Messages

121

Beginners / Re: Some substitutes for words not in Dothraki

« on: January 10, 2014, 12:36:28 am »

The missing /l/ in ildak is definitely a typo.  The word order bit I was not aware of, but it makes sense.

122

Introductions / Re: Fanfic writer wants his Dothraki quotes accurate

« on: January 10, 2014, 12:28:40 am »

To clarify, the fanfic is in English with some Dothraki words and phrases added

http://archiveofourown.org/works/802600
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9291697/1/Queen-In-The-North

Basic plot: Rhaego is born healthy. The dragons hatch. Daenerys keeps much of Drogo's khalasar. They head straight to Westeros, where they find Robb, who is still unmarried.

Sounds like an interesting premise. I am looking forward to reading it!

123

Beginners / Re: Some substitutes for words not in Dothraki

« on: January 09, 2014, 01:57:57 pm »

Here's a couple of additional thoughts.

For 'smith', you might consider something like shiqethi idak - 'iron striker', or perhaps more generically, tawak idak - 'metal striker'. A term for 'smith', though is a good candidate for a future word, seeing how valuable a skill this was in those days.

I would be careful messing with dosh khaleen, though. This is a proper noun, and is one of the original GRRM words. Its meaning or derivability may not be quite what we expect. This would be a very interesting question for the IRC chat.

124

Introductions / Re: Fanfic writer wants his Dothraki quotes accurate

« on: January 09, 2014, 01:31:41 pm »

M'ath, zhey KingAlan1!

Welcome to the Dothraki/Valyrian community! It sounds like you have quite a project going, and I wish you well (GRRM's wishes notwithstanding   ). One cannot help but writing fan fiction for such a rich world!

You have already found most of the resources there are, and you have found Qvaak as well! My background and feelings are very similar to Qvaak, except the only natural language I speak is English. In addition to Dothraki, I also speak Na'vi, which right now is my main focus. I try to stay active enough in Dothraki though, to not lose what I have learned, and to move forwards as I much as I can. Although I will bow the knee to Qvaak and Ingsve in terms of Dothraki (and general linguistics) knowledge, I will also help out whenever the opportunity arises.

In any case, welcome, and I hope your project goes really well!

125

Beginners / Re: Summertime Sadness in Dothraki, anyone want to check this translation?

« on: January 02, 2014, 01:32:47 pm »

Wow! Somehow, I missed this one! And as an administrsator, I check this site almost every day

Thank you, Zhey Qvaak for always being willing to take these on and do a great job at them. Alas, I have not have the time I used to have to really get into translations like this, but this definitely looks like one worth studying!

126

David's Dothraki blog / Re: Any good filter or collection of blog posts?

« on: December 19, 2013, 12:44:36 pm »

Thanks, Qvaak! I had forgotten about that page.

127

David's Dothraki blog / Re: Any good filter or collection of blog posts?

« on: December 18, 2013, 01:06:58 pm »

As far as I know, nothing like that exists, but it ought to exist. The Na'vi community now has in forum index page for Paul frommer's blog posts. There is no reason that couldn't be done here.

In the meantime, have you looked at Sunquan8094's videos on the Dothraki beginner's page? He's got some nice tutorials there you might find helpful.

128

Beginners / Re: No accusative marker on 'horse'?

« on: December 05, 2013, 07:01:02 pm »

Keep in mind that 'animate' and 'inanimate' do not necessarily completely follow whether or not an item is alive or not. It is a kind of 'gender', and in linguistics, 'gender' doesn't necessarily have to do with sex, like you see in French and Spanish. In fact, David Peterson has indicated that inanimate and animate words correspond to a not-totally-explained gender system of 'grass words' and 'sky words'. Thinking on this, it is not totally implausible for hrazef to be inanimate, as a horse is a terrestrial animal and eats much grass.

There are some other horse terms that are animate, though.

129

Beginners / Re: Adjectives

« on: November 18, 2013, 01:00:51 pm »

There was a movement earlier in the last century among scientifically literate English speakers to 'modernize' English by dropping some of these epenthetic letters. For instance, 'modernize' would become 'moderniz'. Although I got used to it, reading their writings was annoying at first.

