Learn Dothraki and Valyrian

General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: Halahhi on November 12, 2012, 05:51:41 am

Title: I think it would be nice for a general chat the be kept....
Post by: Halahhi on November 12, 2012, 05:51:41 am
M'athchomaroon!

Hash yer dothrae chek asshekh? Anha dothrak chek asshekh

i think the more chat that happens generally as well as it being people asking for help it will bring in more people and get other memebers back, i was unsure to join because it seemed quiet but if there was more general chat so friends are made as well as helper i think that would do better :)

so i think everyone should get to know each other more and become friends etc

thought this might be a good thread too :)

so yeh...
i chose my dothraki name to be Halahhi means she who is like flower :) rather pretty
my real name is Rhiannon welsh so similar language to dothraki it helped me knowing welsh when learning dothraki
im 20 live in England (though does say on my profile)

anyone else?

Dothras chek


Title: Re: I think it would be nice for a general chat the be kept....
Post by: Havazhyol on November 12, 2012, 07:33:17 am
M'ath, zhey Halahhi (yer zheanae).

Anha dothras chek akka.

If I had to take a Dothraki name, I would translate my own from its celtic origin : Morgan = Sea born which would be Havazhyol.

I'm 27, french, and I reaaaally work on dothraki speaking, accent and stuff, cause it's really fun to see the faces of my coworkers when they piss me off... (plus we french have a bad reputation about accent in foreign speechs, so I try to prove it's not general)

I speak french (duh!), English (pretty well, I think), a bit of german, japanese, some polite words (more or less ::) ) from italian, portuguese, chinese, spanish, literary Arabic.

About conlang, I can merly speak some qenya, khuzdul and black speech, but it's not easy since no one agrees on the grammar. I never tried Naavi, or Klingon (the Federation is not really popular in my country), but I can recognize them.

And I'm done !

Hajas !
Title: Re: I think it would be nice for a general chat the be kept....
Post by: Najahho on November 12, 2012, 10:44:29 am
M'ath, zhey Halahhi (yer zheanae).

Anha dothras chek akka.

If I had to take a Dothraki name, I would translate my own from its celtic origin : Morgan = Sea born which would be Havazhyol.

I'm 27, french, and I reaaaally work on dothraki speaking, accent and stuff, cause it's really fun to see the faces of my coworkers when they piss me off... (plus we french have a bad reputation about accent in foreign speechs, so I try to prove it's not general)

I speak french (duh!), English (pretty well, I think), a bit of german, japanese, some polite words (more or less ::) ) from italian, portuguese, chinese, spanish, literary Arabic.

About conlang, I can merly speak some qenya, khuzdul and black speech, but it's not easy since no one agrees on the grammar. I never tried Naavi, or Klingon (the Federation is not really popular in my country), but I can recognize them.

And I'm done !

Hajas !

Well it stands to reason that no one agrees about the grammar of Khuzdul and the Black Speech, since they have none. We only have very little phrases... in fact we have the Ring inscription and the "cess-pool" bit for the Black Speech and they don't even seem to be exactly the same language (maybe formal and informal or modern and ancient) and Khuzdul only the "the dwarves are upon you". About Quenya you do have more grammar, but again it all depends on what period you mean to study... so that gets all things complicated.

Last time I went to the US I bought the Klingon book, it was so much fun, because as it happens with you, here the Klingons are very much unknown too!
Title: Re: I think it would be nice for a general chat the be kept....
Post by: ingsve on November 12, 2012, 11:01:18 am
M'athchomaroon!

Hash yer dothrae chek asshekh? Anha dothrak chek asshekh

i think the more chat that happens generally as well as it being people asking for help it will bring in more people and get other memebers back, i was unsure to join because it seemed quiet but if there was more general chat so friends are made as well as helper i think that would do better :)

so i think everyone should get to know each other more and become friends etc

thought this might be a good thread too :)

so yeh...
i chose my dothraki name to be Halahhi means she who is like flower :) rather pretty
my real name is Rhiannon welsh so similar language to dothraki it helped me knowing welsh when learning dothraki
im 20 live in England (though does say on my profile)

anyone else?

Dothras chek

I agree that it would be nice to get some more activity on the forums. It has gotten a bit better in the past month though. Before that it could go months without much posted at all.

Most of the socializing seems to happen on the IRC chat where we meet every monday night (7 pm PST) which is in the middle of the night in Europe (4am CET).

