Phrases

[ingsve]

Here are all the phrases that have appeared somewhere yet. EDIT: This list is not up to date and it probably won't be updated much since there are so many phrases around by now.

hash yer ray nesi? - Did you know?
Vos arakhaan feveya qoyoon - Not to a sword thirsting for blood.
Oqet vichitera oma vafikhoon - The sheep shivers without it's wool.
Achrakh yeroon zireyesee hrazef anni, zhey ifak! Your stink offends my horse, foreigner!
Asshekh Dothraki samveno 2,300 as  - Today dothraki broke 2300 words.
Athchomar chomakea, zhey lajaki vezhveni. Anha goshok mehrazef shafki athiroe; me haja lekhaan k'athtihari. - Respect to those that are respectful, great warriors. I'm sure your horse will survive; he seems strong enough.
Fichi jin hlak kherikhi. Mori nroji ma nizhi. Me azho anni shafkea. - Take these leather gloves. They are thick and tough. It is my gift to you.
Hash anha laz adothrak shafki, hash ashilok khal shafki. - As I can ride by your side, so shall I meet your khal.
jin ave sekke erin anni ma dorvoon - this very kind father of mine with a goat
jin ave sekke verven anni m’orvikoon - this very violent father of mine with a whip
Khalakka dothrae mr’anha. - A prince rides within me.
Me oge oqet oskikh He slaughtered a sheep yesterday.
Yer ofrakhi vosecchi sajoes mae! - You will never touch her steed!
Me ray kaffe rek tokikes. - It already crushed that fool.
Vizhadi vizhadaan norethi shafki Silver for the silver of your hair.
M'athchomaroon, zhey khaleesi! Memzir shafki choma anna. With respect Khaleesi! Your tweet respects me. (or more likely "Your tweet honors me" or something like that.)
Hrazef ost gazer. The horse bit the apple.
Azhi anhaan asshilat Allow me to present...
Moves lekhes zhorre shafki Invent your own language.
Shekh ma shieraki anni My sun and stars
Jalan atthirar anni Moon of my life
Me allayafa anna! I like it. (It pleases me)
Akat Dalen m'Atthi: Firesof jeshi ma vorsasi! - 2011: Year of ice and fire.
Anha tih mahrazhes fin kasha chakat karlin - I saw a man that lasted twenty miles.
Eyel varthasoe she ilekaan rikhoya arrekaan vekha vosi yeroon vosma tolorro! - The rain will fall on your rotting skin until nothing is left of you but bones.

[ingsve]

Added a couple more phrases to the list.

[Verak]

Athchomar chomakea.

So there is no accusative case? Redundant because the OBJ always follows the verb (SVO)?

Have any of these been spoken canonically in the series by actors yet?

[ingsve]

Athchomar chomakea.

So there is no accusative case? Redundant because the OBJ always follows the verb (SVO)?

Have any of these been spoken canonically in the series by actors yet?

Yes, there is an accusative case. In that expression however it's the ablative case that is used. Athchomar simply means respect and chomak means one who is respectful. When you add the ablative case ending -ea (which I believe also expresses plural in this case but I'm not 100% sure on that) the translation becomes "respect to those that are respectful"

Out of these sentences the only one I have heard yet is "Athchomar Chomakea, [zhey] khal vezhven. Azhi anhaan asshilat..." which is said by Illyrio when Dany first meets Drogo.

Not all of these sentences will appear in the show however. Some are examples sentences given by the creator of the language.

[Verak]

Yes, there is an accusative case. In that expression however it's the ablative case that is used. Athchomar simply means respect and chomak means one who is respectful. When you add the ablative case ending -ea (which I believe also expresses plural in this case but I'm not 100% sure on that) the translation becomes "respect to those that are respectful"

That's very interesting about the ablative on chomak. So:

   chomat, vin., be respectful
   athchomar, n., respect
   chomak, n., one who is respectful...??

