46
HBO: Game of Thrones / Re: First example of spoken dothraki.
« on: March 17, 2011, 04:36:08 am »
Sounds to me like [mamaquervefimorietihmai]. No idea how to segment that, though.
News:
The Dothraki and Valyrian forums has been receiving an unprecedented level of spam as of late. I am doing my best to stay on top of it (in my experience, these go away in time). If you catch a suspicious post that I missed, mark it as spam, or PM me about it - Hrakkar
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47
Announcements / Re: David Peterson to go on IRC this Sunday (13-Feb)
« on: March 15, 2011, 02:45:13 am »
Thanks for keeping on top of things, Ingsve. As you may have gathered, my internet wasn't working too well at the time last week. I won't make it next week, either, as I got a conference to attend.
48
HBO: Game of Thrones / Re: Momoa worked hard on Dothraki
« on: March 13, 2011, 03:57:47 pm »
This is great news. I'm really glad that they're putting a lot of effort into this. I hope the dentals turn out alright!
49
Introductions / Re: Hello there!
« on: March 13, 2011, 03:16:51 am »Not all of us know Na'vi. Ingsve doesn't. You'll fit in fine.
Ya, just rub it in...
Dude, you're European. You automatically win at languages.
50
Introductions / Re: Hello there!
« on: March 12, 2011, 12:09:33 pm »
Welcome, Anderson! South America is cool. I really want to go there, at some point. my brother in law is Colombian, which is rather different, to be honest, but still, SA seems sweet.
Not all of us know Na'vi. Ingsve doesn't. You'll fit in fine.
Not all of us know Na'vi. Ingsve doesn't. You'll fit in fine.
51
Introductions / Re: Hello, ido rhaesh!
« on: March 12, 2011, 12:08:15 pm »
Yeah man, that's me. It is pretty cool, isn't it? I can't wait for more people to show up. 
52
Announcements / Re: David Peterson to go on IRC this Sunday (13-Feb)
« on: February 13, 2011, 02:03:32 am »Crap I'm at work during that time
I, too, will be at work. And by work, I mean I'll be sitting in a bar with my laptop and pop on for a bit (most likely).
53
Introductions / Re: Fyhen Shush - Hello
« on: February 13, 2011, 02:02:46 am »Just spent three hours last night working over the postposition system.
Nice.
Conlanging takes so much time. I spent three hours last night reading a book. Probably should have been conlanging.
54
Dothraki Language Updates / Re: HBO Dothraki Pronunciation
« on: February 13, 2011, 02:01:58 am »Ah well, the reason I brought up the Westerosi is the are the closest thing to an English Speaking population in ASOIAF.
The main issue isn't that there's a divide between Westerosi and English that isn't being taken into account. Rather, it's that there's a lack of uniformity in the actual names themselves, both internally (when two names come from the same source language but have different pronunciation), and externally (when English stress rules are used, or avoided without reason.)
55
Dothraki Language Updates / HBO Dothraki Pronunciation
« on: February 12, 2011, 06:20:09 am »
So, we've now got a pronunciation guide for Game of Thrones. This is how HBO is going to be pronouncing the names. I believe that George RR Martin said somewhere that he doesn't really care how people pronounce them, although he always uses the same ones. What is interesting is that we do actually have some differences between a) GRRM's pronunciation b) David Peterson's phonology and c) how the natives would potential pronounce them.
There were a lot of names mentioned here. I'm going to run through the ones that I found interesting. I think that all of these should be taken with a major pinch of salt. The pronunciation team was going to for a mix between what people would read and what would make sense, assumedly. These aren't given in IPA, which is fairly obvious, meaning that it is fairly ambiguous. Personally, I don't really like how they've done these. This will be become blatanly obvious.
<> is orthographic. [] is phonological, written in IPA. Their transcriptions are given in bold.
Edit: In the two hours since writing this post, I realise I may have been a bit harsh. First off, the HBO team has a hard job going for them. They've got to take GRR Martin's work and apply it to real life, which it was never meant to be originally. They've also got to consider the readers and the viewership. This means divorcing some of the more hard-to-pronounce words, possibly like Qarth. My beef stems from the fact that it looks like what they did here is use the standard American English-pronunciation of these names only, and didn't make them internally consistent either orthographically or in the context of the languages we do know in the books. Furthermore, they failed at several points in this post to correctly display Dothraki words, which makes me feel very queasy about the Dothraki on the show.
