Words for genitals?

[KingAlanI]

Sorry if this is too salacious, but Dothraki doesn't seem to have a word for genitals overall, or particular parts (whether medical terms or common slang)

[Chiorisi/mahrazhi] athhilezar saccheya, literally [woman’s/man’s] sex part(s)?

That was the best I could come up with, besides translating various slang terms literally.

This line from S1E8 comes to mind but doesn't seem to answer my question.
Drogo: Anha acharak vos ale. Zhey Mago, anha acharak vos ale. Ezas eshna gech ahilee. I will hear no more. Mago, find somewhere else to stick your cock.

I will hear no more, repeated to Mago for emphasis, seems to be translated fairly literally, but I'm confused by the last sentence. [You find] [another] [?] [future 2nd person 'to hit it']. I can't find 'gech' or a word it could be derived from anyway. Could it be a typo for 'gache', 'place'? That seems to fit the sentence.

[Qvaak]

Sorry if this is too salacious, but Dothraki doesn't seem to have a word for genitals overall, or particular parts (whether medical terms or common slang)

The reason for us not having the words might be in part because the salaciousness of the issue, but I don't see sense in censoring our conversation here. The series is not very censored and Dothraki are in some ways (interpretations?) even particulary carnal people - in places going far beyond the point of just-not-cool-anymore. We know from words like ijelat fitteya and even dothralat that DJP has thought at least some about sex-related vocabulary, but we haven't met the core vocabulary.

This line from S1E8 comes to mind but doesn't seem to answer my question.
Drogo: Anha acharak vos ale. Zhey Mago, anha acharak vos ale. Ezas eshna gech ahilee. I will hear no more. Mago, find somewhere else to stick your cock.

I will hear no more, repeated to Mago for emphasis, seems to be translated fairly literally, but I'm confused by the last sentence. [You find] [another] [?] [future 2nd person 'to hit it']. I can't find 'gech' or a word it could be derived from anyway. Could it be a typo for 'gache', 'place'? That seems to fit the sentence.

Hm. I really thought gech was gach (and that an accusative of gache), but I'm not sure if that's a typo or a different word. The literal meaning of the sentence is approximately "Find another hole to dig," but when we first went over the dialogue, that got sorta jumped over, and it took some time before we got a proper explanation for it. The future-as-infinite setence structure is peculiar (though we've met it elsewhere and DJP has sorta explained it) and the translation is far from literal. In all the confusion it's no wonder gech has been left a mystery, but I'm fairly certain it's euphemism at best as far as genitals go, and would be one for vagina rather than for penis.

[Chiorisi/mahrazhi] athhilezar saccheya, literally [woman’s/man’s] sex part(s)?

That was the best I could come up with, besides translating various slang terms literally.

I can't help you much further than that, but I can try to help with the syntax of the construction.
Adjectives, possessors and stuff like that comes usually after the main word. This ordering works pretty much for compound constructions, too. A good rule of thumb is to go reverse order to English. So that's saccheya athhilezar chiorisi/mahrazhi. Then there's the question of how to inflect the words, or if you'd like to form a proper compound of some kind. But things being speculative, that's a big swamp to veture on. Using ablative instead of genitive might be wise, since genitals tend to be inalienable, but even that isn't a certain improvement, as you have more an abstract "governing" relation than a concrete "has" relation. You could have eg. something like
saccheyahile chiorisoa/mahrazhoa ~ "digging parts of men/women" or
saccheychiori / saccheymahrazhi ~ "man parts / woman parts"

[KingAlanI]

yeah, I figured it might not be a problem to talk like that here, but I didn't want to just go ahead and post such things.
I did notice DJP had created some sex-related words like that, which made it seem all the more odd that there weren't any words for the parts themselves.

A typo for a form of 'gache' (like the accusative 'gach') would also be a good explanation there.

I agree that even if the sentence is a euphemism/slang, it likely can't be generalized. So it might be a quirk of translating to/from the show versus a general issue of literal/idiomatic translation?

Yes, hilelat also means 'to dig'. Something hole-related would mean vagina, so why would the dialogue be translated as cock? Maybe a better idiomatic translation would be "Mago, if you wanna get some pussy, go somewhere else"

I like saccheychiori / saccheymahrazhi ~ "man parts / woman parts" as less of a mouthful [although one's mouth may be full of them  ]

[KingAlanI]

As for my compound phrase, i do often seme to get word order wrong.

Maybe it's a cultural nuance that DJP doesn't want to jump ahead on, besides any concern about salaciousness.

A couple phrases I came up with for it.

