Learn Dothraki and Valyrian

Information => Announcements => Topic started by: ingsve on March 31, 2012, 04:06:34 am

Title: Dothraki learners for Thronecast
Post by: ingsve on March 31, 2012, 04:06:34 am
The Sky Atlantic show Thronecast is looking for Dothraki learners to be on their show.

http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/64058-dothraki-learners-needed/page__fromsearch__1 (http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/64058-dothraki-learners-needed/page__fromsearch__1)

I emailed them and said that someone here would probably be interested and that I would ask on the forums.
Title: Re: Dothraki learners for Thronecast
Post by: ingsve on March 31, 2012, 12:08:50 pm
I got some more info from them. It doesn't matter where the person is from so anyone who is interested is welcome. They prefer someone who can be featured in video using Skype but if no one with a cam is available they could settle for someone over the phone. They record on tuesdays between 11am-2pm BST (which is 3am-6am PDT). It would be a rather short segment 1-2 minutes but it's an opportunity to show off some Dothraki.
Title: Re: Dothraki learners for Thronecast
Post by: Hrakkar on March 31, 2012, 10:40:57 pm
I volunteered to do this.

I am also now registered as 'Hrakkar Khal' on the Westros forums!
Title: Re: Dothraki learners for Thronecast
Post by: ingsve on March 31, 2012, 11:55:28 pm
I volunteered to do this.

I am also now registered as 'Hrakkar Khal' on the Westros forums!

Cool. So you already contacted them about it?
Title: Re: Dothraki learners for Thronecast
Post by: Hrakkar on April 01, 2012, 12:05:49 am
I have an email into them. I have not heard back yet. It will probably be tomorrow before I hear anything.
Title: Re: Dothraki learners for Thronecast
Post by: Daenerys on April 02, 2012, 04:45:21 pm
Zhey Hrakkar,

Did you hear back? :)
Title: Re: Dothraki learners for Thronecast
Post by: Hrakkar on April 02, 2012, 06:44:53 pm
I have heard back, and will post more later.

I will not be on the chat this evening. There is a concert (Bach's St. Matthew's Passion) I am going to.
Title: Re: Dothraki learners for Thronecast
Post by: Hrakkar on April 03, 2012, 12:22:27 am
I did hear back from the Thronecast folks, and they originally wanted to do an interview early this morning. They asked me to answer some simple questions in Dothraki (which I want to take a shot at writing answers for, before submitting them here for review). But they also asked me to translate and sing a verse of a well-known song. Their suggestion was 'I will Survive', but it could be any popular song. Below are the lyrics for 'I will survive' (Which was a good choice in the sense I know the melody). Most of it looks pretty straightforward, but there are a couple tricky words there:

FIRST VERSE:
At first I was afraid
I was petrified
I kept thinking I could never live without you by my side

But then I spent so many nights
Just thinking how you've done me wrong
I grew strong
I learned how to get along

CHORUS
Oh not I, I will survive
Yeah As Long as I know how to love,
I know I'll be alive
I've got all my life to live
I've got all my love to give
I will survive,
I will survive
Yeah, yeah

I am throwing this out to the community because I tend to get awfully busy, and I am sure 1 or more of you will enjoy seeing what you can do with this.

The interview has been scheduled for a week from today (Tuesday the 10th).
Title: Re: Dothraki learners for Thronecast
Post by: Qvaak on April 04, 2012, 06:20:15 am
The requests keep getting more insane. I thought the CNN thing was slightly out of our league, but this... I guess they are looking for funny and klunky singing, rather than for the words to exaclty fit into the melody, but still, crazy stuff.

Without much polishing and with the vocabulary we have, I can come up with something like:

Atte anha aresakoon.
Anha mawizziven.
Anha zin dirge m'anha laz thirok vosecchi oma yeroon.

Vosma kash anha mithre san ajjalani arrek,
kash anha dirge disse meyer ray et anhaan k'athmalari.
Anha hajo.
Anha ezo avatterak atthirar.