To follow your lead:

I'm ingsve and I guess I'm the oldest one here now since the original instigator Lajaki has taken a step back from conlangs.

I live in Sweden and I'm in physicist and not a linguest but I've learnt a lot while helping to build the wiki. My interest in GRRMs world goes back a long time from when I was a regular player of the Collectible Card Game "A Game of Thrones" based on the books. I've also been fascinated by created languages ever since I heard about Esperanto when I was younger. When they announced they were creating a Dothraki language saw my chance to combine my curiosity for conlangs with my interest in GRRMs world.
Title: Re: I think it would be nice for a general chat the be kept....
Post by: Najahho on November 12, 2012, 11:44:59 am
my real name is Rhiannon welsh so similar language to dothraki it helped me knowing welsh when learning dothraki
im 20 live in England (though does say on my profile)

anyone else?

Dothras chek

I think Welsh is quite different from Dothraki. It has a very beautiful sound to it too.
Title: Re: I think it would be nice for a general chat the be kept....
Post by: Halahhi on November 13, 2012, 03:52:28 am
my real name is Rhiannon welsh so similar language to dothraki it helped me knowing welsh when learning dothraki
im 20 live in England (though does say on my profile)

anyone else?

Dothras chek

I think Welsh is quite different from Dothraki. It has a very beautiful sound to it too.

It's rather a throaty language (or how my welsh mother says spitty) haha can be beautiful but nothing like Latin languages like French and Spanish etc
Very nice to talk to everyone if I didn't have work I'd join the chat but since I'm eu 4am is sleep time haha but shall try once in awhile.
Ingsve it's nice to hear about you as seems you have done a lot of work to make this all possible
Title: Re: I think it would be nice for a general chat the be kept....
Post by: Havazhyol on November 13, 2012, 04:48:00 am

I agree that it would be nice to get some more activity on the forums. It has gotten a bit better in the past month though. Before that it could go months without much posted at all.

Most of the socializing seems to happen on the IRC chat where we meet every monday night (7 pm PST) which is in the middle of the night in Europe (4am CET).

I mentioned dothraki.org, the forum, and dothraki.com in a topic of a french "geek" forum. Maybe it'll bring new folks.
Title: Re: I think it would be nice for a general chat the be kept....
Post by: Halahhi on November 13, 2012, 10:25:19 am

I agree that it would be nice to get some more activity on the forums. It has gotten a bit better in the past month though. Before that it could go months without much posted at all.

Most of the socializing seems to happen on the IRC chat where we meet every monday night (7 pm PST) which is in the middle of the night in Europe (4am CET).

I mentioned dothraki.org, the forum, and dothraki.com in a topic of a french "geek" forum. Maybe it'll bring new folks.

nice to have people from around the world and with the different languages. Can always help by translating the english meanings of dothraki words into french for people or other languages im very bilingual
Title: Re: I think it would be nice for a general chat the be kept....
Post by: ingsve on November 13, 2012, 10:48:58 am
Ingsve it's nice to hear about you as seems you have done a lot of work to make this all possible

Thanks. I can't take all the credit though. Lajaki did the leg work of setting things up initially and Qvaak has helped a lot with adding content to the wiki. Hrakkar and Daenerys has also done a lot of work.
Title: Re: I think it would be nice for a general chat the be kept....
Post by: Najahho on November 13, 2012, 11:16:48 am
I would like to contribute translating the dictionary into Spanish or something.
Title: Re: I think it would be nice for a general chat the be kept....
Post by: Halahhi on November 13, 2012, 11:28:18 am
Ingsve it's nice to hear about you as seems you have done a lot of work to make this all possible

Thanks. I can't take all the credit though. Lajaki did the leg work of setting things up initially and Qvaak has helped a lot with adding content to the wiki. Hrakkar and Daenerys has also done a lot of work.

Well im greatly appreciative of all of you and like i said willing to help
Title: Re: I think it would be nice for a general chat the be kept....
Post by: Havazhyol on November 13, 2012, 12:31:42 pm
I'd love to help on the french one.

Even if I find it easier to first translate in english and then in dothraki. Plus all the cool stuffs to translate are mostly in english.

Like this quote :

- Vos! Anha avees yeri!
- Vosecchiiiiiiiii...
   (Admiral Ingsve will immediatly see what it is...)
Title: Re: I think it would be nice for a general chat the be kept....
Post by: Hrakkar on November 13, 2012, 02:42:56 pm
Like this quote :

- Vos! Anha avees yeri!
- Vosecchiiiiiiiii...
   (Admiral Ingsve will immediatly see what it is...)

