Sentence Attempts

[Verak]

I am going to attempt to write sentences in Dothraki. I will very much appreciate anyone who wants to discuss/correct them. I'm SURE they will be replete with errors.

San athchomari yeraan.

My 9 sheep are quiet tonight.
Qazat oqet anni chakae ajjalan.
Qazat oqet anni chaka ajjalan.

That spider bit me again under my glove yesterday.
Rek qosar save oste anha torga hlak anni oskikh.
Rek qosar save ost anha torga hlakon anni oskikh.
Rek qosar save ost anna torga hlaki(?) anni oskikh.


Sheep’s wool is useful to ill foreigners.
Vafikh oqet(i (gen?)) davrae ifaki shikhaki. (I don't know which case to put on ifaki (or how to form it).)
Vafikh oqeti davrae ifakoa shikhaki.

Lekh Dothraki nroja. 

[ingsve]

Nice attempts. I'll give it some feedback with how I understand things but I can't guarantee that I'm right.

My 9 sheep are quiet tonight.
Qazat oqet anni chakae ajjalan.

We're not sure what the conjugation of verbs that end in a consonant is so the present tense of chakat might not be chakae. Based on the conjugation of lanat from the new Wired article it seems that the present tense of that verb is simply lana. From this my guess would be that the present tense of chakat would be chaka but that would be 3rd person singular so who knows what the 3rd person plural would be.

That spider bit me again under my glove yesterday.
Rek qosar save oste anha torga hlak anni oskikh.

The past tense of ostat is simply ost. The /-e/ is only added when the stem ends on a disallowed consonant like q, w or g or certain clusters. I'm also not sure whether there might be case changes after certain prepositions. That's something I've been meaning to ask David Peterson about. From some examples it seems that there is an odd case after some prepositions which has been a bit confusing.
 

Sheep’s wool is useful to ill foreigners.
Vafikh oqet(i (gen?)) davrae ifaki shikhaki. (I don't know which case to put on ifaki (or how to form it).)

Yes, it should be vafikh oqeti. The sheep are in possession of the wool. Ya, the case is a bit hard. I don't know the exact rules for when ablative and allative cases are used but they seem to be common so my guess is that "to ill foreigners" would actually be ablative. If ifak is animate (which is my guess since fonak=hunter is animate and has the same /-k/ formation) then the declension would be ifakoa I believe.
 

[Verak]

Zhey Ingsve

San athchomari yeraan save.

[Verak]

Re:

Lekh Dothraki allayafa anna ma me san athnrojari.

Lekh Dothraki allayafa anna ma me sekke nroja.

Questions:

  - Are they (both) grammatical?

  - What do they mean?

  - Is one more correct than the other?

  - Is there no word for 'but' yet?

[Verak]

Anha tih meqosar ost allegre ma me drivo.
I saw the spider bite the duck and it died.

Hash me athjilar?

Which animal died?

[ingsve]

Re:

Lekh Dothraki allayafa anna ma me san athnrojari.

Lekh Dothraki allayafa anna ma me sekke nroja.

Questions:

  - Are they (both) grammatical?

  - What do they mean?

  - Is one more correct than the other?

  - Is there no word for 'but' yet?

I would translate the sentences as:

Lekh Dothraki allayafa anna ma me san athnrojari.

I like dothraki and it much complexness. (Literally is would be "Language Dothraki pleases me and it heaps of complexness".)

Lekh Dothraki allayafa anna ma me sekke nroja.

I like dothraki and it is very complex.

I'm a little uncertain of how an adverb like sekke interacts with those built in copula words but I think this is correct. Is there another example of an adverb working on a verb yet?

At any rate I would say the second example is more correct. The second part of the first sentence is a bit strange.

No, there is no word for "but" as far as I can find.

[ingsve]

Anha tih meqosar ost allegre ma me drivo.
I saw the spider bite the duck and it died.

Hash me athjilar?

Which animal died?

Let's see. The literal translation would be: I saw that the spider bit the duck and it died. I guess that means the same thing as your translation.

As for who died that is a bit tricky. That even causes confusion in english doesn't it? Does the fact that we expect the target of a bite to die change the subject from the spider to the duck? If the sentence was "I saw the spider race against a duck and it won" I would think that the spider won. But if it was "I saw the policeman shoot the suspect and he died" I would assume it was the suspect that died. I think usually it is better to be less ambiguous in these types of sentences right?

[Verak]

Anha tih meqosar ost allegre ma me drivo.
I saw the spider bite the duck and it died.

Hash me athjilar?

Which animal died?

Let's see. The literal translation would be: I saw that the spider bit the duck and it died. I guess that means the same thing as your translation.

As for who died that is a bit tricky. That even causes confusion in english doesn't it? Does the fact that we expect the target of a bite to die change the subject from the spider to the duck? If the sentence was "I saw the spider race against a duck and it won" I would think that the spider won. But if it was "I saw the policeman shoot the suspect and he died" I would assume it was the suspect that died. I think usually it is better to be less ambiguous in these types of sentences right?

