Several Titles

[Death]

I enjoy dark ambient. So obviously, as someone who enjoys such a genre, one would want to at least try and do some of his own. I was thinking of making mine in Dothraki (the titles), at least partially, but I wouldn't want any mistakes, grammatical or otherwise, in there, so I was just wondering if the following is correct:

• Khal shekhi driv
• Adakhat khadokhe rikh
• Movek athasari zhavvorsi
• Anha drozh vojes assikhqoyisir
• Vidrogerat lamees messhihven
• Azhasavva mel athrokhari ha mahrazhea
• Kisha e mra rhaeshaan vojjor

More would likely follow.

[Qvaak]

Khal shekhi driv

Well, the first thing to worry about is whether these are meant to be sentences. Copulaless and many suffixes having multiple uses, in Dothraki most of everything can be read as a sentence. So Khal shekhi driv. would mean something like King of the sun was dead. But maybe you were aiming for king of the dead sun? Then the adjective driv would get an -a suffix, to mark that the word it modifies, shekhi is not in nominative case.
The genitive construct, khal shekhi is, at least at first glance, a bit iffy, but I think it should work. There are probably even examples of similar use. The sun is not an owner of the king, quite the other way around, so this is a bit extended use of genitive. The most obvious alternative would be to use ablative. One or another is probably the right way and the other is a bit off.

Adakhat khadokhe rikh

I'm guessing this is to eat a rotting corpse. As far as I can think, khadokh will never get an -e suffix. Inanimate nouns that in nominative end in a vowel sometimes get an -e suffix in accusative, but inanimate nouns ending in a consonant (or animate nouns of any kind, for that matter) never do. On the other hand, rikh should again mark the non-nominative case of the word it modifies with an -a suffix.

Movek athasari zhavvorsi

The magician of the wasteland of dragons. The genitive constructs probably works in this as well, though I would not bet heavily on that. As Dothraki aren't too keen on marking plurals or making indefinite/definite distiction, this could mean eg. a magician of the wastelands of the dragon, but that's as it should be, IMHO.

Anha drozh vojes assikhqoyisir

I slew a person ... prophecy? I don't quite understand, how that assikhqoyisir is meant to figure to the sentence. Anha drozh vojes is simple enough and should work fine. I translated voj as a person there, but it's much more everyday word than that, so a man is probably closer to it's tone.

Vidrogerat lamees messhihven

To ride the pale mare. Once again the adjective should have an -a. The vocab does not list the animacy of lame, but animate is pretty safe guess. Messhihven is a bizarre adjective to be used of a horse. It's a word for human skin colour and literally means "white horse -like". Perhaps it's appropriately bizarre, though. I have only an inkling of the nuances of the different to ride words, but I think vidrogerat might be pretty good choise.

Azhasavva mel athrokhari ha mahrazhea

The bad blessing of fear for men. That should work, as long as genitive extends, which it should.

Kisha e mra rhaeshaan vojjor

We went to the land of gods. Kisha is plural, so elat should be in past plural: esh.
I'm pretty sure mra does not work there. Mra is much more inside than English in or even into; she is the "neutral" Dothraki preposition, which often works even where English use in. Here, though, no preposition is needed, IMO.
Oh, whatthehell. It's the land of gods. Maybe the pronounced "inside" sense is just what you wanted.
[edit] I missed that the vojjor there wasn't in the genitive. Is that an error or are you trying to use a word compound expression, something like "god lands"? Perhaps the vojes assikhqoyisir was an attempt to a similar expression, "prophecy man"? If so, I don't think word compounds work like this. I'd rather leave the first one in nominative and inflect the second one, but it's very iffy either way. Dothraki use a lot of compound words, so looser word compounds aren't that common.

I'm not the sharpest sword in the armoury even on my best day, and presently I'm a bit off-season, so please don't be offended if I missed some clever constructions and took them as errors.

[Death]

Hmm, well thanks for actually bothering to check this out.

Well, the first thing to worry about is whether these are meant to be sentences. Copulaless and many suffixes having multiple uses, in Dothraki most of everything can be read as a sentence. So Khal shekhi driv. would mean something like King of the sun was dead. But maybe you were aiming for king of the dead sun? Then the adjective driv would get an -a suffix, to mark that the word it modifies, shekhi is not in nominative case.
The genitive construct, khal shekhi is, at least at first glance, a bit iffy, but I think it should work. There are probably even examples of similar use. The sun is not an owner of the king, quite the other way around, so this is a bit extended use of genitive. The most obvious alternative would be to use ablative. One or another is probably the right way and the other is a bit off.