It just seems to me like this post was the easy way out - they're just trying to make all of the fans out there, now, have a standardised pronunciation, so that the show-talk doesn't end up mired in 'Oh! It's CAT-lyn? Woops!', but instead is more like 'Man, she was a good actor (and I'm therefore implicitly glad that HBO hired her).' That's all fine - but I think they could have done a better job of keeping hardcore linguistic radicals like me in mind. Not that I'd be happy on everything, of course.
CHARACTER NAMES:
Aerys Targaryen - AIR-eez Tar-GAIR-ee-in Right. Well. We can guess that this should be something like [ɛɹ]. That's fairly unspectacular. What's interesting is the transcription of <y> as [i:]. That's expected, but nice to know how they're going to do it. Rules out the possibility of a swedish front rounded vowel or something like that, though. Also interesting: different sorts of <a>, and the lack of syllable initial glide. They've opted for [i:] again in [taɹgɛɹi:en]. Weird.
Daenerys Targaryen - Duh-NAIR-iss Tar-GAIR-ee-in Same thing. They've reduced the unstressed syllable to schwa, which I doubt is what GRRM wanted to do with the orthographic spelling here. In any sense, we can see that they're clearly applying English stress rules. Note the different interpretation of <y> here: it's given as [ɪ] this time. Huh. Why would they do that? I'm guessing this is another English take on it.
Illyrio - Il-LEAR-ee-oh Ok, so here we have a third pronunciation of <y>, and a re-interpretation of <i> as the same as the <y> in Targaryen. I wonder if they actually put thought into this, or if they just applied English pronunciation across the board? Is this the pronunciation we can expect in the show? I realise that most people will be pronouncing these words the way they read them in English, but that doesn't mean that they should be pronounced that way, in my opinion, in an internal world.
Irri - I-ree Lack of gemination, different takes on <i>. This is unsystematic and probably wrong according to Dothraki rules. [aɪɹi:] just isn't how I saw this one being pronounced, at all. As this is out first Dothraki name, I'm very dissapointed
Khal Drogo - KHAL DRO-go Ok, our first major controversy. Are they going to pronounce this as [kʰ] or as [ x]? And as [ɹ] or [ɾ]? This is very important.
Nymeria - Nigh-MEER-ee-uh Wait, so, [nɑjmi:ɹiə]? SERIOUSLY? Well, I was going to take this seriously, but I think may just stop now. Maybe I should go for a walk. To be fair - they don't have access to the Rhoynar phonology, as no one as made it, and they haven't looked at my wiki. Still. Dear god.
Qotho - QUO-tho So you're saying that George RR Martin uses weird orthography for no phonetic reason? This is clearly, from a linguistic view, [qoðo:]. Not [kʷ], nor [kw]. This also has the problem of not being clear whether the [th] is voiced or not. The pronunciation they give indicates unvoiced. Alright.
Rhaegar Targaryen RAY-gar Tar-GAIR-ee-in Another issue where <rh> is ignored. I would expect some sort of post-rhotic aspiration: [rʰæ] perhaps. The interpretation of <ae> as [aɪ] kind of annoys me, but not as much as the <yen> being taken as [i:ɪn].
Syrio Forel - SEER-ee-o For-EL Why the final stress on Forel? Interesting!
Varys - VAIR-iss Another weird second pronunciation for <y>.
Viserys Targaryen - Vi-SAIR-iss Tar-GAIR-ee-in They seem to like doing weird things to stressed <e>. This goes along with my theory that they basically took English phonotactic rules and applied them with broad, broad brush strokes.
PLACES:
Asshai - Uh-SHY Did NOT see that coming, meaning the stess on the second syllable.
Braavos - BRA-vos Doesn't appear to be any gemination of the first vowel.
Essos - ESS-os Well, might have gotten the geminated s right, here.
Eyrie - EAR-ee I was expecting [aɪɹi:]. American versus English pronunciation, I guess. I've also seen [ɛɹi:].
Harrenhal - HAIR-in-hall Another weird <e>.
Pentos - PEN-tos Expected.
Qarth - QUARTH ... I've talked about this above. I really don't like it.
Vaes Dothrak - VIE-iss Doth-RACK Stress on the final syllable when it is closed - this is good. Why didn't it happen with Vaes, I wonder? It should have.
So, I guess they're saying [vɑjɪs]. That's really weird. Like, really weird. Was expecting [vaɛs], or maybe [væs] as a loose interpretation.
Westeros - WES-te-ros Alright.
MISCELLANEOUS:
Andals - AN-dals Good.
arakh - Ah-rock Different a-vowels. They've now completely done DP's interpretation wrong. He has it as [a'ɾax]. Should we email them?
