, the closing the air flow part does sound quite different in different stop consonants and may well serve as a phoneme at it's own right. So yeah, to speak of doubled consonant is pretty accurate too. If you pause long enough to differentiate the sounds, you get two consonants at the prize of one stop of the air flow. I think in word combinations like at times and top priority even english speakers often do this two for one trick - I do for sure.

As for the IPA notation:
/hrak.kar/ is the simplest possible solution and very defendable. But 1) people not used to doubled consonants will voice two fully executed stops and sound very wrong; 2) If Dothraki also uses fully doubled stops (for example with some prefixes), we'd need to find some different way to notate them.
/hrak:ar/ doesn't seem too popular choice. I saw it used somewhere outside in the internet (with finnish, not with Dothraki of course), but there too it was presented as misleading. Syllabes change in the middle and the notation argues against that.
/hraʔ.kar/ seems like an odd solution. Isn't the ʔ-symbol used unconventionally? As far as I read it marks a stop deep in the throat, a voiceless glottal plosive. You might manage to emulate the way the word sounds quite closely, but if you followed the instruction, you'd do it very wrong and rather awkwardly.

It is, of course, possible that Dothraki just handles doubled stop consonants in some unusual way, but from the little I have heard that doesn't seem likely.

Quote
I think for these it's good to listen to DP from the relay text reading from the LCC4 audio. There are some double consonants in the general talk on verb classes too.
Pardon my clumsiness. It seem I either cannot download or haven't even found those recordings. Are they available for an outsider like me?
Game of Thrones is not The Song of Ice and Fire, sweetling. You'll learn that one day to your sorrow.