Things learnt from other sources.

[ingsve]

As mentioned in one of the IRC chats, David Peterson was recently interviewed by The Daily Beast. An article has now appeared that among other things feature material from that interview. http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-04-04/game-of-thrones-10-secrets-about-hbos-adaptation-of-a-song-of-ice-and-fire-by-george-rr-martin/

David talks about some of his inspirations for the language and also gives us a new phrase from the books:

Vizhadi vizhadaan norethi shafki

Silver for the silver of your hair.

This obviously gives us two new words:

vizhad=silver 
noreth=hair

[Jenny]

Good find!

I love the word for hair 

[ingsve]

Good find!

I love the word for hair 

Well, I can't take too much credit for finding it. Just following links on twitter really.

[ingsve]

There is an article about dothraki in the current issue of Wired magazine (at least in the UK). You would probably need to find the paper copy of the magazine to read it.

In that article David Peterson goes through various steps of how to create your own language and there are several new words presented in it:

Moves lekhes zhorre shafki which means "invent your own language".
vado - turnip
lanat - to run
alana - will run, gives us more info on how to conjugate verbs that end in a consonant.
athhayozar ahhaqe lajasares The waiting frustrated the army.
riv loqami - the tip of the arrow
asavva - sky

There was also a list of all the pronouns:
anha - I
yer - you
me - he, she, it
kisha - we
yeri - you
mori - they

Finally he said that the idiom that means "now or never" literally translates as "the stew is colling in the air" but there was no dothraki translation for that phrase.

[ingsve]

David Peterson has a new blogpost up that features some new words:

http://dedalvs.livejournal.com/48259.html

First of all we get a translation of one of the first Dothraki sentences we saw:

Anha tih mahrazhes fin kash chakat karlin. I once saw a man that lasted twenty miles.

This gives us a few new words:

kashat - to last
chakat - twenty
karlina - mile, distance gallopped in one leshitof

He then goes on to discuss some of the ways he decided that the Dothraki measure time and distance. Their time measurement is based on taking a long breath and distances are then based on how long a horse can more using various gaits during that time period. This gave us even more new words:

leshitat - to breathe
leshitof - "a great big breath", time period equivalent to two minutes
chetira - half mile, distance cantered in one leshitof.

[ingsve]

Hehe. The language censor on the forum changed leshitat to les**tat. That's not really intended I guess. I changed it now though...And added a twist to the censor.

[ingsve]

David just posted a string of Dothraki insults on GRRMs liveblog...

This in response to the news that some scripts that David and Dan had sent to GRRM to auction off in Reno was stolen in the mail:

http://grrm.livejournal.com/234472.html

Anyway, the post is as follows:

This has happened to me before (on a much smaller scale). My stepdad would always send me a birthday card with $5 in it when I was a kid. One year I received a card with an envelope that had been torn to shreds and then taped back together with the card inside. Only the money was missing. Obviously the value doesn't compare, but I remember the feeling.

At such times, a Dothraki threat seems most appropriate:

Goshas, zhey filkak: Anha vezak yera. Anha arissak foth ma vidrik qoraes anhoon memras ma vassok ven yera ven yallish. (Me vemma anna, jini.) Majin anha vanneva khadokh she sorfosor majin jano laz vosti chenoon ma jadro laz anasi tihoa. Yer otihi Rhaeshis Ajjalani avvos! Anha astak asqoy ki jini. Hethkas!

Which is roughly:

"Be certain, coward: I will find you. A will slice your throat and shove my hand inside it and make you talk like a small child. (This will amuse me.) And then I leave your corpse on the ground and the dogs will bite at your liver and the vultures will peck at your eyes. You will never see the Night Lands! I swear this. Be prepared!"

Lots of new words here.

[Qvaak]

The reason of the post notwithstanding, that's very nice and educational. At first read-through at least most of the grammar in sentences seems familiar, and not that many words are completely unfamiliar either. Pretty understandable, when read with a translation.

New words, I think: filkak (~coward), memra(s) (~inside; probably me+mra, but /me-/ doesn't seem to serve it's usual role, so I'd guess this is a word in it's own right, not mra with a suffix), yallish (~small child; is /-sh/ perhaps another diminutive suffix?), emmat (~to amuse; dunno, if this should be considered a new word, we knew emmat would almost certanly mean "to make smile", so this is only a minor clarification on the tone), khadokh (~corpse; I'm a bit surprised this is a new word), jadro (~vulture), nasat (~to peck), hethkat or hethkalat (~to be prepaired)

Notes:
- Is it that dothraki aren't that much on straight out profanities and swear words, or is it that David doesn't like to use them, or that he rather translates the swearing by literal meaning than by tone? Not that I'd be surprised if they didn't swear on daily basis. Many peoples don't, for many reasons. You don't need to be potty-mouthy to be baddy-assy. Still, interesting.
- In dothraki throat is just a throat, body just a body and liver just a liver, where english marks these things for an owner, "you". Good to notice. This surprised me a bit.

[ingsve]

- In dothraki throat is just a throat, body just a body and liver just a liver, where english marks these things for an owner, "you". Good to notice. This surprised me a bit.

I asked David about this on twitter and he responded that inalienable possession is assumed. You only mark it with a possessor if there is a chance for confusion or as an emphasis. It's like saying "I'm getting a tattoo on the arm" rather than "...on my arm".

[Hrakkar]

David gave me a new word at Worldcon today. The word is havzi, which means 'cat' (of the domestic variety, I am assuming). David did not know for certain whether this was an animate or an inanimate noun, but leaned towards inanimate. (I am beginning to wonder if 'animate' means 'able to use language', as in the Klingon language.)

[ingsve]

David just posted the slides from his talk in Reno:

http://dedalvs.com/dothraki/dothrakireno.pdf

Several new words in there.

[Hrakkar]

Even though I heard David's presentation live, I picked up a lot more when I looked at ht powerpoint slides. One thing for sure: I need to memorize a number of the lines given there, as they are the most basic of conversational Dothraki. (I saw zhey veraki vichomeri somewhere as a greeting, but that didn't work too well.)

What are the new words that you saw?

[ingsve]

What are the new words that you saw?

In the presentation? Gaezo, yamori, geshah, mredi, choo, kolver, gango awazat (new meaning), rekke, aresak, fitte. And several from the dialogue that we don't have a translation for yet.

[Hrakkar]

What are the new words that you saw?

In the presentation? Gaezo, yamori, geshah, mredi, choo, kolver, gango awazat (new meaning), rekke, aresak, fitte. And several from the dialogue that we don't have a translation for yet.

Wow! Shows how much I have to learn! I really hope there were others in that panel besides my self, who are anxious to learn. David is such a good (and challenging!) teacher. I'll have to post somewhere about the language construction workshop he did at the con. It was really excellent, plus it 'stretched' your thinking about language more than a little!

[ingsve]

What are the new words that you saw?

In the presentation? Gaezo, yamori, geshah, mredi, choo, kolver, gango awazat (new meaning), rekke, aresak, fitte. And several from the dialogue that we don't have a translation for yet.

Wow! Shows how much I have to learn! I really hope there were others in that panel besides my self, who are anxious to learn. David is such a good (and challenging!) teacher. I'll have to post somewhere about the language construction workshop he did at the con. It was really excellent, plus it 'stretched' your thinking about language more than a little!

Well, I guess I have a pretty good handle on what words we have so I can tell pretty immediate when a word is new.