Messages

Wow. Thanks

Okay. I fixed all of the above. The course is ready to be made public. I used a popular screenshot from the show as the course image. I hope that's not a problem. Mr. Peterson said that I should contact him so he can twitter about it when it's ready, and I will do that now.

Will you put a link to it on the wiki? I noticed that there are already three links to memrise courses on there, but neither of them exist anymore.
Thanks again for all the help.

[chek!]

Things that I need before I can publish this course:

- A conclusion to the chek! dilemma.
- A confirmation that the adjectival verb instructions are correct.



Other things that I am waiting for:

- Sunquan8094's answer and permission to use his voice.


All I'm doing now is waiting for a bunch of replies and we're done. Thanks a bunch for all the help so far.

[chek]

Yeah.. the chek thing is a good point. I got it from Mr. Peterson's blog when I was looking for audio here: http://www.dothraki.com/2012/07/comic-con-again-off-again/

So what if I moved it to the phrases level and kept the exclamation mark? Let me know what you think.
Also, I've been giving the good vs well a thought and I figured, what if chek, even if it means well or "nicely" as you said, could also be used as a response to "I made some pancakes". The question is, what does the English "good" mean when we reply with it? And more importantly, what could a Dothraki chek mean? What if instead of "I made some pancakes" - "That is a good thing", we are actually saying "things are well" / "all is good", as in stating your current change in overall satisfaction. I think a word that means "well" could be used for that. I may be way off here and I'm not sure if I'm making any sense. Just a thought that passed my mind.


On to the adjectives that can be verbs explanation. I will try to write it myself. I'll put it right here for your comments and criticisms. So imagine, if you will, that you are a learner going through my course:

- You've been told in a block of text that this is a course that teaches you Dothraki and that you should learn some grammar along side it. Also, before you start, have a look through sunquan's pronunciation video.

- You have now started learning the Everyday words and after 3 days of practice you feel ready to advance to the next level.

- Now you learn about noun animacy in another block of text.

- You start learning the words for Family members.

- You start learning words for things that you find Outside.

- Now you come upon your first level of Adjectives

- So after you learn some adjectives you stumble upon yet another block of text explaining how the adjectives you just learned can be used as verbs:

Adjectival Verbs

In Dothraki some verbs work as adjectives. In the following levels you will learn some words that are nothing more than verb forms of the adjectives that you have learned in the previous level. So let's take for example a noun and an adjective that you have already learned:

qevir - forest (noun)
zhokwa - big (adjective)

Now if you've been learning any grammar yet you might have already learned that adjectives come after the words that they describe. Let's put our two words together and from a sentence. There are two ways we can do this:

Qevir zhokwa - Big forest.
Qevir zhokwae - The forest is big.

In the first sentence we used the adjective zhokwa to describe the forest.
In the second sentence we used the word zhokwae which is a conjugated form of the verb zhokwalat - to be big.

To learn more about conjugation check out this youtube video: Dothraki Tutorial Lesson 1 - Pronouns and Present Tense



- And then in the next level you learn the verbs which are basically all the same words as in the Adjectives level before that.

Was that correct and clear enough?

There is another thing. It has probably become apparent that English is not my native language. So I would really appreciate it if you guys corrected me on any awkward or incorrect sentences, descriptions or titles that I might have produced in the course. Thanks!

[Qvaak]

Allright here's the latest update. I contacted Sunquan8094 on the forums, via email and via youtube and asked permission to link to his videos and to use his audio in the course.

I've made the post where I put all the words (on page 1 of this thread) my main list. I added an update log to the post.

Qvaak this is where I will need your help in order to finish this. Memrise has an option to add multimedia levels in between the other levels. I decided to use this in order to explain things with text. For instance, the first level is just a text explaining in more detail what the course is about and that users should also be learning grammar along side it. Following is the first level - Everyday words. After that is another text level that explains what noun animacy is. Then the users learn some nouns, and some adjectives. And after the adjectives there is a level with verbs that come from the previously learned adjectives. Before this I need to put in another text level with an explanation why adjectives can be used as verbs. I cannot for the life of me put this together as I have no real idea how this is used and what the actual rules are. I really need someone to put this together. It needs to look like a short text explaining that this exists and then an example that shows how it works.
Pretty please with sugar on top!

