Messages

346

Dothraki Language Updates / Re: The Dictionary Thread

« on: May 25, 2011, 08:24:23 pm »

As for adding IPA to the wiki I guess that could be done but that is a big job as well so it will have to come when it comes.

Done. If they are too cumbersome, just load the backup.
Mostly I just copied the dictionary, but did a few adjustments.
* Stresses are copied by hand, so I'm sure I missed one or two and misplaced one or two more.
* With doubled r's I went for a trill. Not that I could defend my decision in any sensible way. Doubled taps just feel like an odd idea. As far as I understand taps are pretty much just trills that don't have time to get trilled.
* In an ill-informed attempt for improvement, jj turned into dd͡ʒ and cch into tt͡ʃ. Might well be d͡ʒʒ and t͡ʃʃ. I think Irri did dd͡ʒ.
* I turned ziqwehelat into /ziqwehe'lat/. You'd think the w would reset the effect if generally the effect resets after the immediate vowel.
* Left dental marks off. Not because I wouldn't believe in them but because they didn't sit nicely under their respective letters. So now the instructions are a wee bit more imprecise.

347

Introductions / Re: Anha tihilat shafka...

« on: May 25, 2011, 03:45:43 pm »

There you have this page (http://wiki.dothraki.org/dothraki/Verbs) where you'll be able to know how to conjugate all verbs (it's very useful).
Take a small look of all that wiki's corners, you'll learn a lot

Yes, the wiki is the place to go. But be warned: it is still far from comprehensive. There are things no-one of us yet knows (if you don't count Mr. Peterson, but I guess Peterson isn't strictly speaking 'us'). And this is a small community (at the moment ingsve seems to be the person who knows the most and works the most - kind of chief editor of the wiki). Updates sometimes plough a little behind. Page about verbs certainly doesn't tell you yet, how to conjugate all the verbs.

348

Beginners / Re: Hrakka vs Hrakkar

« on: May 25, 2011, 03:25:18 pm »

Pardon my clumsiness. It seem I either cannot download or haven't even found those recordings. Are they available for an outsider like me?

Ah, I thought I posted a link to that more prominently but it seems it was only in response to a question of the dothraki /h/.

Anyway its' this video and he starts at around 14:50 into the video.

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/14723467

Thanks! Those streams are rather unwieldy for my bandwidth, but I managed to rip the relevant audios and already listened through them a couple of times. Actually the thing that stood most out for me is how clearly Peterson separates the doubled vowels. I knew there were supposed to be no long vowels (at all?) and very few diphthongs, but I guess that hadn't really set in my brain.

349

Beginners / Re: Hrakka vs Hrakkar

« 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.

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?

350

Introductions / Time to say hello

« on: May 24, 2011, 05:43:16 pm »

Hello.

It seems I'm writing more than one or two posts here, so I guess it's appropriate for me to introduce myself. I'm a finn. I'm no linguist and speak no languages except english (some) and finnish (with some confidence), so I might be compairing Dothraki to finnish more often than you'll be comfortable with (we have ablatives n' stuff so maybe it isn't that bad a comparison).

I'm somewhat holistic in my interests and have also a deepset relationship with fantasy genre. ASOIAF has so far been a saga of outstandingly good storytelling, and when the HBO series was announced, I decided it worth the effort to invest my curiosity into this meta adventure. The story of Dothraki's creation might well be the most unique and inspiring facet of this journey.

I love speculating and hypothesizing. This is probably the strongest asset I can offer. As I have very little knowledge to back up my theories with, they might turn a bit crackpotty. If I become a nuisance, give a stong hint and I'll tone myself down.

351

Dothraki Language Updates / Re: The Dictionary Thread

« on: May 24, 2011, 04:52:24 pm »

I just finished a big update of the dictionary. If anyone finds any mistakes or anything that looks weird let me know in this thread.

With a cursory read through I find some rather trivial oddities to note:
Dozgosor is empty. According to vocabulary it should be "ni. enemy, slang for ones own khalasar."
Athdavrazar and sajat lack translation. Athdavrazar isn't even in our wiki vocabulary. We have plenty of untranslated words, so I'm guessing these don't belong into dictionary (yet).
Origin stamps have some oddities too. Firesof is marked for fire (well, could be). Firikh has Dp instead of DP. Menat has DP at the end instead of following the IPA phonetics. Movelat lacks origin.

