Messages

Wow! Really amazing! Great job, Qvaak, you really shocked me with all that display.

Thanks also for your comment and of course I would love to help in any way I can.

Wouldn't that be really cluttered and repetitive for no good reason?

I don't think so. I think it would be a great learning material for novices. Think of the wiktionary and how it shows the complete inflection for each noun, adjective or verb in langauges such as Latin. I think it's worth trying.

Edit: I offer myself to help with this.

What we are discussing is changing the vocabulary to be more similar to the way David presents the words in his dictionary where the words are sorted based on the root so that you see the various versions of the same word. See here for an example: http://forum.dothraki.org/language-updates/more-info-ahead-of-next-list-program-new-words/msg1189/#msg1189

This would also be very cool!

Hey, I was thinking about something... wouldn't it be cool to add the definition of each word to the Dothraki wiki? I mean a whole article for each word where we could include the complete derivational paradigm, the forms (i.e. full declension, full conjugation, etc) and also notes maybe about usage or about something mentioned by David?

Wow! So cool... but now that I read all this... is there more coming? A whole show dedicated to deconstructing Dothraki?

[chomolat]

Actually yes, yes I was going exactly for that.

Alright. Sorry for not getting it. Why chomolat and not just chomat?
Edit: Ahh! "Me vafik, zhey khaleesi. Dothraki chomoe mae." from the series. How that hasn't made its way to the vocab. Still, I'm not convinced the meaning fits.

Why not? A formal imperative to replace a subjunctive. I think it works just fine. The "let's" construction seems too colloquial to me.

...Thinking further about Zhey ave kishi fini vekha she asavva, I wonder if Zhey ave kishi fini vekhi she asavva would work - or be even better. A relative pronoun in a second person sentence seems a bit odd, but it works unproblematically in English (and in Finnish), so why not in Dothraki too.

This only if you actually need that verb there, which I'm not convinced about.

khalasar shafki jadi

We have a word rhaesh, which is pretty good approximation of kingdom, IMO, but I think I like khalasar better. It's a good culturalization. I'm less sure about jadat. It's a literal translation, but sounds too concrete to me. Especially since khalasars can travel and thus don't need to metaphorically "come". Of course you might think of it literally even in English: the kingdom descending from the heaven, ie. moving here. I've always thought of it more as "to come into being", "to begin to exist". I might go with yolat.
And I'd use that newfound impersonal command thingie even here. So I'd propose
Yolates khalasar shafki.

Not sure about this. Isn't "rhaesh" more like "land, country"? It would in any case fail to give the feeling of the realm and its structure, so I prefer to err on the side of the culture. Maybe a compromise with "khalrhaesh", "rhaesh khali"?
Why use "yolat"? "be born"? Isn't that too much interpretation? All translations use "come", why not go by that? The fact that a khalasar can actually "come" might be just a happy event that would help this culture assimilate the prayer.

dirge shafki ti* she sorfosor ven she asavva "Thy thought be done in earth as in heaven" ?
* somebody knows the full conjugation for tat? (I'm going for formal imperative here)

Tat should conjugate regularily save for the past singular, where there's that curious irregular epenthetic e at the beginning. Ti should indeed be the formal imperative. The end of the sentence sounds promising to me, though ven needs to be in front of both arguments. I'd change dirge to athzalar. It's just "hope" in the vocabulary, but as a nominalization of zalat, I think the meaning should be spot on. But all in all I'm not at all sure, how that "thy will be done" might work in dothraki. I'll hazard an uninspired guess:
Tates ki athzalari shafki, ven she sorfosor ven she asavva.

The parsing is almost always "sicut in caelo et in terra" even in Ancient Slavic, maybe "ven she sorfosor ma she asavva"?

[-i]

Well wouldn't Chomo be the formal imperative? Giving us "be honored!". I think that's quite close.

Well, kinda, but not really. I had to check the formal imperative myself, to be clear on this, but this is how it goes: for consonant ending stems /-i/, nothing to vowel ending. In negative grade the /-i/ or otherwise the final vowel of the stem changes to o. So for chomolat 'chomo' would be a correct formal imperative, but I don't think that was what you were going for.

Actually yes, yes I was going exactly for that.

I could help with those. The exercises wouldn't be for the wiki, right?
And how could I do so? How could I get started?

Cool then! Keep up that great work. Can I help in any way at all?

Basically it's because it was a name created by George RR Martin in the books before any of the grammar was even created.

My guess is that David would probably explain the discrepancy with some historical reasoning in that the genitive form -i might be a recent development in the language while Vaes Dothrak is probably an archaic form but since it is a proper name the form has not changed. That would be my guess at least but ultimately the reason is that the things GRRM created for the books don't always work 100% consistently so some tweeks are needed when you create a formal grammar.

Thanks for the answer. You know, I kind of guessed that, but I remember that in the first days of Dothraki I read that it would have something similar to the Russian genitive, now we all know that's the inanimate accusative, but back then there was too little info and I thought something like that would explain the form. I thought maybe he had already addressed the discrepancy in some way, but also know that Martin didn't have a grammar in mind when making the names up.

I wonder if it could be explained as an apposition of "city" and "rider".

[Vaes Dothrak]

I don't know if this has been mentioned already... but... why is it Vaes Dothrak?

I mean, why doesn't dothrak use a genitive?

[Chomo]

Well wouldn't Chomo be the formal imperative? Giving us "be honored!". I think that's quite close.

From here I'm a little bit lost. Do we have a word for "daily"?

Its reasonable, as the use in the prayer is kind of past-tensish, anyway.

Keep up the good work!

But it's actually a formal imperative.

Have anybody included the words mentioned by David in the Reddict AMA or something like that?

[Chomo]

Well wouldn't Chomo be the formal imperative? Giving us "be honored!". I think that's quite close.

From here I'm a little bit lost. Do we have a word for "daily"?

[Zhey ave kishi fin she asavva...]

The Lord's prayer could be very interesting in Dothraki!

Let's give it a try then:
Zhey ave kishi fin she asavva... "Our father who is in heaven"

maybe: hake shafki nem chomo "thy name be honored" ?

khalasar shafki jadi "thy horde come" ?

dirge shafki ti* she sorfosor ven she asavva "Thy thought be done in earth as in heaven" ?
* somebody knows the full conjugation for tat? (I'm going for formal imperative here)

[ingsve]

Thank you so much, ingsve.

Then I can proudly parade my new signature in Dothraki! It really is a very interesting well-rounded language, can't wait to know more about it.