Vos, anna vosecchi, anha vistesok.
Ai. Kash anha shilak os zhilataan,
kash anha nesak m'anha vithirerak.
Ei atthirar anni thirataan mra qora.
Ei athzhilar anni azhataan mra qora.
Anha vistesok,
Anha vistesok.
Ai, ai.


It's nothing wonderful, but should at least have relatively low grammar error count. Not even that many speculative words or sentence syntaxes.
Syllabe count? 166, I think. English? Less than 100.
Title: Re: Dothraki learners for Thronecast
Post by: ingsve on April 04, 2012, 06:49:47 am
The requests keep getting more insane. I thought the CNN thing was slightly out of our league, but this... I guess they are looking for funny and klunky singing, rather than for the words to exaclty fit into the melody, but still, crazy stuff.

Without much polishing and with the vocabulary we have, I can come up with something like:

Atte anha aresakoon.
Anha mawizziven.
Anha zin dirge m'anha laz thirok vosecchi oma yeroon.

Vosma kash anha mithre san ajjalani arrek,
kash anha dirge disse meyer ray et anhaan k'athmalari.
Anha hajo.
Anha ezo avatterak atthirar.

Vos, anna vosecchi, anha vistesok.
Ai. Kash anha shilak os zhilataan,
kash anha nesak m'anha vithirerak.
Ei atthirar anni thirataan mra qora.
Ei athzhilar anni azhataan mra qora.
Anha vistesok,
Anha vistesok.
Ai, ai.


It's nothing wonderful, but should at least have relatively low grammar error count. Not even that many speculative words or sentence syntaxes.
Syllabe count? 166, I think. English? Less than 100.

Some nice choices. I love mawizziven. I would probably have gone with anha nem negwino.

I'm a little puzzled by vistesok for will survive. Iste means well-proven in battle so I guess if you are well proven then you must have survived but that's not really the meaning of the word is it? I thought we already had word for survive and it seems like we do but it wasn't in the vocabulary. In one of the posts on the Making of blog we have thirolat meaning survive ("I'm sure your horse will survive").
Title: Re: Dothraki learners for Thronecast
Post by: Hrakkar on April 04, 2012, 01:06:45 pm
Very nice work! And I agree that mawizziven is a rather interesting choice for 'petrified'!

I will look at this much more closely this evening (I hope!)

Now, I'll have fun trying to fit this to the rhythm of the song!

In any case, thak you for doing this, zhey Qvaak and Insgive!
Title: Re: Dothraki learners for Thronecast
Post by: Qvaak on April 04, 2012, 02:41:33 pm
Quote
Some nice choices. I love mawizziven. I would probably have gone with anha nem negwino.
Thanks. Some nice choices, some less nice. Maybe mawizziven is good. I also considered adraven. Not very close to literal, either, but somehow I didn't think of negwin (well, I didn't think that hard or long; I just wanted a passable translation to spark discussion or serve as better-than-nothing-solution) and thus found no close hitting words. With negwin, "Anha nem annegwin." or just "Anha negwinven(o)." would make more sense to me.

Quote
I'm a little puzzled by vistesok for will survive. Iste means well-proven in battle so I guess if you are well proven then you must have survived but that's not really the meaning of the word is it? I thought we already had word for survive and it seems like we do but it wasn't in the vocabulary. In one of the posts on the Making of blog we have thirolat meaning survive ("I'm sure your horse will survive").
Ya. As with the previous, I found no close hitting word that I liked. Not finding that thirolat, all the possible versions of thirat seemed random and dull. Istesolat seemed poetical and evocative and still somewhat close in meaning. Not that bright choice, on hindsight.
I guess thirolat must be the word, but the text is getting quite flooded with thir-rooted words. It would be nice to replace at least a couple of those.

