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Hello there forum!
I'm writing a thesis on constructed languages and Dothraki and since I have some doubts I though to ask the experts! ;D
I'm a newbie, obviously, and while looking at the wiki page for season one's Dothraki dialogue, I found a sentence that I don't understand... I mean, I do understand it, but I don't know why there's a case instead of another.
The sentence is:
Affin shekh yola she jimma ma drivoe she titha / When sun rises from the west and sets in the east
I was wondering why jimma and titha are in their nominative case and not in their ablative/allative form; I know that there is she, which in this case convey the nominative, but why?
I know that this may be a stupid question, but I don't understand... maybe also because I'm one of the few Italians who has never studied Latin, my bad.
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Sorry to get you excited if you thought this was someone answering your question (I'm as new as you are). But wouldn't east and west be lowercase (I'm unfamiliar with nominative versus ablative) because only the direction is specified, not the location? I'm talking about the difference between a relative geographical direction versus a specific region/culture/ethnicity.
The wind blew from the east.
The man came from the East.
In those examples east is used a general direction, while East in English indicates that this man is from a specific location relative to the speaker's. So... they would be nominative, wouldn't they?
I could just not know what I'm talking about. I tend to stick my nose into conversations I have no business being in.
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I didn't think at this possibility and I lost myself in your post...do you think that they (east/west) should be uppercase or lowercase?
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I wouldn't be the one to ask for the Dothraki way, but in English they would be lowercase purely because of their connotation. The speaker isn't pointing to east and west as specific locations or regions, but as a direction.
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Ok, I thought you mean the other way round :)
I don't know, but I think you may be right.
Let's wait for the Dothraki version now :D
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Yes. Let's. ;D
... Want to play a game?
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Uh, by the way, I was reading about verb classes and there is one in which you have to use the genitive with a verb of movement, when the movement is beside another body... I know that neither yolat nor drivolat are verb of movement, but they are describing the sun movements in a metaphorical way... or not?
Uff, I'm blabbering, maybe I just need to rest (and die a little) ;)
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You'd know more about it than I would. :D
And I wanted to try and translate a riddle. I've got most of the pieces, I think, to string together; I just need to hammer out the proper syntax. I'm looking at the riddle, "No sooner spoken than broken. What am I?"
These are the words I've compiled that I think I'd need:
(samva) broken
(vasterat) to converse, to speak with
(ajjin) now
(vos) (negator)
(fini) what (question word, when speaking of an inanimate object)
(me) it, he, she
And what I've got so far is:
Ajjin vaster, me samvaan. Fini me?
Which to me sounds like, "Now speak, it is breaking. What is it?"
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ahahaha no, I'm really blabbering 'cause I read genitive and I thought nominative, and that's why I write it XD oh god, I'm so so so sorry.
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You've got no reason to be sorry. I came butting my nose into your topic. ;D
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I'm sorry for my mind and for you all that have to put up with me in this state XD
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Hey, if you've got somewhere you need to be, feel free to leave me to my own devices here. I'm still trying to work out my riddle. Would it be "Ajjin vaster, me samvaan. Fini me?" or "Vaster ajjin, me samvaan. Fini me?" The latter sounds better in English ("Speak now, it is breaking. What is it?"), but then it would be, "Vaster. Ajjin me samvaan. Fini me?" ("Speak. Now it is breaking. What is it?") And that's if I have my Dothraki grammar right in the first place.
If it were the third option, vaster would no longer be acceptable (if it was to begin with). Sooo...
Anha vasterak. Ajjin me samvaan. Fini me?
Does that work? I'm talking out my ass here.
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whoa. We have rapid discussion on a forum where the regular post frequency is more like once per week! Cool.
Dothraki seem to use ordinal directions mostly adverbially. I asked about this in http://www.dothraki.com/2012/04/valshe-vinesera/ (http://www.dothraki.com/2012/04/valshe-vinesera/) about the line
Ma yer adothrae tith; ma yer heshtith; ma yer valshtith. “You ride east; you southeast; and you northeast.”
Me:
I would have expected the ordinal directions to be in allative. Are ablative and allative used for directions and how does allative differ from accusative then?
And David answered:
I suppose you could treat them as nouns, but they basically function as adverbs. Directions are tied to motion rather than location, initially, so the basic sense is, e.g. “eastly” or “northly”, etc. You could say something like Me dothra jimmoon, “He rode from the west”, but the basic functions are adverbial.
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Probably my fault, Qvaak. I talk far too much. :-X
;D
And there you go, jojinu! There's your answer!
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Well ok then, thank you Qvaak :)
Now that's better, I finally saw the light XD
Can I bother you/the forum with some other doubts if I need to? ^^
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Well ok then, thank you Qvaak
No problem.
Uh, actually, speaking of problems, my take on the situation was a bit off. While I described the general ordinal direction situation, I kinda forgot about the particular text we were discussing somewhere in the middle of researching for the quotes. In your sentence, Affin shekh yola she jimma ma drivoe she titha / When sun rises from the west and sets in the east
, the ordinals are specifically distanced from the normal "eastly" and "westly" use by the use of prepositions. The reason for not using ablative and allative is just in how the expression exactly rolls, IMO. Note that the whole expression is far from literally translated. Literal translation would be "When sun is born in the west and dies in the east". East and west are used as places; sun dies on the east sky and is born on the west sky. Dothraki might even consider that the sun is born from the ground and dies back to it.
Can I bother you/the forum with some other doubts if I need to?
Ya. That's what we are here for. Especially me and Ingsve have a pretty good track record at tackling all kinds of questions. Hopefully most times we get our answers right at the first try.
