Jasi's Journal [The Riddle Game]

[Jasi]

So... I really want to learn this language properly (and not just reading and writing in it, but speaking and thinking, too).  I've decided to start my own thread documenting my attempts.  As a starting point I thought it would be fun to invite everyone to a game of riddles (in the fashion of Tolkien).  I'll be trying to translate some very basic ones into Dothraki, and will document my thoughts as I make my attempt.  Feel free to jump in at any time and add your own!

[Jasi]

These are the words I've compiled that I think I'd need:

(samvolat) to break
(samva) broken
(vasterat) to converse, to speak with
(ajjin) now
(vos) (negator)
(fini) what (question word, when speaking of an inanimate object)
(me) it, he, she

This was my first try at it:

Ajjin vaster, me samvaan.  Fini me?

Which to me sounds like, "Now speak, it is breaking.  What is it?"

As I chew it over I wonder if it would be, "Ajjin vaster, me samvaan.  Fini me?" or, "Vaster ajjin, me samvaan.  Fini me?"  The latter sounds better in English ("Speak now, it is breaking.  What is it?"), but then it would be, "Vaster.  Ajjin me samvaan.  Fini me?" ("Speak.  Now it is breaking.  What is it?")  And that's if I have my Dothraki grammar right in the first place.

If it were the third option, vaster would no longer be acceptable, would it?  Sooo...

Anha vasterak.  Ajjin me samvaan.  Fini me?

Does that work?  It's vastly different from the original ("No sooner spoken than broken.  What is it?") but it conveys the same meaning, doesn't it..?

[Qvaak]

OK. Let's look thought this first one.

Just a general sidenote: The first thing I'd recommend to do when trying to translate a text is to try to unfold it to as prosaic form as possible. You might like to eventually retain some of the neat snappy language of the original, but as a first step this at least should tell you, what you are saying. Dothraki is not a cipher of English. You can't expect to have all the same fields of meaning, all the same syntactic shortcuts, all the same implications in the subtext. More than words always translate the meaning. The meaning is more apparent, if you manage to look past the syntactic trickery of the language you are translating from.
I think here we have more or less "When it is spoken, it immediately breaks. What is it?". This is just an alalyzis method, but helps a lot in pinpointing, what the words are doing in the syntax.

The word selection is mostly good. I like the solution to approximate the nasty-ish "no sooner" with simple "now", though there might be other passable solutions like disse. But vasterat does not ring right to me. It's durative derivation from astat, to say, so it moves the meaning to a continuous action, longer time period or wider context. Compare to tihat, to look, to see-> vitiherat, to stare, to examine or elat, to go -> verat, to travel. With vasterat I get the feeling you're trying to say something akin to "As soon as there's been a conversation about it, it's broken." The difference between astat and astolat is a bit foggy, but astat would be the best bet, IMO. [Another sidenote: considering that the example sentence in astolat looks to be negative of astat wrongly interpreted, I wonder, if we have any solid knowledge of the word astolat]

Creating sentences is a tricky task, and this is no straightforward text you are trying to translate. "Fini me?" is, I think, right. "Fini jini", "what is this" might work as well, but does not sound as promising.

Both Dothraki and English are non-pro-drop languages, so you can't generally go "Love the shoes. Where did buy them?", you need to use the pronouns "I love the shoes. Where did you buy them?". This is not an absolute rule though, and for example in both English and Dothraki you can in straightforward situations drop a repeating subject, thus saying "I'll hunt rabbits and make food" instead of "I'll hunt rabbits and I'll make food." There are a lot of colloquial and poetic freedoms too, and actually English "Love the shoes." is quite alright given the right discourse. "No sooner spoken than broken." is a radically pro-dropping sentence (or sentence fragment?). You might hope it works for the same slogan-like quality in Dothraki, but if you want to go even slightly on the safe side, add pronouns - at least the first one.

