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This is kind of a late announcement, as the change has already happened.

Originally, the URL for (originally) the Dothraki wiki, and now the Dothraki/Valyrian wiki was wiki.dothraki.org/dothraki/MAIN_PAGE The extra 'dothraki' was at best kind of inconvenient, and at worst a nuisance, especially to Valyrian users of the site.

At AvatarMeet this year, I discussed this with Marki, the administrator of the LearnNavi server (where the Dothraki/Valyrian language stuff all lives). He was already aware there was an issue with the way the entire wiki was originally set up, and he was already thinking about fixing this. Well, it was fixed soon afterwards. Although removing the extra 'dothraki' did not break anything internally (that I am aware of, please let me know if you find something!), it undoubtedly broke links that people have to the wiki. I apologize for this, but this shouldn't be necessary again. This change also poises the site to handle any additional GoT/ASOAIF languages that might come along.

If you have questions about this, don't hesitate to ask them!

The High Valyrian dictionary will be here sooner than you think! 

When Payoang began altering the main Dothraki website to also handle Valyrian, he changed the title to be 'Languages of Westeros'. I think everyone here knows that this is not exactly correct, as Valyrian is little-spoken in Westeros, and Dothraki not at all. So, what would you have for a new title? Here are two I propose:

The languages of Ice and Fire
The Tongues of Ice and Fire

Do you have a better idea?

It would appear that LearnNavi founder and overall administrator 'Seabass' has taken it upon himself to get the Valyrian forums going here. Kirimvose, zhey Seabass (thank you! (in mixed Dothraki/Valyrian)).

I can also report that the frame of the Valyrian wiki has been built, and turned over to some 'Valyrian power users' to begin populating it. Expect to see a link to it soon! Let me know if you are interested in contributing at this early stage and I will give you a link.

I just finished a wonderful day at the BayCon 2013 Science Fiction Convention in Santa Clara, California. One activity planned for the convention was a meetup between David Peterson, Dothraki.org community members Daenerys and CrownOfGold, and myself. This would follow a presentation by David on a panel discussion about creating constructed languages for science fiction stories ad TV.

The panel consisted of David Peterson, writer/linguist Juliette Wade, and a third person who is a television producer/writer. It was a lively and interesting discussion that covered everything from vowel harmony to communication by urine odor. There were about 40 people in attendance, which was a very good attendance for a medium-sized science fiction convention. (We maybe had 30 people for a panel on the Na'vi language back in 2010.)

Completely unannounced, LearnNavi community member Omängum Fra'uti and his wife Jennifer surprised me by showing up for this panel. After the panel, Omängum and Jennifer were invited by David to join us for dinner. We ended up eating at a restaurant that served Chinese dumplings and other tasty things. We finished our evening together at a Chinese pastry shop, where we enjoyed 'egg pastry' while playing a couple rounds of the card game 'Fluxx'. It was an exceptionally fine evening, and capped off what has been the most enjoyable day of 2013 so far!

Here are a few pictures. The first picture shows David during the panel discussion:


Here's a picture of (L to R) Jennifer (who is also a linguist), Omängum Fra'uti and David Peterson, taken while we were waiting for our food to arrive:


Finally, here's a picture of (L to R) CrownOfGold, Daenerys and myself (Yeah, I know I was wearing a Na'vi shirt!):

Keep an eye open for big changes at Dothraki.org. It looks like the changes to support Valyrian will be here sooner rather than later! I'll pst news here as I get it.

[vitteyqoyi]

Here is my attempt to translate the most ubiquitous and universal of all Christmas songs: 'We Wish You a Merry Christmas'!

Last Monday night during the IRC chat, we worked out the chorus, for which David Peterson gave us a word we can use for celebrations, such as Christmas (which the Dothraki very likely do not celebrate!), namely vitteyqoyi So for that we have the following translation:

[Za-LAK VI-tey-qoi DA-vra (qoth sen) We wish you a merry Christmas 3X
Ma fi-re-sof sa-sha la-ya-fa And a happy new year. (layafa is a new word from layafat 'to be happy'.)

These are 'blessed'. But now, we need verses, or at least the first verse. Here is my first try:

Nesikh davra(i) fich kisha Good tidings we bring
Ha yeraan ma yeri okeo(es) To you and your kin
neshikh davra qisi vitteyqoy Good tidings of Christmas
Ma fi-re-sof sa-sha la-ya-fa And a happy new year!