Yes. It is generally better to avoid this kind of ambiguity.

Is drivo correct for "died" in the past tense?

I also wonder if David is doing anything about ambiguity within the grammar. Some languages don't allow or do all they can to avoid this kind of ambiguity. English really doesn't care that much.

[ingsve]

Yes. It is generally better to avoid this kind of ambiguity.

Is drivo correct for "died" in the past tense?

I also wonder if David is doing anything about ambiguity within the grammar. Some languages don't allow or do all they can to avoid this kind of ambiguity. English really doesn't care that much.

Yes, I think drivo is the correct word.

As for ambiguity, I know that there are several words that need to be understood in context. Just take a word like me that means both he, she and it so you would need to be explicit if there is a chance there will be confusion.

On the other hand. Have you seen Davids writing guide for english? http://dedalvs.com/guide/index.php
He's very aware of the fact that english is full of strange things and I would guess based on that that he would perhaps want to avoid ambiguity in the languages he creates.

He has also proposed his own spelling reform for the english language. http://dedalvs.com/petersonian.html

[Verak]

Yes, I think drivo is the correct word.

Good to know.

As for ambiguity, I know that there are several words that need to be understood in context. Just take a word like me that means both he, she and it so you would need to be explicit if there is a chance there will be confusion.

On the other hand. Have you seen Davids writing guide for english? http://dedalvs.com/guide/index.php
He's very aware of the fact that english is full of strange things and I would guess based on that that he would perhaps want to avoid ambiguity in the languages he creates.

He has also proposed his own spelling reform for the english language. http://dedalvs.com/petersonian.html

I've seen LOTS of the things at his site, but never the things related to English.

Spelling reform is very interesting, but I don't think it will happen in my lifetime due to the fact that it would undermine English’s linguistic dominance in the technology age. Pronunciations have diverged so significantly in Singapore, India, etc. that without the "standardized" spellings a lot of the intelligibility across geographic boundaries would evaporate.

[Finger]

Re:

Lekh Dothraki allayafa anna ma me san athnrojari.

Lekh Dothraki allayafa anna ma me sekke nroja.

Questions:

  - Are they (both) grammatical?

  - What do they mean?

  - Is one more correct than the other?

  - Is there no word for 'but' yet?

If you take a look here you will see there is in fact a word for BUT: http://wiki.dothraki.org/dothraki/Vocabulary#References

vosma conj. but

Actually I don't know for sure if it is much recently, but I am kinda learning all the stuff from that wiki.
(Hope that helps u) 

[ingsve]

Re:

Lekh Dothraki allayafa anna ma me san athnrojari.

Lekh Dothraki allayafa anna ma me sekke nroja.

Questions:

  - Are they (both) grammatical?

  - What do they mean?

  - Is one more correct than the other?

  - Is there no word for 'but' yet?

If you take a look here you will see there is in fact a word for BUT: http://wiki.dothraki.org/dothraki/Vocabulary#References

vosma conj. but

Actually I don't know for sure if it is much recently, but I am kinda learning all the stuff from that wiki.
(Hope that helps u) 

Ya, that was added after these posts. I try to update the wiki continuously when we learn new words.

[Verak]

If you take a look here you will see there is in fact a word for BUT: http://wiki.dothraki.org/dothraki/Vocabulary#References

vosma conj. but

Actually I don't know for sure if it is much recently, but I am kinda learning all the stuff from that wiki.
(Hope that helps u) 

Interesting. A literal mashup of "NOT+AND". I'm not sure I've ever encountered that before. 

It's very very helpful and I really appreciate your kind assistance and intention to be helpful!!

I need to go read through the dictionary again now that it's current.

[Qvaak]

Graddakh! Zhey chiftik! Hash yer vifoneri, hash torga anni vos nira!
Chakas, zhey ifak! Anha addriv mawizzi.
Mawizzi! Yer vos davrae anhaan. Kishi agarvoki silokh.
Vosecchi. Anha addriv mawizzi vezhveni. Hash yer emi anhaan?
Mawizzi vezhveni? Anha sekke emak yeraan!

I had ingsve already offer some constructive critisism, so this is better than what I could come up with. There are still many dubious thingies. This is, after all, an attempt thread, not success thread.

It should roughly translate as:
Bloody hell! You little s**t! While you roam the land hunting, my stomach goes empty.
Shut up, bastard! I killed a rabbit.
A Rabbit! You are useless. Tomorrow we'll be hungry.
Nuh-huh. I killed some honking big rabbits. Do you like me now?
Big rabbits! I like you greatly!

...and the joke of course is (or was meant to be) that the way the word rabbit was introduced, it did not tell us if there was just one or many lovely bunnies brutally slaughtered. With the adjective vezhveni the speaker did not just reveal that the rabbits were big, but also that there were multiple.

[Verak]

I'm very impressed and I really like your use of emat for "like". 

Is that canonical?