Should I throw my list of dubious spots on my own translation? 'Cause that would be a lot more than just two suspect word choices :)

How would you translate "oh"? interjections like "aah!", "outch!", "oh!", "yuck!" etc. are at least half language dependent. How much can you deduce just from the phonotactics?
Title: Re: Dothraki learners for Thronecast
Post by: ingsve on April 04, 2012, 03:09:34 pm
Quote
Some nice choices. I love mawizziven. I would probably have gone with anha nem negwino.
Thanks. Some nice choices, some less nice. Maybe mawizziven is good. I also considered adraven. Not very close to literal, either, but somehow I didn't think of negwin (well, I didn't think that hard or long; I just wanted a passable translation to spark discussion or serve as better-than-nothing-solution) and thus found no close hitting words. With negwin, "Anha nem annegwin." or just "Anha negwinven(o)." would make more sense to me.

I guess the choice of which negwin to use depends on how one sees the word petrify. I saw it as "to become stone" rather than "to turn into stone". It depends if you see it as describing a passive action or as an active process. Ultimately I think both words would translate as "to petrify" depending on the circumstances.
Title: Re: Dothraki learners for Thronecast
Post by: Hrakkar on April 06, 2012, 12:56:20 am
Ok, I have had a chance to play with this translation a little bit. Some of it just plain brilliant. Other parts simply cannot be sung within the melodic/rythmic constraints of the song. The biggest problem is number of syllables.

I made a couple of the substitutions that were discussed, using both thirolat and negwin. IMHO, thirolat is a much better match for 'survive' than vistesok.

I am going to continue to work on this, and see if I can't get they syllable count down a bit on some lines, or else use fast-moving syllables.

But what a great way to learn the language! Thanks!
Title: Re: Dothraki learners for Thronecast
Post by: Qvaak on April 06, 2012, 09:15:04 am
Quote
Ok, I have had a chance to play with this translation a little bit. Some of it just plain brilliant. Other parts simply cannot be sung within the melodic/rythmic constraints of the song. The biggest problem is number of syllables.
Well, there are quite many words that aren't vital to the core meaning of the text, and some other small tricks like dropping the epenthetic es (if that works for haiku syllabe count, they should be elidable here too).
Vosma kash anha mithre san ajjalani arrek,
kash anha dirge disse meyer ray et anhaan k'athmalari.

->
Vosma kash anha mithr' arrek,
kash dirg' meyer et anhaan k'athmalari.

Just a bit iffy. Some things are easy to streamline, some less so. It won't be easy, no matter what.

Quote
I made a couple of the substitutions that were discussed, using both thirolat and negwin. IMHO, thirolat is a much better match for 'survive' than vistesok.
Ya. I'm definitely not arguing against thirolat. How do you use negwin? Anha negwino is probably the surest bet, just without the nem ingsve had there, I'd say.
Title: Re: Dothraki learners for Thronecast
Post by: Hrakkar on April 06, 2012, 01:16:50 pm
Quote
Ok, I have had a chance to play with this translation a little bit. Some of it just plain brilliant. Other parts simply cannot be sung within the melodic/rythmic constraints of the song. The biggest problem is number of syllables.
Well, there are quite many words that aren't vital to the core meaning of the text, and some other small tricks like dropping the epenthetic es (if that works for haiku syllabe count, they should be elidable here too).
Vosma kash anha mithre san ajjalani arrek,
kash anha dirge disse meyer ray et anhaan k'athmalari.

->
Vosma kash anha mithr' arrek,
kash dirg' meyer et anhaan k'athmalari.

Just a bit iffy. Some things are easy to streamline, some less so. It won't be easy, no matter what.

I will try those changes out and see how they might help. In the meantime though, I am going to try a much simpler song that everyone should know: "Twinkle, twinkle little star". I think we have most or all of the vocabulary to do this song, and I think it can be translated with fewer references to tenses, etc. I am hoping to have a lot of time on Saturday to finally sort this all out.