Hehe!!  ;)
This is actually an interesting sentence, because it has no verb.

If you are really serious about translating the dictionary into another language (and I do mean 'really serious' as it does require a real time commitment, especially at first), I can arrange with the dictionary backend manager to set up a dictionary framework in Spanish, French, or any other language you choose. For examples, go look at the various Na'vi dictionaries, as the same software (Eana Eltu/Blue Brain) is used to create both dictionaries. The English dictionary is the master dictionary, and would pre-populate a lot of fields in the other language dictionaries. The person responsible for the alternate language then just has to add the definition, and any other needed notes.
Title: Re: I think it would be nice for a general chat the be kept....
Post by: ingsve on November 13, 2012, 03:00:06 pm
This is actually an interesting sentence, because it has no verb.

Well, it just comes from the fact that Dothraki has no copula so any sentence that just uses a copula in English would have no verb in Dothraki.

Anha mahrazhgale!
Mori mahrazhgali!
Anha ivezhvorto!
Kokokacho!
Title: Re: I think it would be nice for a general chat the be kept....
Post by: Havazhyol on November 14, 2012, 12:01:05 am

If you are really serious about translating the dictionary into another language (and I do mean 'really serious' as it does require a real time commitment, especially at first), I can arrange with the dictionary backend manager to set up a dictionary framework in Spanish, French, or any other language you choose. For examples, go look at the various Na'vi dictionaries, as the same software (Eana Eltu/Blue Brain) is used to create both dictionaries. The English dictionary is the master dictionary, and would pre-populate a lot of fields in the other language dictionaries. The person responsible for the alternate language then just has to add the definition, and any other needed notes.

Got some link for the dictionnary?

Fin oses kisha'th silaki?
Title: Re: I think it would be nice for a general chat the be kept....
Post by: Qvaak on November 14, 2012, 06:56:18 am
Athchomar chomakea.

I'm the usual Finnish ever-so-slightly depressed do-no-good chap in my early thirties. Sometimes active. Likes to talk grammar and speculate. Thoroughly amateur, no linguistic knowledge outside of random Wikipedia adventures, no language skills to speak of. A bit of a left-wing hippie. Dothraki are interesting because they have such a pessimistic perpective flawed culture. They allow for a great deal of grey area discussion.
Title: Re: I think it would be nice for a general chat the be kept....
Post by: Halahhi on November 14, 2012, 10:09:16 am
quite happy to do a dictionary in other languages any way to help. would just live everyone talking :)

Qvaak nice to hear from you i love finland very beautiful country :) lovely in the winter
Title: Re: I think it would be nice for a general chat the be kept....
Post by: Hrakkar on November 17, 2012, 11:15:16 pm
Zhey Niqqo ma Havazhyol, I have put in a request to the dictionary backend keeper, for the mechanisms to create the Dothraki dictionary in French and Spanish. I'll let you know when I hear something!
Title: Re: I think it would be nice for a general chat the be kept....
Post by: Havazhyol on November 18, 2012, 12:45:14 am
Awesome ;D
I already started working on a printed version of the actual dictionnary.

Shieraki gori ha kishaan

Edit : I'll be working with the vocab section of the wiki too.
Edit 2 : Since we've been talking about translation of the dictionnary seriously, I launch a topic for the french one, I leave the spanish to you, zhey Niqqo
Title: Re: I think it would be nice for a general chat the be kept....
Post by: Havazhyol on December 02, 2012, 09:57:47 am
Since it's been in the news during the past few weeks (and it came to me while working on the dictionnary) I thought about movie title :

Shierak athvilajerari :

- Athzalar imesh

- Rhaesh shierakoon elza

- Jedi athessazari


Ingsve : your avatar sentence is the first thing that came to my mind when I heard the news...

Back to work now.

Hajas!
Title: Re: I think it would be nice for a general chat the be kept....
Post by: Havazhyol on December 24, 2012, 02:48:37 pm
Anha zalak ha yeraan vittesqoyi davra, zhey ei voji.

Hope it's good.

Hajas and don't over drink!!!