I wanted to say "The lord of the dead sun." So I'm assuming "khal shekhi driva" would be correct. It's naught but a mere title, and not a sentence.

The magician of the wasteland of dragons. The genitive constructs probably works in this as well, though I would not bet heavily on that. As Dothraki aren't too keen on marking plurals or making indefinite/definite distiction, this could mean eg. a magician of the wastelands of the dragon, but that's as it should be, IMHO.

I know it's nothing but semantics, but I was going for warlock here. Sounds more menacing. But yea, it doesn't really matter whether it's a singular dragon or plural.

I'm guessing this is to eat a rotting corpse. As far as I can think, khadokh will never get an -e suffix. Inanimate nouns that in nominative end in a vowel sometimes get an -e suffix in accusative, but inanimate nouns ending in a consonant (or animate nouns of any kind, for that matter) never do. On the other hand, rikh should again mark the non-nominative case of the word it modifies with an -a suffix.

Hmm, my bad. I don't know why I even bothered modifying "khadokh," as it's already the bare stem, I assume. I'm still not sure on how to modify the adjective to fit the cases, though. But uhh, why an -a suffix? I presume it's an universal inanimate-accusative-adjective modifier.

I slew a person ... prophecy? I don't quite understand, how that assikhqoyisir is meant to figure to the sentence. Anha drozh vojes is simple enough and should work fine. I translated voj as a person there, but it's much more everyday word than that, so a man is probably closer to it's tone.

I slew the prophet. Since there is no word for prophet, I've "coined" my own, "voj assikhqoyisiri," which means man of prophecy, as you most likely know. Again, I've did a small mistake and forgot to add the genitive suffix in the title. So I take it that "Anha drozh vojes assikhqoyisiri" works?

To ride the pale mare. Once again the adjective should have an -a. The vocab does not list the animacy of lame, but animate is pretty safe guess. Messhihven is a bizarre adjective to be used of a horse. It's a word for human skin colour and literally means "white horse -like". Perhaps it's appropriately bizarre, though. I have only an inkling of the nuances of the different to ride words, but I think vidrogerat might be pretty good choise.

Yes, the adjective marker. But from what I've gathered on the dictionary, messhihven is pale-skinned, nothing more is written. Perhaps it speaks of humans, but I don't really know. With this title I was going for the bloody flux idiom the Ghiscari (I think) use, so I'm assuming the Dothraki have on of their own.

We went to the land of gods. Kisha is plural, so elat should be in past plural: esh.
I'm pretty sure mra does not work there. Mra is much more inside than English in or even into; she is the "neutral" Dothraki preposition, which often works even where English use in. Here, though, no preposition is needed, IMO.
Oh, whatthehell. It's the land of gods. Maybe the pronounced "inside" sense is just what you wanted.
[edit] I missed that the vojjor there wasn't in the genitive. Is that an error or are you trying to use a word compound expression, something like "god lands"? Perhaps the vojes assikhqoyisir was an attempt to a similar expression, "prophecy man"? If so, I don't think word compounds work like this. I'd rather leave the first one in nominative and inflect the second one, but it's very iffy either way. Dothraki use a lot of compound words, so looser word compounds aren't that common.

Haha, oh god... I've missed the genitive marker for the third time, then. I was going for "vojjori". So "Kisha esh rhaeshaan vojjori" would be the correct form?

[ingsve]

Hmm, my bad. I don't know why I even bothered modifying "khadokh," as it's already the bare stem, I assume. I'm still not sure on how to modify the adjective to fit the cases, though. But uhh, why an -a suffix? I presume it's an universal inanimate-accusative-adjective modifier.

It's a universal marker for adjectives ending in a consonant that is modifying a noun that is in a case other than nominative.

Yes, the adjective marker. But from what I've gathered on the dictionary, messhihven is pale-skinned, nothing more is written. Perhaps it speaks of humans, but I don't really know. With this title I was going for the bloody flux idiom the Ghiscari (I think) use, so I'm assuming the Dothraki have on of their own.