What about the verbs? You can't write much dothraki without worrying about what exactly the verbs are doing, because in Dothraki verbs conjugate way more than in English. The first sentence is not "No sooner it spoke", it's "no sooner it is spoken" - it is a passive sentence (and a positive grade present tense third person singular, to be exact), but the copula got dropped with the subject. Dothraki passive works different than English. It uses a particle thingie I like to call verbal auxiliary. It's rather unlikely you'd manage to maintain anything about the passive if you dropped it. If you desperately wanted to arrive at some kind of truncated form, you might borrow the trick from participles and smash it to the front of the verb, but I doubt you aspire to such adventurous stylistical depths.

In Dothraki the normal place for adverbs (ajjin here works as an adveb) is sentence final, but they can be fronted for emphasis and here I think the placement is easily defendable.

...I'm cutting this short here, as I gotta go, but we are arriving towards Ajjin me nem asta, me nem assamva, though I wasn't exactly gonna stop there.

Anha vasterak.  Ajjin me samvaan.  Fini me?

This works pretty well too, though of course I'd recommend astak instead of vasterak and samvaan is just some bizarre misunderstanding, as allative is noun case and won't work for neither verbs (verb would be needed there and should be samvalat, though samva looks a bit irregular, so I can't swear on that) nor adjectives.

[Jasi]

Thanks for your input and thanks for your advice for the future (breaking down the text to its most basic form).  I tried not to approach it like an English-to-Dothraki key (which is why my end result is so far removed from the original riddle) but it seems I've got work to do in that direction.

I looked at disse but ultimately dismissed it when I was flipping through the dictionary for words to use.  Astat is one that I missed completely (thank you for that).    It's really interesting that the drawn out form of these verbs begins with a v but isn't (to me, anyway) an obvious prefix.

I'll be back in an hour or so; I need time to absorb this... @___@  But average, for a first try? 

[Jasi]

Both Dothraki and English are non-pro-drop languages, so you can't generally go "Love the shoes. Where did buy them?", you need to use the pronouns "I love the shoes. Where did you buy them?". This is not an absolute rule though, and for example in both English and Dothraki you can in straightforward situations drop a repeating subject, thus saying "I'll hunt rabbits and make food" instead of "I'll hunt rabbits and I'll make food." There are a lot of colloquial and poetic freedoms too, and actually English "Love the shoes." is quite alright given the right discourse. "No sooner spoken than broken." is a radically pro-dropping sentence (or sentence fragment?). You might hope it works for the same slogan-like quality in Dothraki, but if you want to go even slightly on the safe side, add pronouns - at least the first one.

I didn't initially know what a non-pro-drop language was, but your examples helped me figure it out.  Like many riddles it tends to be a fragment (like song lyrics or poems) but I introduced it as a sentence all its own.  I guess the other ways to ask would be, "It's no sooner spoken than broken," or, "This thing is no sooner spoken than broken." You might even go further and say, "When you speak this thing is broken." But then the riddle loses it's mystique.

What about the verbs? You can't write much dothraki without worrying about what exactly the verbs are doing, because in Dothraki verbs conjugate way more than in English. The first sentence is not "No sooner it spoke", it's "no sooner it is spoken" - it is a passive sentence (and a positive grade present tense third person singular, to be exact), but the copula got dropped with the subject. Dothraki passive works different than English. It uses a particle thingie I like to call verbal auxiliary. It's rather unlikely you'd manage to maintain anything about the passive if you dropped it. If you desperately wanted to arrive at some kind of truncated form, you might borrow the trick from participles and smash it to the front of the verb, but I doubt you aspire to such adventurous stylistic depths.

In Dothraki the normal place for adverbs (ajjin here works as an adveb) is sentence final, but they can be fronted for emphasis and here I think the placement is easily defendable.

... I have no idea what a positive grade present tense third person singular is.  I know the tense and what person it's in, but what makes a sentence a positive grade versus a negative grade (and is it singular because there's only one subject, or what)?  I'm not coming at this from the perspective of someone who's familiar with the nuances of English grammar.

"Adventurous stylistic depths," are beyond my reach at this time, though I'd like to come back when I've learned more and see how I would say it then as opposed to now.  The placement of ajjin was a mistake on my part, though I'm happy it worked out.

...I'm cutting this short here, as I gotta go, but we are arriving towards Ajjin me nem asta, me nem assamva, though I wasn't exactly gonna stop there.