Dothraki - Doth-RACK-ee This isn't how DP or GRRM does it. [dɔθ'ɹæki] is how I see theirs. GRRM does [dɔ'θrakaɪ]. DP does it ['dɔθɾaki], I believe. Not to mention the dentals!
khalasar - KHAL-uh-ssar Wrong. No reduction to schwa. Trilled [r]. [ x] not [kʰ]. Aarrrgh!
Khaleesi - Khal-EE-see At this point I think it's not even worth me finishing this list.
Tyroshi - Ti-ROH-shee Why won't they take the <y> at face value? Ever?
Valyrian - Vuh-LEER-ee-un Annoyed.
Right. Sorry, that turned into a rant.
Update: @westerosorg pointed me to this on twitter. Phonetic spellings with IPA from GRRM. A lot of these make more sense, now!
http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/24292-character-name-pronunciations/page__st__40__p__2104529#entry2104529
There were a lot of names mentioned here. I'm going to run through the ones that I found interesting. I think that all of these should be taken with a major pinch of salt. The pronunciation team was going to for a mix between what people would read and what would make sense, assumedly. These aren't given in IPA, which is fairly obvious, meaning that it is fairly ambiguous. Personally, I don't really like how they've done these. This will be become blatanly obvious.
<> is orthographic. [] is phonological, written in IPA. Their transcriptions are given in bold.
Edit: In the two hours since writing this post, I realise I may have been a bit harsh. First off, the HBO team has a hard job going for them. They've got to take GRR Martin's work and apply it to real life, which it was never meant to be originally. They've also got to consider the readers and the viewership. This means divorcing some of the more hard-to-pronounce words, possibly like Qarth. My beef stems from the fact that it looks like what they did here is use the standard American English-pronunciation of these names only, and didn't make them internally consistent either orthographically or in the context of the languages we do know in the books. Furthermore, they failed at several points in this post to correctly display Dothraki words, which makes me feel very queasy about the Dothraki on the show.
It just seems to me like this post was the easy way out - they're just trying to make all of the fans out there, now, have a standardised pronunciation, so that the show-talk doesn't end up mired in 'Oh! It's CAT-lyn? Woops!', but instead is more like 'Man, she was a good actor (and I'm therefore implicitly glad that HBO hired her).' That's all fine - but I think they could have done a better job of keeping hardcore linguistic radicals like me in mind. Not that I'd be happy on everything, of course.
CHARACTER NAMES:
Aerys Targaryen - AIR-eez Tar-GAIR-ee-in Right. Well. We can guess that this should be something like [ɛɹ]. That's fairly unspectacular. What's interesting is the transcription of <y> as [i:]. That's expected, but nice to know how they're going to do it. Rules out the possibility of a swedish front rounded vowel or something like that, though. Also interesting: different sorts of <a>, and the lack of syllable initial glide. They've opted for [i:] again in [taɹgɛɹi:en]. Weird.
Daenerys Targaryen - Duh-NAIR-iss Tar-GAIR-ee-in Same thing. They've reduced the unstressed syllable to schwa, which I doubt is what GRRM wanted to do with the orthographic spelling here. In any sense, we can see that they're clearly applying English stress rules. Note the different interpretation of <y> here: it's given as [ɪ] this time. Huh. Why would they do that? I'm guessing this is another English take on it.
Illyrio - Il-LEAR-ee-oh Ok, so here we have a third pronunciation of <y>, and a re-interpretation of <i> as the same as the <y> in Targaryen. I wonder if they actually put thought into this, or if they just applied English pronunciation across the board? Is this the pronunciation we can expect in the show? I realise that most people will be pronouncing these words the way they read them in English, but that doesn't mean that they should be pronounced that way, in my opinion, in an internal world.
Irri - I-ree Lack of gemination, different takes on <i>. This is unsystematic and probably wrong according to Dothraki rules. [aɪɹi:] just isn't how I saw this one being pronounced, at all. As this is out first Dothraki name, I'm very dissapointed
Khal Drogo - KHAL DRO-go Ok, our first major controversy. Are they going to pronounce this as [kʰ] or as [ x]? And as [ɹ] or [ɾ]? This is very important.
Nymeria - Nigh-MEER-ee-uh Wait, so, [nɑjmi:ɹiə]? SERIOUSLY? Well, I was going to take this seriously, but I think may just stop now. Maybe I should go for a walk. To be fair - they don't have access to the Rhoynar phonology, as no one as made it, and they haven't looked at my wiki. Still. Dear god.