The IPA instruction probably need both more knowledge and some judgement calls. Should diphthongs be marked? How do the doubled consonants function and how should that be marked (I'm pretty sure ajjalan at least isn't IPA'ed in a sensible way ... but we already have a discussion about doubled consonants at hrakkar-thread)? What amounts to consonant cluster that turns r into tap? Rh starts are generally marked as trills; rhaes is marked a trill, but Rhaes Andahli with a tap; Hr-starts are already all marked as taps.

Critique notwithstanding, I'd like to see IPA instructions on wiki too. I'm even prepared to copy them there myself, but as ripping things from pdf-file is somewhat toilsome and all in all I believe you, ingsve, could do it ten times better, I hope they'll just magically manifest into wiki vocabulary.

So what's the general purpose for it? So that people who have downloaded a copy of the dictionary can easily see how up to date it still is?

Well, it's also a consentrated commentary on how the editor views his/her product. 0.x tells us that the editor considers the definite version to be still oncoming. x.0 tells us that the version is in some big way definite, but also that the bug fixes are still to come... etc. etc.
hehh. It'd mostly be a curiosity, but why not.

after a q there is a vowel change.
/i/ > [e]; /e/ > [E]; /o/ > [O ]; /a/ > [A] / q_

argh. I had totally missed that. And just the moment before the Dothraki seemed so straightforwardly phonetical in it's writing.

352

Dothraki Language Updates / Re: Davis Petersons talk at the Language Creation Conference

« on: May 21, 2011, 01:48:03 pm »

That a certain confirmation if I ever saw one.

353

HBO: Game of Thrones / Re: Dothraki dialogue from the TV series.

« on: May 21, 2011, 01:16:34 pm »

Meme really is a word that means nearly exactly it-it! Just like in english you can say things like I thought that that horse liked apples. Well, I don't know if that really is that grammatically correct example, but still. You get the idea. ..You probably already had it.

The word meme looks strange since the complementizer me is the same as the pronoun me. Meme translates as that.he or that.she or that.it. Your english example with that that horse is not exactly the same. You have added an extra that there. "...that that horse..." would be rek mehrazef in Dothraki I think.

Ah yes. A better example would have been something like "I thought that that was the end." What I tried to say is: I think complementizer like that isn't accidentally also a pronoun. They refer to their clause: I thought -that->[that was the end.] And because they are presumably often pronouns and are often followed by pronouns, they often introduce hilarious repetition.

I could be very very wrong both in my analysis in english and in assuming complementizer prefix me to be directly linked with a pronoun me. But ploughing on the path I chose, it's a bit of a challenge to get a good grip on why the complementizer is a prefix instead of a separate word. The best answer might be "Because languages do crazy stupid stuff for no good reason," but I think there might be more rewarding answers. And it might have something to do with why the prefix is me.
Khaleesi zala meme adakha esinakh ajjalan.
translates rougly as Khaleesi wants that she eats different tonight.
that refers to the whole thought she eats different tonight. It's like a short hand to ...a certain thing which happens to be...
It's hard to see prefixed me refering straight to the whole thought the same way english that does. It seems more like a shorthand to ...something for a certain person who happens to be...
So maybe a more faithful rough translation would be
Khaleesi wants for her to eat different tonight.

ugh. Requires some more thinking, I think.

Well, if you look at those sentences you'll see that lajakoon and dothrakhqoyoon is in the ablative case without some reason for it. My guess is that a bare ablative indicates the past as a way of getting around not using a copula.

Cool! Sounds like a good guess. Ablative would introduce a background-mode. That makes a lot of sense. Anha tokik - I'm a fool; Anha tokikoon - I've been a fool.

354

Beginners / Re: Hrakka vs Hrakkar

« on: May 21, 2011, 11:35:48 am »

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.

355

HBO: Game of Thrones / Re: Dothraki dialogue from the TV series.

« on: May 21, 2011, 10:04:39 am »

Woo! The dialogue is becoming much more understandable. So some new thoughts:

Meme really is a word that means nearly exactly it-it! Just like in english you can say things like I thought that that horse liked apples. Well, I don't know if that really is that grammatically correct example, but still. You get the idea. ..You probably already had it.
And if I'm not mistaken both preposition ma, with and prefix me, that (clause introduction) are cut into elided version m' when the word they precede starts with a vowel.

When Jorah and Rakharo talk about their fathers, there is no explicit indication in Dothraki sentences (none that I can see, that is) about them being about the past.
- I've heard that your father a famous warrior.
- He a bloodrider under Khal Bharbo.
- And your father, Jorah the Andal? He a warrior also?
I wouldn't say Jorah's response, He still is, wouldn't fit, but it is quite a different answer.