I had to truncate a couple of suffixes to make this reasonably singable. Those are the parts above in parenthesis.
Comments? Ma Qvaak, rip and tear!

[zhalia]

From the wiki, to demonstrate the use of epenthetic /-e/ on inanimate nouns:

        khewo → khewe
        mawizzi → mawizze
        alegra → alegre
        kendra → kendre
        zhalia → zhalie

Per the text given, these all make sense, but the last one. zhalia does not end with a lone vowel. Why does it get the /-e/?

As most of you know, our Dothraki language site is graciously hosted by the folks at LearnNavi. Recently, they have done a major redesign of the LearnNavi homepage. Besides looking much nicer, a link to Dothraki.org is now prominently featured!

Check it out at http://www.learnnavi.org

[Athdavrazar!]

The first season of HBO's Game of Thrones TV series won a Hugo award last night for "Best Dramatic Presentation - long form". This award was given at the 70th World Science Fiction Convention, A.K. A. 'Chicon 7', in Chicago IL. On hand to receive the award was the show's executive producer David Benioff, as well as George R.R. Martin. Commenting on the Award, Mr. Martin commented that he hopes the series will go on 'for many years'. Athdavrazar! to all involved, and I think those of us in the Dothraki speakers' community can certainly share in the excitement!

GRRM's most recent installment in the ASOIAF series, 'A Dance With Dragons' was also up for a Hugo for 'best novel', but it did not win. Perhaps next time!

There is a saying that goes 'To err is human, to really mess things up, it takes a computer...' And so it goes.

It seems that in the super-duper new Learnnavi server, they put such a fast SATA II RAID controller that, if loaded to capacity, it was faster then the motherboard of the computer. Marki (the Learnnavi system administrator, and a first-class nice guy) didn't know about this until he tried to add some additional disk storage. Well, cloning the RAID turned out to be one of those things that 'maxed out' the disk controller, and overloaded the motherboard.

These kinds ofproblems usually result in the hair and blood of the sysadmin being found on the floor of the server room (trust me, its happened to me, too!) In any case, it took a few days to puzzle this out. The ultimate solution was to use the motherboard's SATA controller rather than the accessory card. The system is now slightly slower overall, but it is stable. And not one byte of data was lost, due to the much improved backup strategy.

Its hard to fault anyone for this problem, because the system was a gift from a member of Learnnavi, and is a much better server than the one that was destroyed back in May. Who would have ever known about this problem? modern computer hardware is pretty much 'plug and play'. But demanding maximum performance out of hardware can bring out unknown 'gotchas' like this.

Right now, I am in Chicago, getting ready for Worldcon. But first, there will be a couple of days spent with the Klingon folks. Although Klingon is high on my list to learn, and I am slowly progressing, Na'vi and Dothraki have the priority. And two languages at once are enough!

Here's a very interesting article explaining how the images are captured and manipulated for HBO's 'Game of Thrones' series. Most importantly, it explains how they have moved away from videotape, to a pure file-based production workflow. (Not too many years ago, they would have used film, and many producers still do.)

http://www.studiodaily.com/2012/03/game-of-thrones-goes-tapeless-for-season-2/

Next week, I will be at the National Association of Broadcasters convention. I expect to see a lot of this kind of equipment firsthand. And I bet I will see GoT playing in some vendor's booths! (I will give a report if there is any material worthy of a report.)

[fatilat]

I noticed while I was working on a new version of declension and conjugation tables, a minor error in the verb conjugation example table in the wiki.  The example for the formal imperative, negative grade of fatilat is given as vos fato Based on the text, and on the actual conjugation table, it should be vos fati.

[athahhaqar]

I noticed as I was updating the dictionary this evening, that the wiki entry for the IPA of  athahhaqar has the wrong 'a' following the 'q'.

I also noticed that the definition of ogat 'slaughter' was updated. A second definition was added, which reads, 'to kill brutally as if slaughtering an animal'. These definitions are inconsistent with each other as described. Normally, when you are slaughtering an animal for meat or other body parts, you try to make as quick and clean a kill as possible. While any kind of killing is generally unpleasant, slaughtering an animal is hardly 'brutal'. However, the term 'slaughter' is also used to describe killing brutally or senselessly, often in a war setting. I think the definition should be modified to simply say 'to slaughter an animal, to kill brutally'.