EDIT:
Wait... I might have just figured it out
so.. if you have the adjective davra - useful and the noun jolino - cooking pot., you could say:
Useful cooking pot: Jolino davra. And we used the adjective from of davra.
The cooking pot is useful: Jolino davrae. And we used the verb davralat.

Is that correct?

I think the course has evolved enough of an outline for me to be able to post the link here if you want to check it out. This is a work in progress and it's not yet available to find by searching on Memrise and it shouldn't be used for learning just yet. Take a look: http://www.memrise.com/course/219796/dothraki-for-beginners/

[chek]

Are you planning on extracting words? ... Are you planning on putting them up on the wiki?

I'm extracting words from Mr. Petersons audio files as we speak. Wasn't planing to put them on the wiki. Do you want me to? I can give you the whole package when I'm done. I'll have a look at the pronouns later, today I really dug deep into this audio stuff, so I want to finish this first.
Also I kinda forgot about a whole bunch of useful words that I think I should add like conjunctions, determiners and maybe some prepositions.

I added was going to add the word chek (good) to the everyday words level, after I have seen it being used on Petersons blog, but now I double checked the meaning on the wiki and see that it says "well". But that can also be good right? For instance if my Dothraki wife says she made some pancakes for breakfast, my reply would be chek as in "good". Is that correct? And if it is, can I put it into the course as such (chek - good, well)?

EDIT: Silly me, as I was writing the above, I forgot where I saw the word chek but as I went back I saw that it was a direct translation from Mr. Peterson: Chek! - Good! But I'm still not sure if that exclamation point changes anything.

[anna]

I didn't know about the word group page, it seems to be a bit outdated though. Anyway, I received permission from mr. Peterson to use his audio for pronunciation examples. Today I'll try to stuff all the words into the Memrise course and scavenge through some audio. Is one of you guys going to help me with a list of pronouns? I'm sure anna and anha could be in there. Maybe all the pronouns for the present tense conjugation table?

On a side note, I tested what happens when you change words in the memrise course and found out that memrise doesn't warn the users that there have been changes made or anything. But thankfully each course has it's own forum, so I will be able to warn users about the changes in the words that they might already have learned. Also, do we have any kind of collection of spoken word audio? Would be great for the course.

fukken shite, no.

I'm getting my info from the dictionary. Ver 3.083 is the latest version right?



According to the dictionary both ohazhat and ohazholat mean to become heavy and ohazhat is marked as intransitive. Ohazholat on the other hand is not transitive, my bad.

The grandma and grandpa animacy also comes from the dictionary.

[Some words, like fittelat may be wrong (could be fittat), but it's too frustrating to refrain from saying things like "I am short" just because we're not entirely sure about the whole scheme of fittat.]

no, no. Ohazholat is "to become heavy", ohazat should be "to be heavy".

So let me get this straight...
Ohazh - heavy (adjective)
Ohazhat - to become heavy (intransitive verb)
Ohazholat - to become heavy (transitive verb)
Ohazat - to be heavy (but we don't know yet)
Did I get that right?

Transitivity tells you if the verb takes an object. It's kinda short extra hint on what a verb means. If the verb is intransitive, it does not take (straight) object, so if you have eg. intransitive to burn (virsalat), you'll know that "the house burned" ("okre virsa") is good use and "I burned the house" (*"anha virsa okre") won't work. Useful, eh.

So if I understand this correctly, because virsalat (to burn) is intransitive, we know it can mean "to be on fire" but not "to burn something"?
What about Ohazhat - to become heavy (intransitive) and Ohazholat - to become heavy (transitive)? Does this mean you could say "Chiori ohazh(e)" The woman became heavy? But how would you even use the verb in a transitive sense? I made something (become) heavy? I don't know

Some words, like fittelat may be wrong (could be fittat), but it's too frustrating to refrain from saying things like "I am short" just because we're not entirely sure about the whole scheme of fittat.
Yes. This is exactly what I had in mind with this course, while making it. Even though we may not know if a lot of these words even exist, the goal is to be able to speak the language. So I think we need to compensate, and if we see that we've made incorrect assumptions we should fix them as new data comes along. That's my take on it at least.