Anha vasterak.  Ajjin me samvaan.  Fini me?

This works pretty well too, though of course I'd recommend astak instead of vasterak and samvaan is just some bizarre misunderstanding, as allative is noun case and won't work for neither verbs (verb would be needed there and should be samvalat, though samva looks a bit irregular, so I can't swear on that) nor adjectives.

I'll have to go back and look up nem (I must have missed it).  I understand your reservations about samvaan; I was under the wrong heading. If it's, "Now it breaks," would it be, "Ajjin me samvae?" It's present tense because "it" is breaking now, as a result of speaking. It ends with e because that's the way you end a third person verb that ends with a vowel in the present tense.

So...

Anha astak.  Ajjin me samvae.  Fini me?

[ingsve]

It's really interesting that the drawn out form of these verbs begins with a v but isn't (to me, anyway) an obvious prefix.

It's actually a circumfix that looks like this v(i)- -(e)r. The vowels in parenthesis are only added if the original root starts or ends in a consonant.

The root of astat is ast so when you add the circumfix it becomes vaster and then the verbending -at is added to form vasterat.

If you look at the other example Qvaak gave then you have tihat "to see" where the root is tih. When you add the circumfix it becomes vitiher + at = vitiherat

[Jasi]

It's really interesting that the drawn out form of these verbs begins with a v but isn't (to me, anyway) an obvious prefix.

It's actually a circumfix that looks like this v(i)- -(e)r. The vowels in parenthesis are only added if the original root starts or ends in a consonant.

The root of astat is ast so when you add the circumfix it becomes vaster and then the verbending -at is added to form vasterat.

If you look at the other example Qvaak gave then you have tihat "to see" where the root is tih. When you add the circumfix it becomes vitiher + at = vitiherat

That's neat. Does it work for all verbs, or only a select few (I imagine there's probably some it wouldn't work for)?

You guys are really helpful; I hope I'm not bothering anyone, fool that I am.

[ingsve]

... I have no idea what a positive grade present tense third person singular is.  I know the tense and what person it's in, but what makes a sentence a positive grade versus a negative grade (and is it singular because there's only one subject, or what)?  I'm not coming at this from the perspective of someone who's familiar with the nuances of English grammar.

It's singular because the subject is a single entity rather than for example a group which would make it plural (we, they etc).

Positive grade is just the normal form where everything works just as expected. It's the negative grade that introduces some additional inflections. In Dothraki when a sentence is expressing the negative there is also a marking added to the verb. In English you don't see a difference in the verb between "I'm riding" and "I'm not riding" other than the added negator "not". In Dothraki you would also change the verb in the negative so Anha dothrak would become Anha vos dothrok. This is true for most verb conjugations in the negative but not all. For example in the present tense in the third person (he, she, it) when the verb stem ends in a consonant the conjugation would be -i in both positive and negative grade. Me adakhi "She is eating" and Me vos adakhi "She is not eating"

[ingsve]

It's really interesting that the drawn out form of these verbs begins with a v but isn't (to me, anyway) an obvious prefix.

It's actually a circumfix that looks like this v(i)- -(e)r. The vowels in parenthesis are only added if the original root starts or ends in a consonant.

The root of astat is ast so when you add the circumfix it becomes vaster and then the verbending -at is added to form vasterat.

If you look at the other example Qvaak gave then you have tihat "to see" where the root is tih. When you add the circumfix it becomes vitiher + at = vitiherat

That's neat. Does it work for all verbs, or only a select few (I imagine there's probably some it wouldn't work for)?

You guys are really helpful; I hope I'm not bothering anyone, fool that I am.

No bother. Just happy to be able to help. It helps us get better at the language as well.

I think it has to make some semantic sense at least so there are probably verbs where it doesn't work. Usually with things like this David might have to coin the exact meaning of the durative form. For example the verb jazat means "to block" while the durative vijazerat means "to protect". It's not immediately obvious that continually blocking would mean "protecting" rather than something else so some officially confirmed judgement is often needed.

[Jasi]

It's singular because the subject is a single entity rather than for example a group which would make it plural (we, they etc).