[ivezhofa]

Am I correct in asuming ivezhofa is a new word? I can't seem to build it by inflecting existing words.

[ss]

The Geminate ss is understood to be a letter S followed by another letter S.
Is the geminate or geminate-like ssh equivalent to an S followed by an SH, or an SH followed by an SH? Are there any exceptions to this rule? Would the same rules/exceptions hold for zzh, kkh, cch or tth?

[VTDB files (plug and play)]

Announcing a new tool for learning Dothraki!

One really easy way to learn the vocabulary of a language is to have the words constantly flashed at you by your computer. This screensaver and desktop window program does just that for you. When using your computer, words are flashed at you in a box you can position on the screen. This box is always on top of whatever happens to be on the screen in that area. When not using your computer, a full-screen window flashes words at you. (The program also includes some beautiful pictures to go under the words. You can add your own pictures if you wish.) This software, called 'Virtual Teacher'. It is easy to use and easy to create new vocabulary for. (It includes tools for building new vocabulary.)

I have been using this tool to help learn Na'vi, and now I have created it for Dothraki.

The bad news? The program will cost you $20 (and I don't get anything for promoting it). But you can try it for 30 days without paying for it. I have found it is well worth the modest cost, and it has done more to boost my vocabulary than anything else.

This software, as far as I know, is for Windows platforms only.

This software can be downloaded here: http://vteacher.net/

I am currently maintaining the Dothraki-English vocabulary for this tool. I am looking for someone to do the English-Dothraki part, as I currently do not have time to do both. I try to update the vocabulary lists about once a month.

There are two sets of files available here. VTDB files are designed to to be plugged directly into Virtual Teacher without having to import from text. They are modifiable, but only with the program's tools. These files also contain notes that I have added to each file as I revise them. Text files are easy to edit, (and are updated pretty much every time I update the dictionary), but they must be imported into the program. This is simple to do, but you will probably need to do it a few times before you are comfortable with how it works. They also do not contain any explanatory notes, but you can add them during the import process.

01-20-2012 -  Everything updated to match Lajaki's Dictionary ver 3.022 (01-16-2012)
01-21-2013 -  Everything updated to match Lajaki's Dictionary ver 3.067 (01-21-2012)
The text files are almost always up to date. Hopefully, I will update the VTDB files more often than oce a year!

VTDB files (plug and play)

Basic vocabulary (includes proper nouns)
Dothraki-English_basic_vocabulary.VTDB
Base vocaabulary (does not include proper nouns)
Dothraki-English_base_vocabulary.VTDB

Text files (easiest to modify to your own needs)

Basic vocabulary (includes proper nouns)
Dothraki-English_basic_vocabulary.txt
Base vocaabulary (does not include proper nouns)
Dothraki-English_base_vocabulary.txt

If you are interested in the Na'vi version of the screensaver, the details can be found here.

[javrathat]

In the process of working on the dictionary, I ran across a word with a ambiguous definition. The word is javrathat, which is defined as a verb meaning 'to rein'. I noticed a couple other places where there were words that weren't quite perfect English translations (but still clearly understandable), and wonder if this is another one that is a little more unclear. A strong case can be made for either interpretation.

The first case is for as the definition is written: 'to rein'. Since the Dothraki are horse people, this would make a lot of sense. It is just an odd way to describe controlling a horse by ita reins. (It is interesting to note that there aren't a whole lot of terms for tack yet in the language.)

The second possible interpretation is 'to reign'. Since the storyline that spawned this language deals with leaders, having a word for 'reign' makes perfect sense.

Can anyone shed any light on what is the right meaning?

Here's an interesting article that is apparently from a French periodical. It addresses conlangs in general, and specifically mentions Dothraki, Klingon, Na'vi, Sindarin and Quenya. Examples of each languages are given. I can only understand bits of it, as I do not know much French.

http://www.slate.fr/story/42567/langues-fictives-langues-vivantes

This is a continuation of a discussion started in an introduction thread for Shmosh. The question was, what guttural sounds exist in DOthraki, and how can they be best pronounced? There was discussion about 'kh' and 'q'. Your thoughts and ideas are most welcome!