Learn Dothraki and Valyrian

Learn Dothraki => Beginners => Topic started by: B3yond on June 29, 2012, 03:04:07 pm

Title: Quick questions?
Post by: B3yond on June 29, 2012, 03:04:07 pm
1. When do I use M'ath, and when do I use M'ach, or does it matter?

2. What do you do when you have a double consonant or a double vowel like in the word, 'Anna' (Me)?

3. How do you pronounce the letters q, and r, in Dothraki?

--Help would be appreciated!!
Title: Re: Quick questions?
Post by: Hrakkar on June 29, 2012, 07:02:41 pm
1. When do I use M'ath, and when do I use M'ach, or does it matter?

They can be used interchangeably, speaker's preference. they are both contractions of m'athchomaroon

Quote from: B3yond
2. What do you do when you have a double consonant or a double vowel like in the word, 'Anna' (Me)?

Basically, you lengthen the sound, pronouncing each letter a little if possible, especially in the case of vowels. You can learn a lot more here (with pronunciation examples:

http://www.dothraki.com/2011/09/long-or-doubled-consonants/ (http://www.dothraki.com/2011/09/long-or-doubled-consonants/)

Quote from: B3yond
3. How do you pronounce the letters q, and r, in Dothraki?

The /q/ is basically an Arabic q. It's kind of fun to pronounce. Here is another of David's blog posts concerning this letter (with exercises):

http://www.dothraki.com/2011/11/qute-noises/ (http://www.dothraki.com/2011/11/qute-noises/)

/r/ is fairly simple, especially if you can roll your r's. If the r occurs at the beginning of a word before a vowel (example reaven 'purple color'), at the end of a word, or is doubled, it is trilled. Most Dothraki speakers do not trill r's particularly heavily, but I tend to.

In all other instances of /r/, you pronounce the r with a medial tap, essentially, a 'flipped' r. This is an r with a little bit of d or t sound associated with it.

Quote from: B3yond
--Help would be appreciated!!

Hope this helps. It's great to see someone here asking questions!

-Hrakkar
Title: Re: Quick questions?
Post by: ingsve on June 30, 2012, 02:27:33 am
Quote from: B3yond
2. What do you do when you have a double consonant or a double vowel like in the word, 'Anna' (Me)?

Basically, you lengthen the sound, pronouncing each letter a little if possible, especially in the case of vowels. You can learn a lot more here (with pronunciation examples:

http://www.dothraki.com/2011/09/long-or-doubled-consonants/ (http://www.dothraki.com/2011/09/long-or-doubled-consonants/)

I would clarify that there is an important distinction between consonants and vowels here. The consonant sound is lenghened like described in the examples in the blog post. The important thing is that the vowels are actually not lengthened they are just pronounced one after another even when it's the same vowel. I think one way to think of it is to pronounce it as if there was a hyphen in between each vowel so m'athchomaroon can be seen as m'athchomaro-on and khaleesi is khale-esi etc.