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David Peterson has just placed in his blog, a very important new entry containing a variety of common phrases, along with (canonical!) audio examples of how to properly say them. Learning a new language that has no learning aids is a tremendous challenge. Having some ready-made stock phrases can give you some immediate working vocabulary, along with important keys to pronunciation and grammar. Time taken to learn and memorize these phrases will take you a long way on your journey to learn Dothraki!

http://www.dothraki.com/2011/10/hajas-zhey-khal/#comments

Hajas!
Hrakkar

There has been some discussion about doing some IRC chats among ourselves (but David Peterson is always welcome to join us!). So, rather than clutter up the 'IRC with DP thread', I started this one so that we can freely discuss this topic and get some chats organized.

[qe]

While creating IPA for a whole list of Dothraki words this evening, I got quite an education on how things should sound. But I did see a couple things that raised some questions.

Some vowels have different sounds after a Q. There are also a couple of cases where an intervening w does not affect the change in the vowel sound. So, the e would sound the same in qe and qwe. Is the same thing true of other vowels, such as qa/qwa ?

How rough is the kh sound supposed to be? Mild, like the 'Bach' example given, or really rough like H sound in Klingon?

The more I play around with Dothraki, the more beautiful and awesome this language is becoming to me!

David Peterson will be in Reno, Nevada this week for the World Science Fiction convention!

Although I haven't looked at the program yet, I have been told he is giving a number of presentations, most of them on Dothraki. One of these is supposedly a workshop on the Dothraki language! I plan to attend as many of these as I can, and I will report back here what I have learned.

So at Worldcon, I will be dabbling in Na`vi, Klingon and Dothraki (and who knows what else!). Looks like it is going to be an intense week!

[hrakka]

I just got back from a train trip to/from Denver, Colorado (train broke down in the middle of nowhere-- both engines failed! Stock without power for 11 hours, until we were towed into Elko, NV by a freight engine.) I used this time to read GoT cover-to-cover, so now I can more fully understand what is discussed here.

One question though-- The word for 'white lion' given in the dictionary is hrakka The word in the book (2 places) is hrakkar. What is the difference? (no clue on the grammar page) Is one word right over the other? Should my user name be Hrakkar instead of Hrakka?

Hello everyone on this new list. Some of you might know me from Learnnavi, where I go by the name of `Eylan Ayfalulukanä. As I see it, any language that has, among its first 100 words, a word for 'lion' (let alone 'white lion') is a language worth learning!  (I am a total lion nut, and a real-life lionkeeper.)

I don't plan to be real active here (lots of work to do on Na`vi first!), but do plan to check on things periodically as I have time, and a chance to read the books.