But, I was actually asking about about examples like

   Yer ofrakhi vosecchi sajoes mae!

       and

   Me ray kaffe rek tokikes.

where sajoes and tokikes are given as the dictionary forms (in the dictionary) and are showing up as direct objects in these sentences (seemingly unmodified for a difference in case). Is it the situation that -(e)s is already showing the accusative and the nominative forms are just not known yet, or are nominative and accusative the same (with certain noun classes)? Perhaps I'm operating under the incorrect assumption that the dictionary is showing nominatives?

Another example, though, is Oqet vichitera oma vafikh-oon. vs. Me oge oqet oskikh. Oqet seems completely uninflected to me whether the subject or the object.

Out of these sentences the only one I have heard yet is "Athchomar Chomakea, [zhey] khal vezhven. Azhi anhaan asshilat..." which is said by Illyrio when Dany first meets Drogo.

Not all of these sentences will appear in the show however. Some are examples sentences given by the creator of the language.

It's nice to know that they've actually started using the language in the early episodes. Is dropping zhey officially permitted by Petersonian rules as far as is known, or was it likely a convenience or error associated with the pragmatics of dialog on set? Any theories??

Azh_ in both gift and allow is evocative of Mandarin 给 (gěi). Interesting.

So what case is on anhaan (‹‹‹ anha (?)) in Azhi anhaan asshilat... ?

[ingsve]

Yes, there is an accusative case. In that expression however it's the ablative case that is used. Athchomar simply means respect and chomak means one who is respectful. When you add the ablative case ending -ea (which I believe also expresses plural in this case but I'm not 100% sure on that) the translation becomes "respect to those that are respectful"

That's very interesting about the ablative on chomak. So:

   chomat, vin., be respectful
   athchomar, n., respect
   chomak, n., one who is respectful...??

Yes, that's [almost] right. The stem of the word is actually chom so the infinitive ending is either /-at/ or /-lat/ depending on whether the stem ends in a consonant or vowel.
The circumfix /ath- -ar/ or /ath- -zar/ seems to be one of the ways to form a noun but the exact use for it is not clear at this moment. /-ak/ or /-k/ is an agentive suffix which can be used for any verb where it makes sense.

But, I was actually asking about about examples like

   Yer ofrakhi vosecchi sajoes mae!

       and

   Me ray kaffe rek tokikes.

where sajoes and tokikes are given as the dictionary forms (in the dictionary) and are showing up as direct objects in these sentences (seemingly unmodified for a difference in case). Is it the situation that -(e)s is already showing the accusative and the nominative forms are just not known yet, or are nominative and accusative the same (with certain noun classes)? Perhaps I'm operating under the incorrect assumption that the dictionary is showing nominatives?

Ah, that's actually a mistake in the dictionary. When the words first appeared we didn't identify that -es was some type of suffix. There have just now appeared a few more words with the same ending so my guess is that -es is an accusative ending for animate nouns. We don't know that much about how cases work for animate nouns so that is still a bit confusing.

Another example, though, is Oqet vichitera oma vafikh-oon. vs. Me oge oqet oskikh. Oqet seems completely uninflected to me whether the subject or the object.

For inanimate nouns that end in a consonant the accusative is the same as the nominative. For inanimate nouns that end in a vowel the last vowel is dropped when forming the accusative. So the accusative of serja (leather west) would be serj but for oqet there is no declension.

Out of these sentences the only one I have heard yet is "Athchomar Chomakea, [zhey] khal vezhven. Azhi anhaan asshilat..." which is said by Illyrio when Dany first meets Drogo.

Not all of these sentences will appear in the show however. Some are examples sentences given by the creator of the language.

It's nice to know that they've actually started using the language in the early episodes. Is dropping zhey officially permitted by Petersonian rules as far as is known, or was it likely a convenience or error associated with the pragmatics of dialog on set? Any theories??

Azh_ in both gift and allow is evocative of Mandarin 给 (gěi). Interesting.

So what case is on anhaan (‹‹‹ anha (?)) in Azhi anhaan asshilat... ?