[Everyday words]

Okay I've assembled it or most of it at least. I'm just gonna post the whole list here. The items are divided into levels, so please feel free to offer advice on the order of the words, the levels, and the names of the levels and well... anything that you think could be improved. I also encountered some problems and dilemmas, so I wrote them all down as I went along. I'll put those at the bottom.

I also didn't add any pronouns because I don't know a whole lot about all those conjugations and declinations and whatnot. So I was hoping that one of you guys could add a list of pronouns that are used very often. Thanks!

Everyday words
sek - yes
vos - no
ishish - maybe
chek - good
m'ath - hi
m'athchomaroon - with respect (greeting)

Family
rhojosor - family (animate)
mai - mother (animate)
ave - father (animate)
simonof - grandfather (animate)
kristasof - grandmother (inanimate)
gaezo - brother (/)
inavva - sister (/)
rizh - son (animate)
ohara - daughter (inanimate)

Outside
gache - place, environs (inanimate)
feshith - tree (/)
halah - flower (animate)
qevir - forest (/)
ashefa - river (animate)
tozara - lake (animate)
olta - hill (inanimate)

Adjectives
davra - good, useful
edavrasa - useless, of poor quality
zhokwa - big
naqis - small
neak - long
fitte - short
ohazh - heavy
imesh - young
foz - old
diwe - wet
ath - dry

Verbs
davralat - to be useful
edavrasalat - to be useless
zhokwalat - to be large
naqisat - to be small
neakat - to be long
fittelat - to be short
ohazhat - to become heavy
imeshat - to be young
fozat - to be old
diwelat - to be wet
athat - to be dry

Pronouns
anha - I
anni - of mine
anna - me
yer - you
me - he, she, it
kisha - we
yeri - you (plural)
mori - they
eyak - everyone

Home
okrenegwin - stone house (inanimate)
okre - tent (/)
gref - wall (/)
davrakh - useful thing, app (inanimate)
emrakh - gate (inanimate)
ador - chair (inanimate)
az - blade (inanimate)
heffof - jug (inanimate)
jolino - cooking pot (inanimate)
khogar - word for one's apparel, clothes (inanimate)
khogari - box, trunk, chest, cask (inanimate)

Adjectives 2
reddi - skinny
oiro - fat
dik - fast
vroz - slow
erin - kind, good
mel - bad, evil
toki - dumb
ville - wise
yofi - mad, crazy
haj - strong
fish - cold
afazh - hot
afazhi - warm

Verbs 2
reddilat - to be skinny
oirolat - to be fat
dikat - to be fast
vrozat - to be slow
erinat - to be kind, to be good
melat - to be evil
tokilat - to be dumb
villat - to be wise
yofilat - to be mad, to be crazy
hajat - to be strong
fishat - to be cold
afazhat - to be hot
afazhilat - to be warm

Animals
rhoa - animal (/)
jano - dog (inanimate)
havzi - cat (/)
dalfe - cow (inanimate)
noah - bull (animate)
dorvi - goat (inanimate)
oqet - sheep (inanimate)
qifo - boar / pig (inanimate)
hrazef - horse (inanimate)
jiz - chicken (animate)
alegra - duck (inanimate)

Conjunctions and Determiners
ma - and
ven - like, as
ei - all, every
che - either, or
loy - some, few, any, a bit of
san - much, many
zhille - any

Adjectives 3
driv - dead
thir - alive
achra - smelly
sorf - dirty
gizikhven - sweet
jelaven - sour
zhifven - salty
havziven - lazy
ataki - first
remek - asleep
samva - broken

Verbs 3
drivolat - to die
drivat - to be dead
thirat - to live
achralat - to be smelly, to give of a smell
sorfat - to be dirty
gizikhvenat - to be sweet
jelavenat - to be sour
zhifvenat - to be salty
havzivenat - to be lazy
atakilat - to be first
remekat - to sleep
samvalat - to be broken ?
samvat - to be broken
samvolat - to break

Animals 2
gimi - mouse (/)
afis - fly (/)
giz - bee (/)
hlizif - bear (animate)
leqse - rat (inanimate)
qosar - spider (/)
ver - wolf (/)
yetto - frog (inanimate)
zir - bird (/)
mawizzi - rabbit (inanimate)
eshina - fish (/)
gezri - snake (animate)

