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Dothraki memrise courses

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Ifak:
Okay quick reply, it's really late, so I'll get into details tomorrow.

I know how words change when you actually use the language more than in English. I'm Slovenian (watch this youtube video if you're into languages and stuff http://bit.ly/1nK4KFY).

I know that it would be impossible to teach people how to use the language with this course, the idea is just to familiarize people with some common words. But I would sure love to get advice on how to make it easier to transition into learning the "rules" of the language, like adding info whether the noun is animate or not (whats the word for "rules" of the language again?).

So far I've made a couple of lists of words:
Everyday words like yes, no, maybe, nothing, why, ...
common deeds like to sleep, to eat, to drink, ...
common adjectives like beautiful, dry, wet, dirty, ...
common animals,
colors
and
numbers 0 - 10

I'll try to figure out what you wrote in the second half of your message tomorrow after I get some sleep.

Ifak:
Allright here's the rest of it...

I too was thinking of adding information about animacy to the nouns. I think it's useful to know and people who don't want to learn it can still easily ignore it. I was going to do it with (an) and (in) next to the words to avoid clutter but I like your idea with the full word better, it's more fluent and I think easier for the brain to remember if the full word (animate)/(inanimate) is next to the noun.

I see what your trying to say when it comes to verbs, but it makes me just a tiny bit anxious to deviate from the norm and teach them in anything but the infinitive form. I'm not familiar with anything but the present time conjugations (that's as far is I've gotten in my learning), but I see how teaching the stem only would be better, because I know sometimes with werbs that end with -lat you can't know if the ending is actually -lat or just -at. But that's all I know about that.

The part with the adjectives I didn't really understand. I'm sorry, here's where the fact that I'm a total beginner becomes a problem I guess.

About the pronouns, not sure if I want to go into all that, because the course is going to teach the basic and common words only. But I see how teaching the nominative declination only isn't very helpful. So I'm not sure if I should teach everything or nothing (course would have no pronouns). That wouldn't be a tragedy since this course will be made with the other lessons in mind (you need to combine the course with other lessons in order to learn anything). Maybe using all of those declinations would overcomplicate a course that's trying to teach the simplest beginner words.

While writing this, I had an idea of maybe making a separate level (courses are devided into levels) that teaches animacy only. So in a few levels you learn a bunch of words and they have animacy in the brackets next to it as we said before, but then in a separate course you get a word and you have to choose if it's animate or inanimate. Sou you would have two chances to learn and improve the knowledge of this, in my mind, most tedious part of the Dothraki language.

Another thing. This course is just an idea that I've come up with. If anyone with more experience or knowledge wants to take over I'd be perfectly fine with that, since as I've said before, I'm not really an authority on the Dothraki language and I'm also only a beginner learner. I don't want to withold any rights from other eager individuals.

To sum up, I'd like to maybe see what other people think about the stems only idea, and what you think about evading the pronouns completely. Maybe you could also give me a more detailed explanation on the adjectives thing. Sorry for the wall of text.

Qvaak:

--- Quote ---I'm Slovenian (watch this youtube video if you're into languages and stuff http://bit.ly/1nK4KFY).
--- End quote ---
Har! Crazy enough :P Dual is a nice feature. I gotta say, though, that the video slightly over-emphasizes the issue. Even in English you'd get from single "Have you eaten?" to three or four options "Has she/he[/it] eaten?", "Have they eaten?" by simply changing to third person.


--- Quote ---Another thing. This course is just an idea that I've come up with. If anyone with more experience or knowledge wants to take over I'd be perfectly fine with that, since as I've said before, I'm not really an authority on the Dothraki language and I'm also only a beginner learner. I don't want to withold any rights from other eager individuals.
--- End quote ---
Go forth. More/better Memrise courses would be cool, but since noone yet has done them, you are the most promising candidate. This is a small group of people, us active/semiactive Dothraki connoseurs. Your contribution will be appriciated. And you seem to be having a good grasp of things.