No, dropping zhey seems to be a mistake by the actor or the production.

The literal translation of Azhi anhaan asshilat is "Give to me to present..." but is understood as "Allow me to present...". I'm not familiar with mandarin so I can't really comment on the similarity.

/-aan/ is the allative case and /-oon/ is the ablative case for inanimate nouns.

You can browse through the dothraki wiki (wiki.dothraki.org) where I have tried to sum up a lot of these things in various posts. It's not 100% up to date but most of it is there and it's not that well indexed yet so perhaps one might need to search a bit to find everything.

[Verak]

For inanimate nouns that end in a consonant the accusative is the same as the nominative. For inanimate nouns that end in a vowel the last vowel is dropped when forming the accusative. So the accusative of serja (leather west) would be serj but for oqet there is no declension.

This makes sense to me IF that first "inanimate" is supposed to be "animate" and it's a typo. 

Mandarin 给 (gěi) means "give" and is used for the sense of "allow" as well.

Thanks for all of your work and time here.

Is there any chance that David is working on one long sentence or two (or a short paragraph) that shows a "snapshot" of of how much of the grammar works. E.g. something with all of the cases and phrases like "this father with the whip" piled together in a coherent brief story that could be an "orientation" for folks who already understand grammatical concepts (and what ablative means, for example) but want to see the puzzle fitting together in a canonically correct way?

Examples like the stacking/ordering of the noun modifiers that he did with "this father" give new learners a way to memorize a fragment of canon and then go back and reference it when they are trying to build their own phrases correctly.

Perhaps I should be lurking more... 

[ingsve]

For inanimate nouns that end in a consonant the accusative is the same as the nominative. For inanimate nouns that end in a vowel the last vowel is dropped when forming the accusative. So the accusative of serja (leather west) would be serj but for oqet there is no declension.

This makes sense to me IF that first "inanimate" is supposed to be "animate" and it's a typo. 

No, it's not a typo. We only have confirmation about how the accusative case works for inanimate nouns which is that if they end in a vowel that vowel is removed in the accusative case and if it ends in a consonant the accusative is the same as the nominative.

For animate nouns we don't know what the accusative is. My guess is that the examples you gave are probably the animate accusative case. So tokikes is probably accusative and the nominative is probably tokik or something like that. As I said, there is an error in the dictionary so the tokikes and sajoes are most likely not the nominative.

Is there any chance that David is working on one long sentence or two (or a short paragraph) that shows a "snapshot" of of how much of the grammar works. E.g. something with all of the cases and phrases like "this father with the whip" piled together in a coherent brief story that could be an "orientation" for folks who already understand grammatical concepts (and what ablative means, for example) but want to see the puzzle fitting together in a canonically correct way?

Examples like the stacking/ordering of the noun modifiers that he did with "this father" give new learners a way to memorize a fragment of canon and then go back and reference it when they are trying to build their own phrases correctly.

Perhaps I should be lurking more... 

I think there will be a longer text from the conlang relay they will be presenting at the Language Creation Conference in May. They have this tradition of taking a text and then translating it between various conlangs to then see how it has changed when they translate it back into english. It's sort of like a conlang game of telephone.

Nah, it's much more fun to discuss things than to lurk.

[Verak]

No, it's not a typo. We only have confirmation about how the accusative case works for inanimate nouns which is that if they end in a vowel that vowel is removed in the accusative case and if it ends in a consonant the accusative is the same as the nominative.

For animate nouns we don't know what the accusative is. My guess is that the examples you gave are probably the animate accusative case. So tokikes is probably accusative and the nominative is probably tokik or something like that. As I said, there is an error in the dictionary so the tokikes and sajoes are most likely not the nominative.

So SHEEP aren’t animate? Me zireyesee anna.

I think there will be a longer text from the conlang relay they will be presenting at the Language Creation Conference in May. They have this tradition of taking a text and then translating it between various conlangs to then see how it has changed when they translate it back into english. It's sort of like a conlang game of telephone.