Qotho - QUO-tho So you're saying that George RR Martin uses weird orthography for no phonetic reason? This is clearly, from a linguistic view, [qoðo:]. Not [kʷ], nor [kw]. This also has the problem of not being clear whether the [th] is voiced or not. The pronunciation they give indicates unvoiced. Alright.
Rhaegar Targaryen RAY-gar Tar-GAIR-ee-in Another issue where <rh> is ignored. I would expect some sort of post-rhotic aspiration: [rʰæ] perhaps. The interpretation of <ae> as [aɪ] kind of annoys me, but not as much as the <yen> being taken as [i:ɪn].
Syrio Forel - SEER-ee-o For-EL Why the final stress on Forel? Interesting!
Varys - VAIR-iss Another weird second pronunciation for <y>.
Viserys Targaryen - Vi-SAIR-iss Tar-GAIR-ee-in They seem to like doing weird things to stressed <e>. This goes along with my theory that they basically took English phonotactic rules and applied them with broad, broad brush strokes.
PLACES:
Asshai - Uh-SHY Did NOT see that coming, meaning the stess on the second syllable.
Braavos - BRA-vos Doesn't appear to be any gemination of the first vowel.
Essos - ESS-os Well, might have gotten the geminated s right, here.
Eyrie - EAR-ee I was expecting [aɪɹi:]. American versus English pronunciation, I guess. I've also seen [ɛɹi:].
Harrenhal - HAIR-in-hall Another weird <e>.
Pentos - PEN-tos Expected.
Qarth - QUARTH ... I've talked about this above. I really don't like it.
Vaes Dothrak - VIE-iss Doth-RACK Stress on the final syllable when it is closed - this is good. Why didn't it happen with Vaes, I wonder? It should have.
So, I guess they're saying [vɑjɪs]. That's really weird. Like, really weird. Was expecting [vaɛs], or maybe [væs] as a loose interpretation.
Westeros - WES-te-ros Alright.
MISCELLANEOUS:
Andals - AN-dals Good.
arakh - Ah-rock Different a-vowels. They've now completely done DP's interpretation wrong. He has it as [a'ɾax]. Should we email them?
Dothraki - Doth-RACK-ee This isn't how DP or GRRM does it. [dɔθ'ɹæki] is how I see theirs. GRRM does [dɔ'θrakaɪ]. DP does it ['dɔθɾaki], I believe. Not to mention the dentals!
khalasar - KHAL-uh-ssar Wrong. No reduction to schwa. Trilled [r]. [ x] not [kʰ]. Aarrrgh!
Khaleesi - Khal-EE-see At this point I think it's not even worth me finishing this list.
Tyroshi - Ti-ROH-shee Why won't they take the <y> at face value? Ever?
Valyrian - Vuh-LEER-ee-un Annoyed.
Right. Sorry, that turned into a rant.
Update: @westerosorg pointed me to this on twitter. Phonetic spellings with IPA from GRRM. A lot of these make more sense, now!
http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/24292-character-name-pronunciations/page__st__40__p__2104529#entry2104529
56
Announcements / Re: David Peterson to go on IRC this Sunday (13-Feb)
« on: February 12, 2011, 05:42:09 am »
You're right. my bad.
57
Announcements / IRC Chats with David Peterson
« on: February 12, 2011, 02:34:43 am »
So, I just got this message:
I think that sums it up pretty well.
Hope to see some of you guys there. Here are our IRC details, for those of you who don't know that we have a room.
That's 9:00pm GMT. (I believe - that's when I'll be going on.)
Quote from: DP
I'm going to jump in Dothraki IRC on Sunday at 1 PST. If nothing else, we can talk about cellular telephones and the weather.
I think that sums it up pretty well.
Hope to see some of you guys there. Here are our IRC details, for those of you who don't know that we have a room.
That's 9:00pm GMT. (I believe - that's when I'll be going on.)
58
Introductions / Re: Fyhen Shush - Hello
« on: February 10, 2011, 05:11:54 pm »
Ah, your conlang from the LN boards. Forgot about that temporarily. Cool dude.
59
General Discussion / Re: Issue with posting
« on: February 09, 2011, 02:24:53 am »
Do the Dothraki even know what fish are? They tend to avoid water...
60
Introductions / Re: Fyhen Shush - Hello
« on: February 09, 2011, 02:23:40 am »
Ah, cool dude! What language would 'Amazon' be? I'm not familiar with it.
I looked up the page - are you guys doing Sanskrit now?
I looked up the page - are you guys doing Sanskrit now?