First attempt at Dothraki

[pinkunicorn]

I made my first attempt at Dothraki today and came up with "anha lekhaan ki dothraki" to mean that I'm learning Dothraki. Did I get anywhere close? If not, why?

[Hrakkar]

How about Anha ezzok anhaan Dothraki lekh
Lit. 'I teach to myself (the) Dothraki language'.

[Qvaak]

Always nice to see new people dip their toe on Dothraki. Welcome, pinkunicorn.

anha lekhaan ki dothraki
That's not terribly close, though it is, in a way, an interesting attempt. I'm not sure, if you are just very very beginner, or if you are trying to find an interesting way to express the idea.

Anha ezzok anhaan Dothraki lekh
That is closer (which is no wonder, since Hrakkar has been around for quite a while). One clear error is with "Dothraki lekh". "Dothraki" as a language is in Dothraki lekh Dothraki, language of Dothraki. "Dothraki" is in genitive and genitive always comes after the noun it modifies.

Also, lekh should not be left in nominative. If you use ezzolat right, lekh goes almost certainly into accusative, which is lekhes (animate to distinquish it from "tongue").

Ditranstitives are tricky, though, and I'm not sure, how ezzolat would work. We have two objects, the person taught and the matter taught. Almost certainly one goes into accusative and another one is dealt in some other way, either with preposition or some specific case without preposition.

Then there's the matter of Dothraki reflexive. Dothraki has a special way to deal with "myself", nemo. If the person taught is in accusative, or if nemo just seeks the right object role by what makes sense or what is ommitted, you won't use a repeat of anha, you use reflexive. But because the ditransitive, it might be that nemo just does not work.

So for this idea "teach myself" idea we have something like
Anha nemo ezzok lekhes Dothraki. (lekh main object, but reflexive works)
Anha nemo ezzok lekhi Dothaki. (lekh not main object, here I'm trying on the "topic class" genitive, but that's just a stab in the dark)
Anha ezzok anhaan lekhes Dothraki. (lekh main object, and reflexive does not work)


The straightforward "I'm learning Dothraki" is not that straightforward either, because there's also the old problem of choosing the "learn" word. I think ezolat should work, though, so going simple, the sentence would be
Anha ezok lekhes Dothraki.

[Hrakkar]

Thanks, zhey Qvaak! I knew you would come along and set things straight.

[pinkunicorn]

Always nice to see new people dip their toe on Dothraki. Welcome, pinkunicorn.

anha lekhaan ki dothraki
That's not terribly close, though it is, in a way, an interesting attempt. I'm not sure, if you are just very very beginner, or if you are trying to find an interesting way to express the idea.

Anha ezzok anhaan Dothraki lekh
That is closer (which is no wonder, since Hrakkar has been around for quite a while). One clear error is with "Dothraki lekh". "Dothraki" as a language is in Dothraki lekh Dothraki, language of Dothraki. "Dothraki" is in genitive and genitive always comes after the noun it modifies.

Also, lekh should not be left in nominative. If you use ezzolat right, lekh goes almost certainly into accusative, which is lekhes (animate to distinquish it from "tongue").

Ditranstitives are tricky, though, and I'm not sure, how ezzolat would work. We have two objects, the person taught and the matter taught. Almost certainly one goes into accusative and another one is dealt in some other way, either with preposition or some specific case without preposition.

Then there's the matter of Dothraki reflexive. Dothraki has a special way to deal with "myself", nemo. If the person taught is in accusative, or if nemo just seeks the right object role by what makes sense or what is ommitted, you won't use a repeat of anha, you use reflexive. But because the ditransitive, it might be that nemo just does not work.

So for this idea "teach myself" idea we have something like
Anha nemo ezzok lekhes Dothraki. (lekh main object, but reflexive works)
Anha nemo ezzok lekhi Dothaki. (lekh not main object, here I'm trying on the "topic class" genitive, but that's just a stab in the dark)
Anha ezzok anhaan lekhes Dothraki. (lekh main object, and reflexive does not work)


The straightforward "I'm learning Dothraki" is not that straightforward either, because there's also the old problem of choosing the "learn" word. I think ezolat should work, though, so going simple, the sentence would be
Anha ezok lekhes Dothraki.

Thanks for a number of options. I'll sit down later and try to understand better how they work.

Could you say a few words about what I actually said in my first attempt? I didn't see a "learn" verb, so I tried something like "I'm moving towards the Dothraki language" (using allative). Or that was the idea, at least.

[Qvaak]

Are you using the wiki's vocab page or the pdf dictionary? Both should be easy enough to search through with find function (Ctrl+f or what ever it is on your OS). Of course if you have printed the dictionary, things can get more difficult. And if you use English to Dothraki dictionary, well, that thing is automatically generated and should be used with caution (there is, I think, a warning about this). You can find "learn" from T section, because it's archived as "to learn".

As I said, it's pretty good attempt, all things considered. It's hard to say, though, what it would mean to Dothraki. If I'm not mistaken, it sounds odd and might evoke some kind of non-standard interpretation. But straightforward translation would be along the lines of "I will become a tongue/language because of the rider(s)/dothrak(i)".

Dothraki don't use copula (was/is/will be), so verbless syntaxes are sort of reserved for that. I'm pretty sure there are expressions that skip the verb and are still interpreted in some other fashion, but I'd say generally when you try to guess how something might work, skipping a verb is not very promising if it's not the straightforward copula situation.

[Hrakkar]

As Qvaak says, the English to Dothraki dictionary has some built-in shortcomings because it is automatically generated (and there is indeed a warning about this in the introduction). Searching the Dothraki to English version is preferable (and you get similar results when you search the wiki). The English to Dothraki dictionary is most useful for looking up words that are too commonly used in English to be easily searchable. I suspect it is also used by folks that just need a word or two of Dothraki and don't want to really lean anything about the language in the process.

If there are multiple words available to express an idea, searching on all those words is generally a good idea. There is often several similar Dothraki words, only one of which most precisely gives the correct meaning.