Home 2
orzi - shoe (inanimate)
timvir - book (/)
yot - fruit (inanimate)
thom - juice (inanimate)
hadaen - food (inanimate)
gavat - meat (inanimate)
vinte - portion of meat (inanimate)
jelli - cheese (inanimate)
nindi - sausage (inanimate)
qazer - apple (inanimate)
zhif - salt (inanimate)

Outside 2
krazaaj - mountain (inanimate)
eyel - rain (inanimate)
asavva - sky (animate)
shekh - sun (inanimate)
jalan - moon (animate)
shierak - star (animate)
vaes - city (inanimate)
os - path, road (inanimate)
rhaesh - land, country (animate)

Numbers 0 - 10
som - zero (0)
at - one (1)
akat - two (2)
sen - three (3)
tor - four (4)
mek - five (5)
zhinda - six (6)
fekh - seven (7)
ori - eight (8 )
qazat - nine (9)
thi - ten (10)

People
voj - person (animate)
okeo - friend, trustee (animate)
mahrazh - man (animate)
rakh - boy, lamb (/)
rakhi - boy (insult) (/)
chiori - woman (animate)
nayat - girl (inanimate)
yalli - child (animate)
enta - baby, infant (/)
tokik - fool (animate)

Elements
sorfo - dirt (inanimate)
vorsa - fire (animate)
chaf - wind (animate)
eveth - water (inanimate)
jesh - ice (inanimate)

Verbs 4
tat - to do
elat - to go
adakhat - to eat
ammemat - to play a musical instrument
astolat - to speak
astat - to say
dirgat - to think
emat - to smile
ezhirat - to dance

Body
khado - body (animate)
nhare - head (animate)
lenta - neck (/)
elme - shoulder (inanimate)
qora - hand, arm (animate)
tir - finger (inanimate)
gango - belly (inanimate)
khaor - waist (inanimate)
rhae - foot, leg (/)
hlofa - wrist, ankle
vem - knee, elbow (/)
vemish - heel of the hand or foot (inanimate)
irge - back (/)
ilek - skin (/)

Phrases
Athdavrazar(!) - Excellent!
Me nem nesa - It is known
Vosecchi(!) - No way!
Hash yer dothrae chek? - How are you?
Anha garvok(!) - I'm hungry!
I'm hungry(!) - I'm thirsty!
Yer zheanae (sekke) - You're (very) beautiful
San athchomari yeraan(!) - Thank you! (a lot of honor to you)
Fonas chek(!) - goodbye (Hunt well! - Farewell)

Body 2
noreth - hair (inanimate)
vish - forehead (/)
hatif - face (/)
tih - eye (animate)
riv - nose, tip (/)
dech - cheek (inanimate)
gomma - mouth of a human (/)
heth - lips, rim (inanimate)
lekh - tongue (inanimate)
chare - ear (inanimate)
vik - chin (inanimate)
shirane - beard (inanimate)

Verbs 5
ezolat - to learn
ezzolat - to teach
fejat - to hate
frakhat - to touch, to reach to touch
frakholat - to feel
garvolat - to grow hungry, to hunger
fevelat - to thirst
ifat - to walk
layafat - to be happy

Seasons
vorsaska - summer (inanimate)
eyelke - spring (inanimate)
chafka - autumn (inanimate)
aheshke - winter (inanimate)

Other Nouns
vosi - nothing (inanimate)
atthirar - life (inanimate)
athdrivar - death (inanimate)
athfiezar - love (inanimate)
eme - smile (inanimate)
zoqwa - kiss (/)
lekh - language (animate)
athjerizar - discussion (inanimate)
ato - one, something (inanimate)
vekhikh - object, thing (inanimate)

Verbs 6
hoyalat - to sing
ifat - to walk
indelat - to drink
jasat - to laugh
khezhat - to be sad
zhilat - to love someone
jolinat - to cook
lommat - to bathe
lanat - to run

Colors
vishiya - color
dahaan - green
kazga - black
nozhoven - brown
reaven - purple
shiqeth - grey
veltor - yellow
vishiya - color
zasqa - white
thelis - blue
theyaven - pink
virzeth - red

