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http://www.learnnavi.org

`Eylan Ayfalulukanä means 'Thanator's friend' in Na`vi. I'll have to look up what zhavvorsi means, but it is an interesting sounding word (like Hrakkar became when it was discovered the trailing R had been left off in the dictionary entrys!)

Or, how about the 'common' language, which sounds suspiciously like English in the book and TV show, but is probably something very different....

Are you active in the Na`vi community as well? (I am `Eylan Ayfalulukanä in that world)

I find that Dothraki and Na`vi complement each other, as kind of opposites. But there is still a lot of stuff about Dothraki that is missing. So, I guess we will all have fun learning.

[hrak.kar]

Wow, I have missed all this discussion going on! It it all very interesting, and I need to read it all very carefully (and I think this helps with certain aspects of Na`vi as well).

I have been practicing hrak.kar and hra`.kar so far (I tend to use ` for the glottal stop because it is on the keyboard, and I do not know the unicode for many of the IPA characters) , and am not sure yet which I like better. I will also have to listen to the DP talk when my busy schedule allows me to.

I guess in my 'set ways' in looking for a version number, I have not noticed the date before (my mind does that sometimes, and it is annoying). A date is sufficient for the purpose.

Ok, I'll try to do something like that.

So what's the general purpose for it? So that people who have downloaded a copy of the dictionary can easily see how up to date it still is?

That is correct. Otherwise, it is hard to tell how old a given copy of the dictionary is. Using a date would do the same thing. Lajacki did both a number and a date. I am surprised he wasn't doing it with the Dothraki dictionary. It might be because it started out smaller than the Na`vi dictionary, and is evolving more slowly.

I will have to find Lajacki's description of how his versioning worked, but you have the right general idea. Small changes like a error correction, got a number change in the third place from right of the decimal point. A bunch of new words, a change in grammar, etc. got a change in the second place. A major shift n something got a change in the first place. A wholesale reworking got a change on the number to the left of the decimal point. Those kinds of changes got to be rare after we had a reasonably good understanding of the grammar, etc. So, the Na'vi dictionary has ben on version 11.xxx for quite some time now. (The current version is 11.87, the last with Taronyu/Lajaki as editor). Above all, it is not rocket science.

Now that there has been a changing of the guard regarding the dictionary, this would be a good time toi suggest assigning version numbers to the dictionary each time it is updated. As the version that was just updated today represents a major upgrade, maybe this would be the place to start with 1.0. Lajaki has a numbering scheme he used with LearnNavi's dictionary, and that might be good to adopt here as well.

I read with sadness the announcement over on LearnNavi about our beloved Taronyu (as known in that world) backing out over there as well. I hope all goes well for Richard/Lajaki/Taronyu and that he can find the time to come over here and enjoy these languages when he has the chance.

I can't even pretend to be a linguist. But if there is any way I can contribute to the development of this site or its various tools, I am interested.

[hrakkar]

I don't think you hear the /k/-sound twice as in a stutter. It's more like a long /k/-sound if that makes sense.

Yeah. We double consonants like p, k and t in Finnish (Finnish is very close to Estonian, which I think Peterson has mentioned as one of the inspirations) and it's likely that goes the same way in Dothraki. More than stutterlike real doubling it's just a very short pause and then the plosive sound, like hra'kar. Only not quite. Actually you close the air flow, then give a shortest pause and then release the plosive, so yeah, it's pretty accurately described as a long k-sound.

At least this is how I think I do it. I'm no phonologist and can not quickly find any source to corroborate my explanation.

Hmmm... every conlanger seems to like Estonian! I have a good friend at work who speaks Estonian fluently. I'll ask him about that. In any case, this is helpful. (The extra r at the end of hrakkar makes for a much more challenging pronunciation!)

[hrakkar]

David confirms that it should be hrakkar.

That was easy to fix. (I am assuming that this would syllabify as hrak-kar?
Thanks for asking DP about this.

How would one go about getting this corrected? Also, it it easy to change ones' username?

[Hrakka]

Hrakka is from Lajaki's dictionary. I just checked the wiki dictionary, and it is hrakka there as well.

[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?

Maybe this is somewhat of a noobish question. Would things that are alive be automatically animate (many in the exception list)? Or is animate/inanimate a linguistic thing?