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Trying to convey in Italian some English explanation of Dothraki, it's a little bit tricky, but I'll make it!
I had some issues with the irresultative (verb) class, but mostly because I had to change the examples, because the Italian meaning of to stab doesn't go well with fruit, imo. (in the irresultative version)
So I change it in rakh vinde jan (the boy stabbed the dog) and rakh vinde janaan (the boy stabbed at the dog)... the allative case has the right declension?
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Trying to convey in Italian some English explanation of Dothraki, it's a little bit tricky, but I'll make it!
I had some issues with the irresultative (verb) class, but mostly because I had to change the examples, because the Italian meaning of to stab doesn't go well with fruit, imo. (in the irresultative version)
So I change it in rakh vinde jan (the boy stabbed the dog) and rakh vinde janaan (the boy stabbed at the dog)... the allative case has the right declension?
Yes, that is correct. In the first example we know that the boy actually managed to stab the dog (that bastard) and in the second example we only know that the boy attempted to stab the dog but we don't know if he was successful or not.
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Me again :)
I was looking at comparative and superlative adjectives: would it be right to say that they uses circumfixes?
If I want to be more specific I mean, because Wiki just says in Dothraki this is done by adding certain affixes to the adjective.
But if I take the stem out, wouldn't they be a(s)--(a)n for the comparison and a(s)---(a)naz for the superlative?
(With as- if the adjective starts with a vowel, I think)
Or they are just considered prefix + suffix?
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Me again :)
I was looking at comparative and superlative adjectives: would it be right to say that they uses circumfixes?
If I want to be more specific I mean, because Wiki just says in Dothraki this is done by adding certain affixes to the adjective.
But if I take the stem out, wouldn't they be a(s)--(a)n for the comparison and a(s)---(a)naz for the superlative?
(With as- if the adjective starts with a vowel, I think)
Or they are just considered prefix + suffix?
Yes, I think they are properly identified as circumfixes. I guess you could perhaps argue that the superlative -az is a suffix to the comparative a(s)- -(a)n but I think that is just splitting hairs.
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Yep. I don't think there's any absolute truth to these things. Categorizing is a tool. The prefixes and suffixes in circumfixes often seem to have enough separate background of separate usage in some special cases that they can be explained apart from each other, but that isn't necessarily beneficial. In practice Dothraki has a lot of very solid circumfixes. I think that was an intentionally acquired feature.
In adjectives you can indeed still see how the prefixes and suffixes work slightly separately, if you really want to look at them that way. Negatives of the adjectives get a prefix /o(s)-/, and then are turned to contrastive by adding the suffix /-(a)n/. If the suffix /-(a)n/ works there as a separate entity turning an absolute quality to a quality relative to something else, we can expect it to do the same with the comparative, and then we can expect the /a(s)-/ to be an entity in it's own right too, some kind of positive grader, perhaps ....and so on.
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I was looking at the syntax page, and while reading the questions section I noticed that Fin shafka okki? it's translated with which will you choose?
Can you explain to me why there's no future tense's prefix?
It may be a stupid question, but I'm trying to understand how things work xD
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I was looking at the syntax page, and while reading the questions section I noticed that Fin shafka okki? it's translated with which will you choose?
Can you explain to me why there's no future tense's prefix?
It may be a stupid question, but I'm trying to understand how things work xD
That seems to be a mistake or simply just an imperfect translation of the English. In English you can often hear people using the future tense of choose even in situations where the choice is clearly in the present. For example, someone picks up an apple from the table and says "I choose this apple" or they might in the same situation say "I will choose this apple". These both examples in the given scenario have the exact same practical meaning eventhough the future tense is used in one example.
It would probably be more clear on the syntax page to change the English part to "Which do you choose?" to avoid confusion.
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Oh, I see, thank you :)
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Sorry for the double post. I have a question about vekhat: there's a specific reason why it assignes the genitive to the subject or it's just an irregularity?
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Sorry for the double post. I have a question about vekhat: there's a specific reason why it assignes the genitive to the subject or it's just an irregularity?
We think it's just an irregularity but there is probably some historical reason for it. I don't think we've gotten an explanation for why it does that and so far I it's the only verb that works that way.
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Sorry for the double post. I have a question about vekhat: there's a specific reason why it assignes the genitive to the subject or it's just an irregularity?
We think it's just an irregularity but there is probably some historical reason for it. I don't think we've gotten an explanation for why it does that and so far I it's the only verb that works that way.
Well, I don't think that's an "irregularity" in the linguistic sense. You can think of verbs that use prepositions, for example, "look", you say "Let me have a look at you", you don't say "Let me look you". That's not an irregularity, that's just how the verb works. You even have "expect" as in "I expect something of you" or better "I expect of you to handle this is a responsible manner" and so on. This is the same thing, inflectional languages sometimes do that with lots of verbs and some even change meaning when different cases are used (think about "think of" and "think for").
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We think it's just an irregularity but there is probably some historical reason for it. I don't think we've gotten an explanation for why it does that and so far I it's the only verb that works that way.
Well, I don't think that's an "irregularity" in the linguistic sense. You can think of verbs that use prepositions, for example, "look", you say "Let me have a look at you", you don't say "Let me look you". That's not an irregularity, that's just how the verb works. You even have "expect" as in "I expect something of you" or better "I expect of you to handle this is a responsible manner" and so on. This is the same thing, inflectional languages sometimes do that with lots of verbs and some even change meaning when different cases are used (think about "think of" and "think for").
Ya, irregularity is perhaps not the best word. What I mean is that it doesn't seem like a general construction that can be applied to many verbs to express a certain meaning but rather it seems like a quirk perticular to this specific verb.