(question : since vitteya is inanimate, I suppose vittesqoyi is also, isn't it?)
Title: Re: I think it would be nice for a general chat the be kept....
Post by: ingsve on December 25, 2012, 06:07:32 am
Anha zalak ha yeraan vittesqoyi davra, zhey ei voji.

Hope it's good.

Hajas and don't over drink!!!

(question : since vitteya is inanimate, I suppose vittesqoyi is also, isn't it?)

Vitteiqoyi is inanimate since all compounds are inanimate.
Title: Re: I think it would be nice for a general chat the be kept....
Post by: Havazhyol on January 14, 2013, 12:11:42 pm
M'atchomaroon, zhey ei voji.

I had an idea, maybe some already thought of it (but I didn't read records of it on the forum (or maybe did I missed them).

I thought about one of the most geeky ornament nowadays (got 72 differents myself... and now that I write it down I figure out I may have too many of them... anyway):

T-shirts (about the wiki or the forum and the language)

Not with pictures, but with sentences, all made up (like Anha lekhak Dothraki or Anha laz astak ma Khal Drogo) in roman or cyrillic calligraphy

The thing is : I'm not sure it could be done without breaking some copyrights HBO may possess though...

Anyone could help on this one?

Dothras chek!
Title: Re: I think it would be nice for a general chat the be kept....
Post by: Qvaak on January 15, 2013, 01:24:57 pm
It's a mystery, what you can copyright. Crazy things have been copyrighted, for sure, but what do you exactly copyright, when you copyright a language? I think with Dothraki a lot between Petterson and HBO is about goodwill: David won't try to circumvent the legally grey area of their agreement and instead follows the spirit in which the agreement was made. I'd like to do the same. I'm not keen on getting cease and desist letters, but I'm more worried about what's cool with David.

I think what we know about vocabulary or grammar is quite fair to use for our original text. Legally probably only selling the whole corpus or a big part of it might be a problem. Perhaps this was already discussed in the context of dictionary app on this week's IRC chat? It's probably worth the trouble to ask David. Even if he does not go with "yes" or "no" answer, we might at least get "I guess you can" or "I'd rather you didn't" - perhaps both  ;).

If it comes to that, I'm a half decent typographist/calligraphist; might certainly manage to design something.
Title: Re: I think it would be nice for a general chat the be kept....
Post by: Hrakkar on January 15, 2013, 06:37:31 pm
The T-shirt idea is athdavrazar and I would probably take a couple of them.

Asking David is essential. I never want to see any harm come to David because of anything we do.

The phrase needs to be something we created, and what Havazhyol has suggested, I think, fits that category.

We can either just make these up and distribute (with costs recovered of course) among ourselves (least legal hassles as well) or sell a few here at minimal cost to raise some money for our host, LearnNavi.

According to Marc Okrand of Klingon fame, the interesting thing si you can copyright a language as an entity, but you cannot copyright the words of a language. A rather interesting interpretation!
Title: Re: I think it would be nice for a general chat the be kept....
Post by: Havazhyol on January 16, 2013, 12:02:46 am
One of the things that might enter the copyright is to use names (such as Khal Drogo).
Title: Re: I think it would be nice for a general chat the be kept....
Post by: ingsve on January 16, 2013, 03:31:37 am
Anha lekhak Dothraki

I'm not really sure what you are trying to say here. We don't have the word lekhat as far as I know and my guess would be that the verb would probably mean something like "to lick". Or are you forming it as an agentive of lekh i.e. lekh-ak? That would mean something like languageer or perhaps one could use such a word to mean linguist.

I think a better way to say it is simply Anha astak lekhes Dothraki = "I speak the Dothraki language" or even Anha nesak lekhes Dothraki = "I know the Dothraki language". Or perhaps it would be better to use shilat or knowing a language. I have a vague recollection that that might be the case.
Title: Re: I think it would be nice for a general chat the be kept....
Post by: Havazhyol on January 16, 2013, 07:26:20 am
My bad, I ran too fast...

Title: Re: I think it would be nice for a general chat the be kept....
Post by: Hrakkar on January 16, 2013, 01:37:21 pm
Anha lekhak Dothraki

I'm not really sure what you are trying to say here. We don't have the word lekhat as far as I know and my guess would be that the verb would probably mean something like "to lick". Or are you forming it as an agentive of lekh i.e. lekh-ak? That would mean something like languageer or perhaps one could use such a word to mean linguist.