Quote from: Qvaak
Quote
I made a couple of the substitutions that were discussed, using both thirolat and negwin. IMHO, thirolat is a much better match for 'survive' than vistesok.
Ya. I'm definitely not arguing against thirolat. How do you use negwin? Anha negwino is probably the surest bet, just without the nem ingsve had there, I'd say.

I used anha negwino, and I like how it works in this role. The verse absolutely does not flow with nem there. The nice thing about songs is there is some room to bend the grammar rules to make things fit into the verses.
Title: Re: Dothraki learners for Thronecast
Post by: Hrakkar on April 08, 2012, 11:06:07 pm
I finally kind of gave up trying to make 'I will survive' work, so I tried something more basic, and had much better luck:

Sis sis shierak naqis (Twinkle twinkle little star)

Sis sis shierak naqis
Anha dirgek san qisi yer
Yer oleth rhaesheseri sekke yath
Ven dan she asavva yath
Sis sis shierak naqis
Anha dirgek san qisi yer


Corrections? (I took some minor liberties with grammar, to get it to work as a song)
Corrections?

Here are the questions I have been asked to answer, and the answers I came up with:


How are you?

    Anha dothrak chek assekh. (I am riding well today)

How long have you been learning Dothraki?

    Anha ezok lekh Dothraki ha firesofaan at. (I have been learning the Dothraki language
       for one year.)

How many words do you know?

    Anha nesa akatken ase vosma nesa chek disse chizhinda ase. (I know 200 words, but
        know well only 60 words.)

How easy is it to learn? Easy like Spanish or hard like Mandarin?

    Lekh Dothraki onrojan lekh tawak vosma anrojan san lekhmove. (The Dothraki language is less
        complex than natural languages but more complex than many constructed languages.)

Again, comments or corrections are welcome!
This has been an important exercise for me, as it is the first really complex translation I have done!

Title: Re: Dothraki learners for Thronecast
Post by: ingsve on April 09, 2012, 01:34:43 am
The number comes before the noun it's numbering. I'm not really sure if it would come before or after the preposition though but my guess is it's after that as well so perhaps something like:

Anha ezok lekh Dothraki ha at firesofaan.

Disse and chek should come last in the sentence so:

Anha nesa akatken ase vosma nesa chizhinda ase chek disse.

Chek could at times be moved to after the verb but I don't think the sentence is heavy enough for that in this case.

When you use adjectives in that manner you need to make them into a verb (by adding -at and conjugating). You also need to express "harder than" in some way. I think the comparative verb class might apply in this case. Also when using san the noun should be in genitive "heaps of conlangs"

Lekh Dothraki onrojana lekhoon tawaka vosma me anrojana sanoon lekhmovi.

This is my take on these but I might have forgotten something or something might not apply in a specific situation so getting a another opinion on it would probably be good.
Title: Re: Dothraki learners for Thronecast
Post by: Hrakkar on April 09, 2012, 01:03:29 pm

When you use adjectives in that manner you need to make them into a verb (by adding -at and conjugating). You also need to express "harder than" in some way. I think the comparative verb class might apply in this case. Also when using san the noun should be in genitive "heaps of conlangs"

Lekh Dothraki onrojana lekhoon tawaka vosma me anrojana sanoon lekhmovi.

This is my take on these but I might have forgotten something or something might not apply in a specific situation so getting a another opinion on it would probably be good.

Thanks! Looks like I was pretty close on the first sentences. And the changes you suggest for the final sentence make sense when in the comparand class (I hadn't even considered verb classses here. Good catch!). But I do have a few questions about how you reworked this, that I still don't understand.

1. Where is the extra 'a' at the end of o/anrojan coming from?
2. Why is the ablative class being applied to san and not to kekhmove, which instead is in the genitive? Shouldn't the ablative be on the main noun here, because of the comparand? Do you consider san here to be a noun or a determinitive (and can a determinitive be marked with a case?)