It's discussed in this blog post: http://www.dothraki.com/2011/09/any-color-you-like/

The word messhihven comes from the word messhih which means a palomino horse. So messhihven means "colour like a palomino horse" and refers to human skin tones (a cultural thing of using horse colourings to describe human skin tones). When speaking of a horse of that colour it's wrong to say that it is "a horse with the colour like a palomino horse" it's simply "a palomino horse" or in your case "a palomino mare" lamees messhiha

[Death]

It's discussed in this blog post: http://www.dothraki.com/2011/09/any-color-you-like/

The word messhihven comes from the word messhih which means a palomino horse. So messhihven means "colour like a palomino horse" and refers to human skin tones (a cultural thing of using horse colourings to describe human skin tones). When speaking of a horse of that colour it's wrong to say that it is "a horse with the colour like a palomino horse" it's simply "a palomino horse" or in your case "a palomino mare" lamees messhiha

Hmm, I see. So is there a word for pale (literally pale of color, not skin or anything specific), like something in the vein of "dei zasqa" (not really sure on how to use the adverb here)?

[Hrakkar]

Hmm, I see. So is there a word for pale (literally pale of color, not skin or anything specific), like something in the vein of "dei zasqa" (not really sure on how to use the adverb here)?

zasqa is an adjective, not an adverb, so it would follow the noun it modifies. So, dei zasqa I would take to mean 'light white' and not 'pale'. You can also use vishiya zasqa, which would generically mean 'light color'. But if I am getting what I think you are trying to get to, you are looking for something like 'pale fleshtones'. You have a few options here. You could use ilek zasqa, 'light colored skin' or hatif zasqa, 'light colored face' or perhaps kher zasqa, 'light colored flesh', although the meaning of kher in this case is a bit ambiguous.  Messhihven and a similar word ochaven are actually complete fleshtone adjectives in and of themselves, and would be used to describe a person, and not their skin. Thus, you could use constructions like sajak messhihven, 'pale rider' or mahrazh ochaven, 'light-skinned man'.

[Qvaak]

Well, while zasqa isn't adverb, dei in this context techically is. Adverbs is a bit scrappy left-overy word group, dei here working as kind of adjective of adjectives. If you look at the blog post Ingve linked above, you'll see dei follows the adjective it modifies. It probably doesn't agree with the word it modifies as adjectives do.
I think Hrakkar's proposition of ilek zasqa (as a full argument, "Vidrogerat lamees ma ilekoon zasqa" perhaps?) is a good one, though. It still seems to me it carries the right kind of feel of magical abnormality; not a white horse, but still a white-skinned horse.

Hmm, well thanks for actually bothering to check this out.

Oh, shush. It's always fun and educational to discuss others' attempts. Next best thing to actually managing to make one's own.

It's a universal marker for adjectives ending in a consonant that is modifying a noun that is in a case other than nominative.

Ya. It's a universal marker for adjectives ending in a consonant that is modifying a singular noun that is in a case other than nominative, to be as murky-clear as possible. This thing is menationed in our wiki's adjectives-article, but unfortunately it seems a bit like an after though there. The article might benefit from a bit of re-writing.

[ingsve]

One way I translated "pale" was to just use dei on it's own which might work for the right word. The sentence I wrote was:

Hash yer ezhir ma vojjoroon mela mra shekhikh jalani dei?

"Have you danced with devil in the pale moon light?" or literally "Have you danced with the evil god in the shallow moon light?"

[Death]

So would Vidrogerat she lame dei be correct? I thought of using "to ride on the pale mare," since I doubt a direct translation from English would work here. If it would work, though, would Vidrogerat lames dea or Vidrogerat lames deia (still not sure on that adjective marker in this specific case)?

[Hrakkar]

So would Vidrogerat she lame dei be correct? I thought of using "to ride on the pale mare," since I doubt a direct translation from English would work here. If it would work, though, would Vidrogerat lames dea or Vidrogerat lames deia (still not sure on that adjective marker in this specific case)?