I'm familiar with those relays. Nice that Dothraki will be included. 

[ingsve]

So SHEEP aren’t animate? Me zireyesee anna.

Nope. I asked David about that and he said that the animacy or inanimacy of words often have a historical logic behind them (in his made up history of the language) but things have gotten jumbled over time. Apparently lots of herd animals are inanimate. It's just one of those things that you have to learn sort of like definite articles in german.

[Verak]

So SHEEP aren’t animate? Me zireyesee anna.

Nope. I asked David about that and he said that the animacy or inanimacy of words often have a historical logic behind them (in his made up history of the language) but things have gotten jumbled over time. Apparently lots of herd animals are inanimate. It's just one of those things that you have to learn sort of like definite articles in german.

Ugh. I probably really am just a verak here, then. While I respect the depth of 'reality' represented by this level of detail, I find this kind of thing rather annoying and personally burdensome. One of the reasons I never really learned Latin was because of all the permutations with the declensions. I guess I'm just lazy.

   

[Daenerys]

One the topic of phrases. (Hope I posted this in the right place.)

In the book Dany tells Khal Drogo's bloodriders to tell him for her: “Tell my sun-and-stars that I dream of him, and wait anxious for his return."

How would that be said in first person? (If she was directly speaking to Khal Drogo. And in the third for that matter, to the bloodriders?
And isn't the definition of "dream" negative in Dothraki, meaning literally "to live a wooden life"? So would that culturally be a positive thing to say?

I was trying to recall if she said this in the show, but can't remember.

[ingsve]

One the topic of phrases. (Hope I posted this in the right place.)

In the book Dany tells Khal Drogo's bloodriders to tell him for her: “Tell my sun-and-stars that I dream of him, and wait anxious for his return."

How would that be said in first person? (If she was directly speaking to Khal Drogo. And in the third for that matter, to the bloodriders?
And isn't the definition of "dream" negative in Dothraki, meaning literally "to live a wooden life"? So would that culturally be a positive thing to say?

I was trying to recall if she said this in the show, but can't remember.

I wouldn't call the Dothraki phrase for dreaming inherently negative. It just expresses the notion that things you experience in a dream aren't really happening in real life. It's just a poetic way of describing what dreaming is.

We don't have all the words to make a complete translation of that sentence yet. And the sentence wasn't in the series either.

"I dream of you, my sun and stars." would be Anha thirak athiraride yeri, shekh ma shieraki anni.

"Tell my sun and stars that I dream of him" would be Asti shekh ma shieraki anni m'anha thirak athiraride mae.

For the rest what we're missing are the words for return and anxious.

[Daenerys]

Thank you for your help!

Looks like we have the word "anxious" now from David Peterson's keynotes/presentation in Reno: "• Phrasal Constructions
❖gango awazat “to feel anxious/excited”"

Two questions on:

"I dream of you, my sun and stars." would be Anha thirak athiraride yeri, shekh ma shieraki anni.

 

1. Isn't "yeri" plural? So would it be "yera"?
2. Would it be "zhey" shekh ma shieraki anni? Or is the "zhey" needed and if not when it would it be used?

[ingsve]

Thank you for your help!

Looks like we have the word "anxious" now from David Peterson's keynotes/presentation in Reno: "• Phrasal Constructions
❖gango awazat “to feel anxious/excited”"

Two questions on:

"I dream of you, my sun and stars." would be Anha thirak athiraride yeri, shekh ma shieraki anni.

 

1. Isn't "yeri" plural? So would it be "yera"?
2. Would it be "zhey" shekh ma shieraki anni? Or is the "zhey" needed and if not when it would it be used?

Yes, now we just need a word or phrase for "return".

1. In that situation yeri is in the genitive case. I used the topic verb class there to denote that the dream was about "you". http://wiki.dothraki.org/dothraki/Verb_Classes#Topic_class. Verb classes is one of the more confusing and hard parts of Dothraki grammar.

2. Yes, you are correct it should have zhey in the example that directly adresses. That's a mistake on my part.