356

Dothraki Language Updates / Re: Davis Petersons talk at the Language Creation Conference

« on: May 21, 2011, 05:50:56 am »

    kemolat -past-> kemo -past negative-> (vos) kemoo
    kemat -past-> kem -past negative-> (vos) kemo
    No. I don't think so.

I don't see why that would be wrong. It seems correct.

Actually I agree. That was stupid of me. It should be anything but strange for me to see words with same morphological background end up homonyms when inflected in different ways. We (finns, still) do it a lot. It's not terribly misleading, though allows for a large set of puns. ...oooo! When do we get our first puns in Dothraki?

Is kifindirgi always the fixed form for "why"? If so, it's the longest WH-word I've ever seen in any language.

Wherefrom and wherefore are just a letter shorter. Finnish has eg. millaisella, ~with what kind of. Compound structures and suffixes make words long.

Well, all of those aren't true pairs.

True. I didn't mean them to be. Just stuff I thought might be relevant to compare

Samvolat and samvenolat are not related at all. Samvolat comes from the stem samv  and relates to breaking. Samvenolat derives from samven which is a word that means numerous which in turn is a similative (-ven) of the word san (the /n/ changes to an /m/) which means heap.

Oh my. You always seem to have some serious insight. If I've read that from somewhere before, I have no recollection. Both samvolat and samvenolat are suffixed -o-lat, so maybe there are corresponding words samvat and samvenat. Maybe sometimes there aren't.
Still, are you sure they are not related at all? Samven might well derive from san. Like heapify, multiply or piecefy. "Multiply that vase!" "Fine." *CRASH* "Now it's multiple."

Also gende is a noun so it makes more sense to compare gendolat with gendat instead.

I meant to. Crappy cut and pasting. Sorry.

Astat mean "to say" but astolat means "to speak" so there is a slight difference in meaning.

They are both "to say" in the wiki's vocabulary. I'll adjust that if you didn't already. It's time to get my hands dirty helping with the wiki anyway.

357

Dothraki Language Updates / Re: Davis Petersons talk at the Language Creation Conference

« on: May 21, 2011, 04:06:54 am »

There is another verb where the -o- appears as well that I remember. We have samven that means numerous and that turns into the verb samvenolat which mean "to surpass".

Pairs (or near pairs) we have

astat v. to say
astolat v. to say

charat v. to hear
charolat v. to understand

addrivat v. to kill
drivolat v. to die

gende n. rip
gendolat v. to rip

kemat v. to conjoin, to marry (someone to someone else, the latter is preceded by /ma/
kemolat v. to marry someone (use the preposition ma)

samvolat v. to break (when something breaks)
samvenolat v. to surpass

358

Beginners / Re: Hrakka vs Hrakkar

« on: May 21, 2011, 03:50:45 am »

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.

359

Dothraki Language Updates / Re: Davis Petersons talk at the Language Creation Conference

« on: May 20, 2011, 02:50:05 pm »

Kifindirgi yer zali meyer nem akemi m'anhoon? seems like nicely concentrated one sentence grammatical rollercoaster.

We have a subordinate clause slyly introduced with a prefix. And in the clause we have a verb in second person singular future passive. And the verb is targeting two words, one of which has travelled in the front of the verb because of the passive structure and the other one which has a preposition with elided vowel - practically making the preposition into prefix.
Huh?

The difference between fini andkifindirgi as well as difference between kemolat and kemat are good examples of Dothraki's derivational possibilities.

If we should understand the -o-, I have missed the explanation. There are quite few word pairs in dictionary with the same translation but one with -at and the other with -olat. Peterson ast ki: 'In the negative grade, a suffixed -o is added to the verb stem in the past tense,' but this just confuses me.
kemolat -past-> kemo -past negative-> (vos) kemoo
kemat -past-> kem -past negative-> (vos) kemo
No. I don't think so.

While fini seems to be all around wh-word, more exact question words are apparently constructed as compound words. Kifinosi breaks down into by what path and kifindirgi probably into something like by what reasoning.

360

Dothraki Language Updates / Re: Animate or inanimate nouns.

« on: May 20, 2011, 12:18:25 pm »

Such a puzzle, this language!

It is! And we must hurry in solving everything we can, too, because any day Peterson might publish the comprehensive guide to grammar and vocaburaly and spoil the whole fun.

Seriously, though, there are better and worse reasons to keep us in the ...not quite dark...dusk maybe, all of them still valid. As I've said before, I do really enjoy the relative lack of knowledge.