This is an interesting situation, as in being used as both an adjective and an adverb, dei can take the meaning 'light in color' only when used as an adverb. So in order to mean 'light color', the word  preceeding dei has to be a color word, all of which are adjectives. Since by definition, an adverb can modify any word but a noun, lame dei automatically forces the adjective meaning of dei, and it would mean 'shallow mare' regardless of whether it is in the nomanative or accusative case. The only 'out' here (and it is an interesting 'out') would be the position of dei at the end of the sentence, where adverbs belong in Dothraki. But does its position at the end of the sentence take precedence over its position immediately following a noun? The case previously given for Hash yer ezhir ma vojjoroon mela mra shekhikh jalani dei seems a little less ambiguous because jalan is in the genitive case here, and directs the sentence's attention to shekhikh, thus being more of an 'idea phrase' than a single noun like lame.

[Qvaak]

So would Vidrogerat she lame dei be correct? I thought of using "to ride on the pale mare," since I doubt a direct translation from English would work here.

"Correct" is a bit strong word. You're asking for peer review, after all. Some things sound evocative and natural and are grammatical as far as we know, but that's pretty much the surest acceptance we can muster. This one, though, might still need work.

Riding is in the core of Dothraki culture, prepositions are not. Dothraki prefer verb conjugations, and use prepositions only as a plan B. Though I can't quickly dig out any counterexamples, I find it unlikely to ride word like vidrogerat would take the mount as a prepositioned argument. The accusative you first went with was a much better guess. Vidrogerat she lame would probably sound something like "to ride on top of a mare". Not terribly strange or ungrammatical, but not the most natural either.

As Hrakkar commented, dei as an adjective is a very iffy word choice. The case is pretty similar to english light, I guess: when used with the right kind of word in the right kind of context, the colour tone interpretation comes through, otherwise it's interpreted wrong or is just baffling and out of place. This whole idea of a pale horse is tricky, and it's quite possible there would not be an easy translation even if we had a full vocabulary at our hands. Pale as a concept is so nuanced and specific that it probably often won't translate straight. Basically lame messhih is a perfect translation (if messhih works as an adjective - I took it for a noun, initially (though even if it is a noun, it's probably also an adjective)). But how do you make it sound interesting that a horse is off-white coloured, when that is quite normal colouring for a horse? English pale has a lot going for it. It has connotations to unhealthy and generally carries a sense of lighter coloured than normal.

If it would work, though, would Vidrogerat lames dea or Vidrogerat lames deia (still not sure on that adjective marker in this specific case)?

Read our comments carefully and you'll notice that we spoke only of adjectives ending with consonant. Adjectives ending with vowel have no visible agreement with neither plurals nor case. This kind of stuff is pretty common with Dothraki - not strongly marking stuff, but rather sometimes agreeing with it. The information carried is not a high priority and may be lost for as little reason as for a vowel ending stem.
Also, lamees, not lames. You did that right the first time. Or, if we are wrong expecting lame to be animate noun, lam.

[Death]

I see. This is quite a tricky situation I've brought unto myself, then. Perhaps we can use "palely coloured"? Since I believe creating new verbs is possible by attaching -lat, would visshiyalat more or less fit the job?

Vidrogerat lamees fin nem visshiyae dei, "to ride the mare that is lightly coloured."

[Qvaak]

There, dear sir, you open a whole lot of wormy can-stuff. Not surprisingly, I guess - if the simple way won't work, you can always go creative, but that way is lined with problems.

There is no dependable derivational morphology from nouns to verbs. There probably rarely is. I Dothraki nouns are often derived from the same root as related verbs, but the verbs are often simpler, sometimes parallel but little different. And if there is a verb, it's anyone's guess, what it will exactly mean. It seems to me a verb derived straight from a noun x is rarely just to be x - eg. I tabled my proposition; I penned a novel; I watered the flowers.

Visshiya is a curious idiom-like expression. There is some kind of etymology story I have yet to hear, but literally it means ~ part of a forehead. To say x is coloured y there might be some wild expression like "x has a forehead of y" (though of course normally you wouldn't use any such convoluted expression).

But let's suppose there is a simple verb derivation, similar to the regular adjective to verb connection. Then visshiyalat would, I guess, mean something like to be of colour, to have a colour. It would not mean exactly to be coloured, as English to colour is a causative, and should in Dothraki be (if anything) avvisshiyalat, but the whole causative-in-passive thing English uses is a bit quirky, so visshiyalat seems a better bet - and as a bonus, now we don't need (ie. can't use) passivisation.