I think a better way to say it is simply Anha astak lekhes Dothraki = "I speak the Dothraki language" or even Anha nesak lekhes Dothraki = "I know the Dothraki language". Or perhaps it would be better to use shilat or knowing a language. I have a vague recollection that that might be the case.

You posted what I would have posted if you hadn't!

I think nesak is the best word here because shilat is for knowing people specifically.

I very much like Anha astak lekhes Dothraki, but Anha nesak lekhes Dothraki is just as good. I thought about whether or not you really needed lekhes in the sentence. It can be omitted for bervity or readability on a T-shirt, but is otherwise fine.
Title: Re: I think it would be nice for a general chat the be kept....
Post by: Qvaak on January 16, 2013, 09:17:19 pm
Seems all discussions deteriorate into grammar/vocab nitpickery. I like it   :D

Quote
I think nesak is the best word here because shilat is for knowing people specifically.
I'm quite sure Ingsve remembers right and David has specifically said that knowing a language is expressed with shilat. Might be worth corroborating. I would have thought this has been discussed more than once, but if Ingsve remembers only just and Hrakkar not at all, it's probably been discussed only on some random IRC meet and well over a year ago. The translation on the vocab/dictionary would probably be better changed from "to know (a person)" to "to be familiar with".

I think Finns use neither information knowing (nesat (Finnish: tietää)) nor familiarity (shilat (Finnish: tuntea)) but know-how (devolat? (Finnish: osata)) when speaking about knowing a language. Nevertheless, if the general attitude is similar, you "nesi" the rivers of Germany when you can name then on the map; you "shili" the rivers of Germany, when you have kayaked them up and down a couple of times. You "nesi" a language when you can give a nice overview of it's phonotactics, word order etc.; you "shili" a language when you can effortlessly express yourself with it.

...so at least for me "nesat" would probably be exactly the right word. I'm not really even trying to get to "shilat" type of relationship.
Title: Re: I think it would be nice for a general chat the be kept....
Post by: ingsve on January 16, 2013, 11:09:49 pm
David confirmed my vague recollection. For knowing a language you use shilat.
Title: Re: I think it would be nice for a general chat the be kept....
Post by: Hrakkar on January 17, 2013, 12:39:49 pm
Thanks, zhey Qvaak for the enlightenment. I'll adjust those definitions accordingly. So then, we have Anha shilak lekhes Dothraki. That's nice, too.
Title: Re: I think it would be nice for a general chat the be kept....
Post by: Halahhi on February 07, 2013, 06:14:42 am
there would be no problem with copy right with peoples names etc as people are free to create their own t'shirts the only thing you would have to check is if you do wish to sell them instead of keeping them within a group. There would be no copy right problems with putting a language on a top either!!! thats like saying i cant have a top in french without asking the french. To be honest i think they would be happy for the publicity more than anything else.
Title: Re: I think it would be nice for a general chat the be kept....
Post by: Hrakkar on February 07, 2013, 07:02:30 pm
A lot depends on who you are dealing with. Fox, for instance, has been great with the Na'vi folks so far, and it looks like HBO has been about the same with GoT fans of all types. On the other side, Paramount keeps a pretty god hold on the Klingon folks, although the Klingon folks have earned themselves a lot of leeway by 'behaving'. And then there is Disney. I am surprised they don't have a lawyer in every movie theater!

All that said, I don't think HBO would say much-- if they can even say anything-- if we made some shirts for use within our community. The only pace where there might be problems is if we came up with something that casts HBO or GoT in a negative light. And I don't think anyone here is interested in doing that.
Title: Re: I think it would be nice for a general chat the be kept....
Post by: Qvaak on February 09, 2013, 10:51:21 am
David himself linked this some time ago on Twitter:
http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind1212a&L=conlang&P=93103 (http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind1212a&L=conlang&P=93103)
I think it's a good summary on legal side of the matter.
Title: Re: I think it would be nice for a general chat the be kept....
Post by: Hrakkar on February 09, 2013, 11:17:36 am
Interesting. Written by a very respected conlanger in the LCS community.

What I take away from that is that the only area where there might be a problem with T-shirts is 'trade dress' (no puns intended!). And most of that can be avoided by not using character names or recognizable quotes or slogans from GoT canon. So, me nem nesa might be gray area, hash yer dothrae chek nearly 'white', and Anha shilak lekhes Dothraki either white or gray, depending on you you view the word Dothraki which on one hand would be a GRRM/HBO proterty work and on the other hand, a title for a language.