Other Nouns 2
athvilajerar - war (inanimate)
qoy - blood (inanimate)
athrokhar - fear (inanimate)
athvillar - wisdom (inanimate)
atthirarido - dream (inanimate)
dirge - thought, idea (inanimate)
hake - name (animate)
ase - word, command (animate)

Verbs 7
laqat - to cry
nesolat - to learn
nevalat - to sit
nevasolat - to sit down
chilayat - to lie (body position)
chilat - to lie down
qafat - to ask
tihat - to look, to see
zoqwat - to kiss

________________________________________

Problems
ershe and foz both mean "old"

ohazhat - to become heavy, not to be heavy ??
what baout ville - wise (ajd) and the verb villat - to be wise. Looks liek an exception. How do we know the other unrecorded verbs that come from adjectives
aren't exceptions too?

haj - strong (adj); hajolat - to grow strong. Is hajat - to be strong?

afazh (adj.) - hot; affazhat - to warm, to give warmth, to make hot. Is afazhat, to be hot? and afazhilat to be warm?

samva - broken
samvolat - to break
is samvalat - to be broken?

chilay (adj) - laying
chilat - to lie down
can we conclude that chilayat means to lie?

what is verb transitivity?

is irge - "back" meant as a part of the human body?

lenta - stem, neck; can this be the neck of a human?

Change log

14.2.2014
- Added a Phrases level
- Moved sky from Elements to Outside 2
- Marked words that still lack an audio file
- Added a Conjunctions and Determiners level
- Added a Pronouns level

20.2.2014
- Removed exclamation mark from chek in Everyday Words

5.5.2014
- Removed nonexistent word from Conjunctions and Determiners

Good to know. If you agree with the current plan, I'll try to assemble the words in the next few days and I'll just post the whole list here or send it to you for approval if I may.

Thanks. That really cleared things up. I like this idea a lot and I was thinking that instead of deviating from the norm and teaching verbs with stems only, what if I would teach the adjectives first, and then in another level the same words in their verb (and infinitive) forms. With this, the people would learn both the verbs and adjectives and how they are connected and they would already know the words so it wouldn't really be extra work. But I notice that not all adjectives have a verb form, like the adjective ath (dry). There is no athat in the dictionary.

Allright here's the rest of it...

I too was thinking of adding information about animacy to the nouns. I think it's useful to know and people who don't want to learn it can still easily ignore it. I was going to do it with (an) and (in) next to the words to avoid clutter but I like your idea with the full word better, it's more fluent and I think easier for the brain to remember if the full word (animate)/(inanimate) is next to the noun.

I see what your trying to say when it comes to verbs, but it makes me just a tiny bit anxious to deviate from the norm and teach them in anything but the infinitive form. I'm not familiar with anything but the present time conjugations (that's as far is I've gotten in my learning), but I see how teaching the stem only would be better, because I know sometimes with werbs that end with -lat you can't know if the ending is actually -lat or just -at. But that's all I know about that.

The part with the adjectives I didn't really understand. I'm sorry, here's where the fact that I'm a total beginner becomes a problem I guess.

About the pronouns, not sure if I want to go into all that, because the course is going to teach the basic and common words only. But I see how teaching the nominative declination only isn't very helpful. So I'm not sure if I should teach everything or nothing (course would have no pronouns). That wouldn't be a tragedy since this course will be made with the other lessons in mind (you need to combine the course with other lessons in order to learn anything). Maybe using all of those declinations would overcomplicate a course that's trying to teach the simplest beginner words.

While writing this, I had an idea of maybe making a separate level (courses are devided into levels) that teaches animacy only. So in a few levels you learn a bunch of words and they have animacy in the brackets next to it as we said before, but then in a separate course you get a word and you have to choose if it's animate or inanimate. Sou you would have two chances to learn and improve the knowledge of this, in my mind, most tedious part of the Dothraki language.

Another thing. This course is just an idea that I've come up with. If anyone with more experience or knowledge wants to take over I'd be perfectly fine with that, since as I've said before, I'm not really an authority on the Dothraki language and I'm also only a beginner learner. I don't want to withold any rights from other eager individuals.

To sum up, I'd like to maybe see what other people think about the stems only idea, and what you think about evading the pronouns completely. Maybe you could also give me a more detailed explanation on the adjectives thing. Sorry for the wall of text.