We still have a problem. Modifying a verb, dei is now working as an adverb. At first glance this sounds good, as the whole light meaning was supposed to be carried in adverbial use. But adverbs are a bit left-over word class, and dei was used as "adjective for adjectives" type adverb. There it should be "true adverb", manner adverb modifying a verb, to be exact. This is very different situation. Dothraki is not big on such adverbs. They have a system for them, but it's kinda heavy. To say shallowly (or lightly, that is), you'd probably take the dei as an adjective, and make the stative verb thereof, deilat, then nominalize it, athdeizar, and then attach it to the sentence with a preposition ki, k'athdeizari.

So now we have Vidrogerat lamees fin visshiyae k'athdeizari, which I'm rather doubtful about. Even so, if you are not happy with Vidrogerat lamees ma ilekoon zasqa or somesuch compromise, this might be as good as it gets barring the copout option of just asking David.

[Hrakkar]

I see. This is quite a tricky situation I've brought unto myself, then. Perhaps we can use "palely coloured"? Since I believe creating new verbs is possible by attaching -lat, would visshiyalat more or less fit the job?

Vidrogerat lamees fin nem visshiyae dei, "to ride the mare that is lightly coloured."

Using visshiyae is clever, in that 'lightly' can seem like a verb. But in reality here, it acts like an adjective, which is a gray area in terms of usage. Although contest makes what you mean dei to mean reasonably clear, it can be used as an adverb or an adjective here, with their respective meanings.

Since the feeling I think you are trying to capture here is 'sickly white', as opposed to simply 'light white'. This reading too, is a bit of a stretch, but perhaps not as much as visshiyae dei.

Vidrogerat lamees fin nem vishiya zhikhat dei, "to ride the mare that is coloured sickly-light."

This, I think works because there is little difference between stative verbs and adjectives in Dothraki. Here zhikhat functions more as an adjective, rather than a verb. An example of this kind of usage is given in the grammar as: Hrazef zhikha — "The horse is sick."  And then, dei can be safely used as an adverb here, in the proper position.

[Qvaak]

Vidrogerat lamees fin nem vi[/s/]shiya zhikhat dei, "to ride the mare that is coloured sickly-light."

That does not make much sense to me. Not that my own proposals were that great either. There's just too much uncharted territory. Why hang to this nem? Generally when things have qualities in Dothraki, they do them themselves rather than suffer from an induced state*. Why does visshiya have no verb suffix? Or did you decide that as the noun is inanimate, it's more likely that the derivation would be from visshiy -a to visshiy -at? ...'Cause that would make sense to me, actually
Souldn't you do something, anything, to zhikhat to tie it to the syntax? Dunno. I just fall off the cart thereabouts.

*  Just for reference, if you translate "The ball is coloured red" to Finnish literally, that's "Pallo on väritetty punaiseksi", and implies that the ball was some other colour before and that someone has taken pencils and coloured it red. The best sensible translation I can come up with is "Pallo on väriltään punainen", which would literally translate back more or less as "The ball is red of colour".

Hey, how about Vidrogerat lamees fini visshiya deie, "To ride the mare whose colour is light/shallow"? Hahh. I'm not sure about the word order, but otherwise that should be one of the most grammatically solid proposals so far. How do you front a possessive modifier? I think I should know, but I'm sure I don't. Might be Vidrogerat lamees visshiya fini deie or even Vidrogerat lamees fini visshiya mae deie.
[edit: actually no, that's not right. I'm pretty sure colour is an inalienable quality, so it should be finoon, not fini]

How do you use colours as nouns? In English (and also in Finnish) you can say stuff like "The red needs to be darker," or "That green makes me happy," while adjectives usually need to be nominalized (softness, heaviness) to fit such syntax. Is it Rek dahaan allayafa anna, or perhaps Rek athdahaanar allayafa anna?

In English (and also in Finnish) you can say stuff like "The picture was considered ugly," or "We painted the house red." This adjective use does not look the same as the manner adverbs. It's adjectives modifying nouns (ugly picture, red house), as far as I can see, even if there is a verb in the midway across the relation (though I guess you could say, that while "The picture was uglily considered." does not carry the same idea as "The picture was considered ugly," "The picture was uglifyingly considered" comes close.) How do these things work in Dothraki? Is there room for adjectives as separate arguments? If there is, how do they decline then?

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