Positive grade is just the normal form where everything works just as expected. It's the negative grade that introduces some additional inflections. In Dothraki when a sentence is expressing the negative there is also a marking added to the verb. In English you don't see a difference in the verb between "I'm riding" and "I'm not riding" other than the added negator "not". In Dothraki you would also change the verb in the negative so Anha dothrak would become Anha vos dothrok. This is true for most verb conjugations in the negative but not all. For example in the present tense in the third person (he, she, it) when the verb stem ends in a consonant the conjugation would be -i in both positive and negative grade. Me adakhi "She is eating" and Me vos adakhi "She is not eating"

Okay; I get both of those. I actually saw the negative form examples on the Wiki, but I didn't make the connection until now. 

So for a word like Akkelenat (to decide, to judge), would the root word be akkelen?  And if it was, would you say Anha akkelenak? And the negative would then be Anha vos akkelenot?

[Qvaak]

This is true for most verb conjugations in the negative but not all. For example in the present tense in the third person (he, she, it) when the verb stem ends in a consonant the conjugation would be -i in both positive and negative grade. Me adakhi "She is eating" and Me vos adakhi "She is not eating"

Nope. You have managed to totally confuse yourself. It's Me adakha and Me vos adakho. The first person forms and third person singular are the conjunctions in which the negative grade is visible even with consonant ending stems. Others, however: Yer adakhi, Yer vos adakhi; Yeri adakhi, Yeri vos adakhi; Mori adakhi, Mori vos adakhi.

[Jasi]

I put it up earlier, but I'll ask again. After the corrections above, does this work?

Anha astak.  Ajjin me samvae.  Fini me?

[Hrakkar]

 
So for a word like Akkelenat (to decide, to judge), would the root word be akkelen?  And if it was, would you say Anha akkelenak? And the negative would then be Anha vos akkelenot?

You have the right idea with the above example, but the negative grade example here should be Anha vos akkelenok (I do not judge).

One way to try ans master verb conjugation (and noun declension as well) is to remember the lexical form of Dothraki words as they are presented in the dictionary, is usually an inflected form. You have to, in most cases, remove this inflection to get another form of the word. In English and many other languages, the lexical form is not inflected, so this is confusing for many people.

You are trying something really heady here for a beginner at a new language-- to try and translate an idiom. This is why this is not coming across in the translation very well. Qvaak kind of explained this in his first response to you. An idiom is a figure of speech that does not necessarily make grammatical or syntactic sense in the language of interest, but it is readily understood-- a kind of 'play on words' as it were. These are often very difficult to translate meaningfully, if they will translate at all. As I see it, none of the translations suggested so far really capture the meaning here. This idea may have to be explained in several sentences to capture the meaning of the idiomatic original phrase. And this is especially true when the language you are translating into a language that has a limited vocabulary, like Dothraki as it exists now.

But what you are doing here is great. Using any language in an intense way like this will help you learn it much more quickly!

[ingsve]

This is true for most verb conjugations in the negative but not all. For example in the present tense in the third person (he, she, it) when the verb stem ends in a consonant the conjugation would be -i in both positive and negative grade. Me adakhi "She is eating" and Me vos adakhi "She is not eating"

Nope. You have managed to totally confuse yourself. It's Me adakha and Me vos adakho. The first person forms and third person singular are the conjunctions in which the negative grade is visible even with consonant ending stems. Others, however: Yer adakhi, Yer vos adakhi; Yeri adakhi, Yeri vos adakhi; Mori adakhi, Mori vos adakhi.

Haha, I think I'm getting a bit rusty and too confident to double check the basics.

[ingsve]

So for a word like Akkelenat (to decide, to judge), would the root word be akkelen?  And if it was, would you say Anha akkelenak? And the negative would then be Anha vos akkelenot?

The root is actually kelen which means "patterned" or "orderly" and akkelenat uses the causative construction (The real one this time, I hope). The person deciding is the one who makes things orderly in a sense. Like Hrakkar already pointed out the negative for first person would be akkelenok. If you are unsure you can check this page in the wiki: http://wiki.dothraki.org/dothraki/Verb_Conjugation#Conjugation_Table