130

Beginners / Re: Adjectives

« on: November 15, 2013, 01:18:20 pm »

All this said, how much 'wiggle room' is there in applying or not applying an epehthetic /e/?

Some people, especially speakers of languages other than English might have no problem pronouncing something that English speakers would append an /e/ to. There would be no agreement between these two people on whether or not the /e/ is really needed.

131

Beginners / Re: Pleaaasseee help!

« on: November 10, 2013, 08:20:48 pm »

The activity level here is not nearly as high as the Na'vi site!

132

Beginners / Re: Questionnaire for Dothraki learners

« on: November 04, 2013, 01:27:31 pm »

As I am active in both communities, I gave you a response for both languages!

133

Beginners / Re: First few days

« on: October 27, 2013, 08:48:25 pm »

And of course, don't be afraid to ask questions, even dumb questions. When you are learning something new, there are no dumb questions.

134

Beginners / Re: First few days

« on: October 26, 2013, 02:12:20 pm »

Most of the linguistic terms seem to have their root in Latin, so there 'voca' or something like it means 'voice'.

It takes some getting used to linguistic terminology. It is sometimes hard to grasp that we have such complex words to describe something as natural as talking and listening. In the early days, the Na'vi community had an 'Introduction to Linguistic Terminology'. I suspect it is way out of date, as it appeared in the first couple of weeks of the community's existence. I think that this might be a good document to borrow and adapt for Dothraki (and probably Valyrian as well). For instance, gemination (double consonants) is really important in Dothraki, and is not used in Na'vi at all.

Although I have not watched many of them, Sunquan's videos are excellent.

There are a number of 'marker' words in Dothraki. In general, they are kind of like signs or placeholders, that suggest that some linguistic function is about to take place. Zhey, as has laready been pointed out, is like the English 'O', before a name or title, and pretty much used the same way.

I would not say that Dothraki follows the rules of English as much as it follows the basic rules of all languages. Anons, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, conjunctions, subjects, objects, particles, etc. They pretty much do the same thing in nearly all languages, and the terms to describe them attempt to standardize their meaning across all languages.

This is the 'high road' way to learn a language. This is the tougher way to learn, but there really isn't a 'low road' (like Rosetta Stone) way to learn Dothraki yet. The other advantage to the 'high road' way is it makes learning other languages much easier in the future. And if you are at all like me, it opened up a whole new world of meaning in language!

135

Beginners / Re: First few days

« on: October 25, 2013, 07:27:33 pm »

M'athchomaroon, zhey  KhalToddy.
The somewhat complex declension and conjugation systems for Dothraki can be intimidating, especially for someone who has no experience with foreign languages. I was almost in that category when I started working with Dothraki.

One really important thing that is not obvious to a beginning user is the words given in the dictionary or the wiki are not in their most basic form, especially for nouns and verbs. You've picked up on some of this already, but basically, nouns are given in their nominative case and verbs in the infinitive (i.e. to verb) What does this mean?

Dothraki uses cases on nouns to indicate their function in the sentence: subject, object, 'possesive', or if they are indicating the action is moving towards or away from the subject. English is different. it uses word order to indicate a noun's function in a sentence.

Very carefully study the noun declension charts in the grammar section of the wiki. You will notice that the basic 'stem' form of the word is used when it is the object or accusative case. So, unless the noun is the object of the sentence, it will always have one of the suffixes attached to it. Although an effort has been made to explain things simply, the terminology takes some getting used to. If you don't understand a term, look it up online. Wikipedia is your friend here.

Verbs are a bit more complex. The infinitive form of a verb, as given in the dictionary, is not the most useful form of a verb, as most sentences do not need the extra 'to' in them. The only tense without any prefixes or suffixes is past tense. There is also a suffix difference, if the verb is used in a positive or negative sense. So, a 'stem noun' has no suffixes, and is past tense, indicative form (opposite of infinitive), and positive grade. Everything else needs suffixes, and in some cases prefixes. Again, study the conjugation chart very carefully!

On many words, especially nouns, it is hard to determine if the correct nominative ending is -at or -lat. On words that have a misleading ending, look in the wiki. Most words that have a misleading ending have their stem form shown, so you can learn what the correct endings are, that you can use.

Don't be afraid to ask questions. there are several folks who watch this list and are always glad to help!