I like what you did with ma in that sentence. I was wondering if Dothraki had a mechanism for idicating a prior noun/noun phrase without repeating it.
Title: Re: Dothraki learners for Thronecast
Post by: ingsve on April 09, 2012, 01:40:51 pm

When you use adjectives in that manner you need to make them into a verb (by adding -at and conjugating). You also need to express "harder than" in some way. I think the comparative verb class might apply in this case. Also when using san the noun should be in genitive "heaps of conlangs"

Lekh Dothraki onrojana lekhoon tawaka vosma me anrojana sanoon lekhmovi.

This is my take on these but I might have forgotten something or something might not apply in a specific situation so getting a another opinion on it would probably be good.

Thanks! Looks like I was pretty close on the first sentences. And the changes you suggest for the final sentence make sense when in the comparand class (I hadn't even considered verb classses here. Good catch!). But I do have a few questions about how you reworked this, that I still don't understand.

1. Where is the extra 'a' at the end of o/anrojan coming from?
2. Why is the ablative class being applied to san and not to kekhmove, which instead is in the genitive? Shouldn't the ablative be on the main noun here, because of the comparand? Do you consider san here to be a noun or a determinitive (and can a determinitive be marked with a case?)

I like what you did with ma in that sentence. I was wondering if Dothraki had a mechanism for idicating a prior noun/noun phrase without repeating it.

1. It's the 3rd person verb conjugation. You turn the adjective into a verb so it becomes onrojanat and then conjugate it for the 3rd person so it becomes onrojana.

2. San is a noun and nothing else. While you use the determiner "many" in English, in Dothraki the same meaning is expressed using a noun. Think of it as "heaps of conlangs" rather than "many conlangs". Also san becomes the main noun in that phrase since lekhmove only describes what it is you have a heap of.

Also the word I added was me and not ma so I simply refered to the previous subject as "it".
Title: Re: Dothraki learners for Thronecast
Post by: ingsve on April 16, 2012, 02:53:14 pm
Here is the Thronecast episode with Hrakkar.

Thronecast Season 2 Episode 3 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cvmcNdkTkY#ws)
Title: Re: Dothraki learners for Thronecast
Post by: Daenerys on April 16, 2012, 08:59:49 pm
Congratz, Hrakkar! :)
Title: Re: Dothraki learners for Thronecast
Post by: Hrakkar on April 17, 2012, 10:49:20 pm
That's a well-done little production they have there!

I can see (hear?) now that I had a tendency to use ä instead of a, which is something I tried to avoid in practice. I also botched a word in the second line of 'Twinkle, twinkle, little star'. I guess you make mistakes like this at 4:45 in the morning my time. Nevertheless, I had a lot of fun doing it!

I have been at the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas all week. Lots of GoT stuff being shown here. One video in particular showed how they mounted a (rather large) TV camera on the end of a sword to get some very unusual shots while wielding the sword!
Title: Re: Dothraki learners for Thronecast
Post by: ingsve on April 18, 2012, 05:53:38 am
That's a well-done little production they have there!

I can see (hear?) now that I had a tendency to use ä instead of a, which is something I tried to avoid in practice. I also botched a word in the second line of 'Twinkle, twinkle, little star'. I guess you make mistakes like this at 4:45 in the morning my time. Nevertheless, I had a lot of fun doing it!

I have been at the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas all week. Lots of GoT stuff being shown here. One video in particular showed how they mounted a (rather large) TV camera on the end of a sword to get some very unusual shots while wielding the sword!

Ya there was few minor things on the pronounciation but overall it was very well done. One thing I noticed was that you tended to pronounce /q/ as [kw] or [qw] rather than [q].
Title: Re: Dothraki learners for Thronecast
Post by: Hrakkar on April 22, 2012, 09:06:23 pm
Ya there was few minor things on the pronounciation but overall it was very well done. One thing I noticed was that you tended to pronounce /q/ as [kw] or [qw] rather than [q].