--- Quote ---I'm not familiar with anything but the present time conjugations (that's as far is I've gotten in my learning), but I see how teaching the stem only would be better, because I know sometimes with werbs that end with -lat you can't know if the ending is actually -lat or just -at. But that's all I know about that.
--- End quote ---
The /-lat/ versus /-at/ confusion is all there is to that, really, but it's a nasty little issue.
If you know present tense conjugation, you know pretty much the whole conjugation. Past is super simple (Dothraki basically just flaunt the whole business of conjugating there, only marking plurals) and future is even simpler (it's not an independent scheme, just prefix addition to present tense scheme).


--- Quote ---About the pronouns, not sure if I want to go into all that, because the course is going to teach the basic and common words only. But I see how teaching the nominative declination only isn't very helpful. So I'm not sure if I should teach everything or nothing (course would have no pronouns).
--- End quote ---
You could add a limited selection of pronouns/cases. If you give only singular pronouns and only nominative, accusative and genitive, that's mere nine words and fairly useful set. I was thinking you wanted to give a nice starting packet, and pronouns are usually one of the first things people want to learn.
Slovene (as I'm just reading from Wikipedia) and my own Finnish are both pro-drop languages. We can say simple stuff like "I kissed a girl" or "You are beautiful" without using pronouns, trusting the verb conjugation to convey the subject. Dothraki does not generally allow this, even when the verb conjugation marks the subject - they like the redundancy, you might say. So knowing pronouns is a little more important in Dothraki than it is in our native languages.


--- Quote ---Maybe you could also give me a more detailed explanation on the adjectives thing. Sorry for the wall of text.
--- End quote ---
Wall of text! Let me tell you about adjectives and show what a real wall of text looks like! ... well, hopefully not :P

There are many ways to categorize verbs, but one is this: Some verbs are momentary acts, some are sustained actions. But some aren't about doing anything at all, just about being in some state, like sitting, lying, sleeping, living. We call these stative verbs. All Dothraki adjectives have also stative verb forms (all true adjectives, that is - not participles).

One might even take this further and say that speaking of adjectives as a separate category of words is not the best analysis of Dothraki at all. One might instead postulate that some stative verbs in Dothraki are simply adjectival. Those adjectival verbs can be integrated into noun phrases, and if they are, they lose their verb inflection pattern and adapt a simpler inflection pattern dependent on the noun they modify.

So, in this analysis we have eg. an adjectival verb zhokwalat, to be big. Thus we can say "Jano zhokwae." - "The dog is big." But it's cumbersome to say "Jano fini zhokwae osta anni." - "The dog which is big bites me." or "Anha tihak jan fini zhokwae." - "I see the dog which is big," so it comes as no surprise that we can integrate the adjectival verb into the noun phrase and say "Jano zhokwa osta anni." - "The big dog bites me." or "Anha tihak jan zhokwa." - "I see the big dog." If you really wanted to run with this idea, you might probably call this adjective a strong participle or somesuch.

But yeah, the gist of the rambling is that verbs and adjectives aren't as separate as they are in most languages. You need to be able to use adjectives as verbs to speak proper Dothraki, and those stative verbs derived from adjectives are only a small fraction more separate words than different conjugations. So it makes little difference if you learn the words as adjectives or in their verb form. If you learn verbs by their stem, then it makes even less difference.

Ifak:
Thanks. That really cleared things up. I like this idea a lot and I was thinking that instead of deviating from the norm and teaching verbs with stems only, what if I would teach the adjectives first, and then in another level the same words in their verb (and infinitive) forms. With this, the people would learn both the verbs and adjectives and how they are connected and they would already know the words so it wouldn't really be extra work. But I notice that not all adjectives have a verb form, like the adjective ath (dry). There is no athat in the dictionary.

Qvaak:

--- Quote ---But I notice that not all adjectives have a verb form, like the adjective ath (dry). There is no athat in the dictionary.
--- End quote ---
That's just because the dictionary is incomplete. The verb form is usually listed if we have run into it specifically, and certainly listed, if it seems there might be some extensions past the adjectival meaning (eg. davralat can be used transitively with allative, which goes past the straightforward derivation from adjective). But most of the stuff that can be inferred (even with extreme certainity) is not listed. So there's no real doubt that there is a word athat and it means to be dry.

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