Dothraki Dictionary needs modifications

[Hydrath]

Ok so basically those people who want to learn Dothraki myself included find the dictionary fun but not user friendly,
Changes that I suggest that might help are
1. instead of Dothraki to English, it would be a lot more helpful if it were English to Dothraki, because users are primarily english speaking
2. Pronunciation could maybe be a little clearer because of videos or audios that tell you how to pronounce the words

[Qvaak]

I'm not directly involved in dictionary, but I often update the wiki vocabulary page, which is in many ways the flipside of the same coin, so I think I can answer this.

1. instead of Dothraki to English, it would be a lot more helpful if it were English to Dothraki, because users are primarily english speaking

This is proposed from time to time and would no doubt be a great addition to our arsenal. We actually do have a reversed dictionary: http://docs.dothraki.org/ikarhtoD.pdf ... I don't know where you found our dictionary, but the reverse is linked at least on out wiki's learning hub: http://wiki.dothraki.org/dothraki/Learning_Dothraki
Anyway, yes, reversed dictionary isn't exactly the English - Dothraki dictionary you might have hoped for. And the reasons are many. Basically it's just hard work to create and much harder to maintain. There aren't too many of us, who actively work on documenting the language, and the time we can spend on this is often scarce.

Dothraki is not open to public in it's entirety. HBO comissioned it and owns it. We document what we learn. We don't know all words, and we don't fully understand all the words we know. And then things get really complicated, when we notice that Dothraki is created to simulate a natural language. It does that to a great detail, warts and all. So, as with any normal foreign language, Dothraki words don't have one-on-one relationship with English words. When we learn a new word, it's relatively easy to add it to the Dothraki - English dictionary: you add one entry where you explain the new word as best you can, in concise dictionary manner. Usually you just offer a couple of English words that you feel best approximate the field of meaning the Dothraki word carries. If you were to add a new Dothraki word to English - Dothraki dictionary, you would need to create many entrys, for all synonyms of all words in the field of meaning. Then you'd need to explain in all of them, in what sense the Dothraki word relates to the English concept. Then when you later learned that our understanding of that Dothraki word was a bit off, you'd need to dig all the entries for an update.

2. Pronunciation could maybe be a little clearer because of videos or audios that tell you how to pronounce the words

I don't think I understand. The dictionary has IPA pronunciation guides. Mr. Peterson has given us pretty good guidelines as to how Dothraki is supposed to be pronounced. Sure we don't know every detail about allophones n' such, but that's pretty much all we don't know. I don't think any of us here could make even half decent IPA pronunciation guides just listening to David's pronunciation. The one thing we are missing is stresses. Those could be added, no problem, as they are regular. That just does not feel very helpful, when the stresses shift when the words decline.

[Havazhyol]

If I may add something about pronunciation, you have this video from Lajaki.

Dothraki Pronunciation

And if you work with dothraki->English dictionnary or with the vocab from the wiki, there is still the Ctrl+F key 

Hajas!

[ingsve]

Another place to look would be the audio sources page on the wiki: http://wiki.dothraki.org/dothraki/Audio_sources

I added all the pages of the Blog that have recorded audio. There are probably other examples that need to be added as well but right now it's a start at least.

[Hydrath]

Ok thanks to you all for the help as the thing says I'm a newbie

[Hrakkar]

Sorry for not posting sooner. I have been extremely busy, and am just now beginning to catch up.

I am always interested in what could be done to improve the dictionary. Adding stress marks is something that definitely could be visited, even if stress is fairly regular in Dothraki.

And Qvaak is correct. Searching the Dothraki-English dictionary to find a word is much preferable to looking in the English-Dothraki dictionary. The latter is more useful in cases where searches don't work too well. It is also good when disambiguating between several translated words with close meaning (and Dothraki has its share of those). The English-Dothraki dictionary is auto-generated from the Dothraki-English dictionary. There is very little in it that I can edit. As a result, it is not nearly as accurate as the Dothraki-English dictionary. When I edit the dictionary, keeping the Dothraki-English dictionary clear and accurate is my main goal. translatability into the English-Dothraki dictionary is secondary, and will be as long as we use the tools we currently have to generate this dictionary.

Hope this helps!
Hrakkar

[Qvaak]

Adding stress marks is something that definitely could be visited, even if stress is fairly regular in Dothraki.

More than regularity the problem is with how the stress is not fixed. It rolls here and there when words decline, so the dictionary stress would rarely be helpful.
All verbs, for example, in their infinite form always end in a closed syllable (ie. they end in consonant), so the stress is always on the final syllable. But many common verb forms end in open syllable (ie. in vowel), so then the stress is on the first or, rarely, on the penultimate syllable.

If I get the markings right, the situation is like this:
infinite: [ˌdo.θɾa'lat] stress in the end, on the third syllable
first person present: [do'θɾak] stress still in the end, but on the second syllable, as there is no third
second/third person present: ['do.θɾaˌe] stress at the beginning
past singular: ['do.θɾa] two syllables now, but stress still at the beginning

[Najahho]

Adding stress marks is something that definitely could be visited, even if stress is fairly regular in Dothraki.

More than regularity the problem is with how the stress is not fixed. It rolls here and there when words decline, so the dictionary stress would rarely be helpful.
All verbs, for example, in their infinite form always end in a closed syllable (ie. they end in consonant), so the stress is always on the final syllable. But many common verb forms end in open syllable (ie. in vowel), so then the stress is on the first or, rarely, on the penultimate syllable.

If I get the markings right, the situation is like this:
infinite: [ˌdo.θɾa'lat] stress in the end, on the third syllable
first person present: [do'θɾak] stress still in the end, but on the second syllable, as there is no third
second/third person present: ['do.θɾaˌe] stress at the beginning
past singular: ['do.θɾa] two syllables now, but stress still at the beginning

Sorry, shouldn't it be [do.'θɾaˌe] ? I see 3 syllables there...

[Qvaak]

Sorry, shouldn't it be [do.'θɾaˌe] ? I see 3 syllables there...

Nope. If you think so because of my explanation, I explained badly.
When the final syllable is open, the stress is almost always on the first syllable, regardless the number of syllables. The penultimate syllable is stressed only if it's closed while the final syllable is open:
infinite: [ʒoˌkak.kwa'lat]
first person present: [ˌʒo.kak'kwak]
second/third person present: ['ʒo.kakˌkwa.e]
past singular: [ʒo'kak.kwa] ...there!

[Najahho]

Right right, don't know why I thought it was second from last.

[Lajaki]

I kind of just want to apologise. When I first made this dictionary, I based it off the LN dictionary. When I made that, I based it off a 50-word list I did for an Old English assignment for uni. That was four years ago, before I had learned much about computers - I didn't know any programming languages at the time, and wrote the thing in LaTeX. I would do everything differently now.

Sorry that you guys are still dealing with this. I agree, it needs to be updated.

Just felt like I should say that. :/

[Hrakkar]

Its not all THAT bad, although I have learned some things about coding in the process.

Tuiq is working on an improved version of Eana Eltu/Blue Brain, although I would be open to something else as well. I have also experimented with doing this with a WYSIWYG word processer, and I think this database driven system works much better. It is also allowing folks like Havazhyol and Niqqo to build French and Spanish versions of the dictionary as well, something that would be a lot of work with WYSIWYG. (I am also working on a Dotharki-Na'vi dictionary, but work there has been temporarily suspended while I deal with some unusually intenase stuff going on at work, and the cat world.)

I am hoping to get an update on the Dothraki dictionary out in the next couple of days, although 3.071 is pretty much up to date now.