Back from NAB. It was a really good time, maybe the best show ever for me. After the show, I helped a friend take down his booth. Then, we went and toured Hoover Dam and nearby Boulder City. We stopped and visited a couple friends on the way home, and enjoyed lightning at night, all around us, as we drove. One of the memorable moments of NAB was going into the Dolby booth only to see Ned Stark lose his head on a big screen.

I am not 100 percent sure what th difference is between /kw/ and /q/ is, but I have been trying to make the /q/ sound at the back of the throat as explained in David's blog post on the subject. I also find that the ease or lack thereof of pronouncing /q/ depends on the letter that follows it. For English speakers, this is something new, as u always follows q.
Title: Re: Dothraki learners for Thronecast
Post by: ingsve on April 22, 2012, 09:24:34 pm
Ya there was few minor things on the pronounciation but overall it was very well done. One thing I noticed was that you tended to pronounce /q/ as [kw] or [qw] rather than [q].

Back from NAB. It was a really good time, maybe the best show ever for me. After the show, I helped a friend take down his booth. Then, we went and toured Hoover Dam and nearby Boulder City. We stopped and visited a couple friends on the way home, and enjoyed lightning at night, all around us, as we drove. One of the memorable moments of NAB was going into the Dolby booth only to see Ned Stark lose his head on a big screen.

I am not 100 percent sure what th difference is between /kw/ and /q/ is, but I have been trying to make the /q/ sound at the back of the throat as explained in David's blog post on the subject. I also find that the ease or lack thereof of pronouncing /q/ depends on the letter that follows it. For English speakers, this is something new, as u always follows q.

Well, the difference is that there is no [w]-sound in [q]. One way to notice the difference would be if you try to pronounce the q-sound without moving your lips at all. That would probably minimize the tendency to add a w which I guess is something that comes from how q is commonly pronounced in english.

As for the q-sound with vowels, remember that there is a vowel change after /q/ which could probably ease pronounciation so [a] becomes [ɑ], [e] becomes [ɛ], [ i ] becomes [e] and [ o ] becomes [ɔ].
Title: Re: Dothraki learners for Thronecast
Post by: Hrakkar on April 23, 2012, 01:14:30 pm
Insgive, that is helpful. It would probably also be helpful to learn how those modified vowel sounds sound, rather than just assuming that the presence of the /q/ will pretty much ensure they come out correctly.
Title: Re: Dothraki learners for Thronecast
Post by: ingsve on April 23, 2012, 01:21:43 pm
Insgive, that is helpful. It would probably also be helpful to learn how those modified vowel sounds sound, rather than just assuming that the presence of the /q/ will pretty much ensure they come out correctly.

This is a page I use to get help with how IPA sounds sound:

http://www.yorku.ca/earmstro/ipa/ (http://www.yorku.ca/earmstro/ipa/)
Title: Re: Dothraki learners for Thronecast
Post by: Qvaak on April 23, 2012, 03:07:00 pm
That is a great page. You've linked it once before, haven't you? I must say, though, all the voiceless plosives sound strongly aspirated to me (I'd be inclined to transcribe them as "thaa", "khaa", "qhaa" etc. if I'd go just by my intuition). It's not a problem with Dothraki, really, as they do aspirate at least sometimes, as far as I understand, but it serves as an example of how there's still so much wiggling space within the scope of one IPA symbol that it can still sound patently wrong for some language.
Title: Re: Dothraki learners for Thronecast
Post by: ingsve on April 23, 2012, 03:17:55 pm
That is a great page. You've linked it once before, haven't you? I must say, though, all the voiceless plosives sound strongly aspirated to me (I'd be inclined to transcribe them as "thaa", "khaa", "qhaa" etc. if I'd go just by my intuition). It's not a problem with Dothraki, really, as they do aspirate at least sometimes, as far as I understand, but it serves as an example of how there's still so much wiggling space within the scope of one IPA symbol that it can still sound patently wrong for some language.

Ya, I've posted it a long time ago I think.

And yes those do seem aspirated at least when he's saying the versions that is followed by an /a/ but not as much when he finishes on the consonant.