Lots of frases

[greygandalf]

Hey people. I was creating frases with prepositions just as examples of how we use them and how we modify the noun case. Could anyone with time give a look at them and check what is right and what is wrong? Thanks!

Azho ha yeraan. -> A gift to (for) you.
Anha jad ha krasaajoon. -> I came from the mountain.
Anha addriv mae haji sondroon. -> I killed him because of the dragon glass.
Anha zalak hatif athdrivar. -> I want the opposite to death.
Anha zalak elat hatif maan vekhak. -> I want to go to before this. (As a Brazilian, I had no idea what "to before" meant)
Me jad hatif okrenegwin. -> He came from the front of the castle (stone house).
Anha kemo ma moon irge athdrivaroon mahrazhkemoon. -> I maried him after my husbund's death.
Anha onqoth irge okresaan. -> I walked to behind the tent.
Anha jad irge okresoon. -> I came from behind the tent.
Anha drivolak ki yeri. -> I'm dying because of you. (The wiki's prepositions chart said that haji and ki, the second assingning genitive, had the same meaning of "because of". Is it right?)
Yer ray vezhvena athostar mra yer. -> You have a gret fury within you.
Anha el mra okresaan. -> I went into the tent.
Anha el mra okresoon. -> I went out of the tent.
Havzisi vekhak oleth essheya. -> There is (Exists) a cat over the roof.
Anha devolak tat me oma rhelayoon yeri. -> I can do it without your help.
Me qaf qisi yer. -> He asked about you.
Havzisi vekhak she okre. -> The is (Exists) a cat in the tent.
Havzi el she essheyaan. -> The cat went onto the roof.
Havzi el she okroon. -> The cat went off of the tent.
Me drivo torga hrazefi mae. -> He died under his horse.
Kisha ver vi verakasari. -> We travled through tha cavern. (I tried tunnel, but I didn't find it in the dictionary.)
Kisha ver ha rhaeshoon yomme havazh. -> We came from the land across the sea.
Yomme oakahoon mae, khal drivol. -> In spite of his ability, the khal died.

For anyone who tries to help me, thank you! I know it's a lot of frases, but it would help a lot! Not only me, but also my friends. Hajas.

[Qvaak]

When have I said no to a good grammar challenge.

First of all, Dothraki uses noun cases foremost and prepositions as a system supplementing the rather small case system where ever the expressive power is otherwise lacking.
Allative and ablative are at their most basic level cases for moving to and from, and thus you usually don't need prepositions for concrete movement associated with a natural movement verb. This affects the use of ha most of all, and means that it is usually used only with less naturally destination/origin related words and words where the movement is less literal. I don't think "Anha jad ha krazaajoon" is wrong, exactly, but probably sligthly weird, clumsy or over-emphasized. More natural should be just "Anha jad krazaajoon."
There are also conventional expanded uses where prepositionless case use is by tradition interpreted in a certain way. For example for gifts and giving in general, recipient is marked without preposition, with just allative. This is mostly a thing considering verbs (see http://wiki.dothraki.org/Verb_Classes), but can also sometimes affect zero copula sentences. So even "Azho ha yeraan" might work better as simply "Azho yeraan." We have an example from Peterson: "Jini azho anni yeraan" - "This is my gift to you" (http://www.dothraki.com/2012/12/me-azho-anni-shafkea/).

Azho ha yeraan
Other than the questionability of the need for ha, this works fine. Notice though, that as Dothraki don't use copula (n' stuff), they don't make difference between "The gift is for you" and "a gift to you". It's not even so much that Dothraki might interpret the sentence in different ways, it's more that Dothraki have a sentence which we might interpret in slightly different ways.

Anha jad ha krazaajoon
Other than the questionability of the need for ha, this works fine too.

Anha addriv mae haji sondroon.
"Because" can mean slightly different things in English, and it's not clear, how the Dothraki words map. We have "because" as one translation in both haji and ki. Reading the sentence "I killed him because of the dragon glass," I would interpret dragon glass to be the motivation (or reason) of the killing. Maybe the victim had stolen dragon glass from me. This is probably the sense haji foremost gives. But thinking about what dragon glass signals in the series, another kind of interpretation might be the one you were going for, not the motivation but means. If you'd say "I managed to kill him because of the dragon glass," my interpretation would shift and I'd think the dragon glass was the reason the killing was succesful. Now, haji is a wague preposition with a lot of context-based interpretation - it is, after all, the default preposition used for foreign words - so perhaps "by means of" type of because is well within it's scope. On the other hand, considering that ki is most commonly interpeted as "by", this might be exactly where you go for ki instead of haji.

Anha zalak hatif athdrivar.
I don't think "opposite" of the English sentence works as a preposition at all, and, generally, I don't think the dothraki version works at all - not as intented and not in any sensible way. First of all, athdrivar is missing the genitive case, it should be athdrivari. But more crucially, "opposite to" is a locative thingie, very close in meaning to "facing": eg. "At the meeting I sat next to Joan and opposite to William." Listing both "facing" and "opposite to" as meanings for hatif+genitive we just tried to better approximate that one sense. You might say eg. "Anha kovarak hatif athdrivari" - "I stand facing death," but "Anha zalak hatif athdrivar" won't work so well.

Anha zalak elat hatif maan vekhak
Well, not all the active Dothraki wiki builders are native English speakers, so some expressions may simply be clumsy. And sometimes the sentiment of the foreign phrase can't be translated in natural and concise manner. I think "to before" might work in sentence like "Let's move the meeting to before the next weekend." It's not easy to read what you have exactly intented to say, so the whole analysis may be a bit off. I'd interpret the meaning of "I want to go to before this." as some close variation of the common sentiment "This is not working. I want to go back to the way things were before." In all it's brevity it feels a bit time-travely wonky, but might even make more sense in Dothraki, who knows.

Jini is the word for "this" - mostly at least. Me is a word for "he/she/it". The difference isn't that big, but let's change to jini anyway. Vekhat is a verb with me (now jini) as a subject, so it should be in third person singular, vekha. Jini and vekha form together a dependent clause, "this exists". I think it is possible to use a preposition like hatif to bind a dependent clause to the main clause, I think I've seen Peterson do this. However, this is not a well mapped territory. Probably the dependent clause is not affected by the preposition like a noun phrase would be, and thus jini won't shift into allative (jinaan - if you kept me, it would not be maan then either). But perhaps this is an unnecessary adventure. "Exists" does not make it to the translation, so maybe better simplify things and drop the whole vekhat. Then we have jini in allative, nice and easy.

Yer okeosoon anni, vosma jin athkemar rikhoe. Anha zalak elat hatif jinaan. ...uhh. Could that work?



Well, that's a start.

[greygandalf]

Thanks Qvaak! I made some basic mistakes, like using verbs in the wrong tense and writing words in a wrong way. I was really focused on the preposition. Actually, most of the prepositions in english can be translated in only three or four in portuguese, so I tend to make mistakes. I'll try searching more about cases were prepositions are not needed, but still there (when translated). I sure you that dothraki is not as hard as portuguese, but still we don't see many people talking in that language. I'll write my frases again and give them more sense. And congratulations! Even being hard, you interpretades all frases the way I wanted them to be. Hajas, zhey Qvaak!