I chatted a bit with David Peterson again today. He wanted to clear up some confusion over a couple of words. I had asked about the words vichomerak and chomak which seemed to have the same meaning and David had also mentioned that using the word chomak while adressing a dothraki would be seen as insulting and he wanted to explain why that is.
First of all, we know these words mainly from the greeting Athchomar chomakea which means "respect to those that are respectful".
To start off we have the root chom which relates to respect. From this we have the verb chomat which means "to be respectful" and the noun athchomar which means "respect".
The other expression we have seen is vichomerat which seems to be the same word but with the circumfix /vi- -er/ added. David explained that this circumfix has the meaning of changing an action verb from something done at an instant into something done for a prolonged time. So while chomat means "to be respectful", vichomerat instead means "to be habitually respectful".
He gave another example as well. The verb tihilat means "to look at, to glace at", vitihirat instead means "to watch, to observe" which would imply prolonged looking.
Now, the reason why using the word chomak (one that is respectful) to a dothraki is insulting is that it implies that someone isn't respectful since you make an overt reference to it. Respect between fellow dothraki is something that is taken for granted so when you overtly refer to a fellow dothraki as being respectful it sends up a red flag. David gave the example of a husband and a wife and trust. Trust between a married couple is something that is taken for granted so when the wife says to the husband "I trust you" it means that she probably doesn't trust him because why would she then need to state it. It's the same way with the word chomat and the dothraki. You don't have to ever state that you trust a fellow dothraki so when you do it implies that you don't really trust them.
As for the uses of chomak and vichomerak that relates to when the dothraki are speaking to people outside the tribe. When they first meet someone that they respect, like Jorah Mormont for example, they might refer to him as chomak, "one who is respected". If they have a long and continuous relationship with someone they respect they would eventually switch and refer to them as vichomerak instead meaning something like "one who is respected for a long time".
Another thing that was learnt from the chat is that there are four different words for the word "that". In the previous chat summary above I mentioned the prefix me- which is a complementizer in the specific sentence used in that example. Today David also used the word fini in an example: Serja fini haja which means "a leather west that is strong". Fini is a complementizer in relative clauses and also translates as "that".
On top of those examples we also have the "that" which appears when we point at something, like that fool. We already know a word for this which is rek but David now tells us that there are two different words used depending on how far away from you something is. Rek refers to something that is further away from you while there is another word that we yet don't know that is used for things that are right next to you or close to you metaphorically.
David also said that we will get lots more info when the Language Creation Conference comes around. They are allowed to release anything they want during talks/presentations so hopefully we will get lots of good info in a few weeks time.