[body part(s)] anni allayafi? (literally My [body part(s)] please(s) you?) – You like my [body part(s)]?
Allayafak yer [body part(s)] alikh – I like your [body part(s)] more.

Also, breasts aren't strictly genitals, but we do have a word for those, odaya. The animacy of odaya is not specified, so I feel I can go to odayasi to clarify when breasts is meant.

Some other phrases I thought up in a sexual context:
Yer akka zheana – You are beautiful too
Kis heshahat jin - Try to ride this
Vosma yer darif diwe - but your saddle is wet

[Qvaak]

I agree that even if the sentence is a euphemism/slang, it likely can't be generalized. So it might be a quirk of translating to/from the show versus a general issue of literal/idiomatic translation?
Yes, hilelat also means 'to dig'. Something hole-related would mean vagina, so why would the dialogue be translated as cock? Maybe a better idiomatic translation would be "Mago, if you wanna get some pussy, go somewhere else"

Ya. "Mago, find somewhere else to stick your cock." was probably what was given to Peterson to be translated. Mr. Peterson did not go very literally with his translation. I guess it might be a good idea to note on our wiki's dialogue page when the translation is that far from a literal translation, but then again, we might just make more glosses, because there you can really tell, how the Dothraki dialogue and the "official" translation differ.

Maybe it's a cultural nuance that DJP doesn't want to jump ahead on, besides any concern about salaciousness.

Possible. DJP might have the words, though, might be we just haven't asked about them that much. The words we have are mostly sidenotes along the line "this word has a sex-related extension too, byt the way."


Grammar time!

[body part(s)] anni allayafi?

It you are a body part collector and these are body parts cut from other people, then anni is correctly declined, but if you want to speak of things that are part of your body (and preferrably still attached), then they are inalienable and thus take ablative, not genitive. Also, with inalienables, the pronoun is usually dropped, if clear from context, so anhoon is pretty much the first word to go, if you want to tighten this sentence.

The body parts are the subject of the sentence, so allayafat is conjugated according to them, so if there is just one body part, then allayafa, if there are multiple, allayafi.

You can't generally skip pronouns in Dothraki, not even if the verb conjugation implies them, and here yera is of course object, so verb conjugation does not react to it.

I think Dothraki can turn sentences to questions with some prosody trick, and I think that trick is dropping tone, quite reverse to English rising tone. That said, making a proper question would be less iffy, and that should be achieved just by adding hash to the front of the sentence.

So we have Hash [body part(s)] allayafa/i yera?

sidenote: Dothraki don't have grammarians or written rules of pronunciation. There isn't probably strong enough class system to produce class difference and there certainly isn't much gap between generations. There are of course some different registers for more and less formal speech, but the grammar and vocab we're describing should be pretty much as "slang" as Dothraki gets. Every kind of speech has it's rules, ways to say things that "sound right" and that sound like a foreigner weaves words clumsily together. In a deep rooted monoculture the rules about how to speak (no matter how unaware the speakers are of them) are probably tighter than what we have in our modern slangs, so if you think you can go breaking grammar rules because some young warriors are just lazily telling bad jokes or a couple is having dirty pillow talk ... well, there is inevitably some relaxing of the rules (you might mumble, leave sentences half finished etc.), but less than you might think.
Actually it seems Dothraki way of informal, relaxed speech is often rather more wordy than contracting to incomplete sentences. Rather than going from
Hash chare anhoon allayafi yera? (~Do you like my ears?) to Chare allayafi? (~Like [my] ears?) maybe it might be better to go Hash mori allayafi yera, jin chare anhoon? (~Do you like them, these ears of mine?)

Allayafak yer [body part(s)] alikh – I like your [body part(s)] more.

Again, IMO you really should not try to drop anna.

Note that now "your [body part(s)]" is the subject, so in normal sentence structure it goes before the verb. Fronting the verb is perfectly OK, though, and kinda fits in the response, so maybe you should keep it fronted. Conjugation of course has to be allayafa/i.

For some reason yer is in nominative and precedes the [body part(s)], when it of course should be in ablative (and not in genitive, let alone in nominative) and follow. Now it's not probably a good idea to drop the yeroon, though, as it contrasts the line before.

Alikh confounds me. I'd like to say there's no way it can work, but it actually probably does. Might be it would go to ablative or allative or might be the noun does not work and then the proper word might be alle, but for all I know, plain alikh is as good a guess as any, and better than most.

So we have Allayafa/i [body part(s)] yeroon anna alikh?

Also, breasts aren't strictly genitals, but we do have a word for those, odaya. The animacy of odaya is not specified, so I feel I can go to odayasi to clarify when breasts is meant.

Hahh. We don't know for sure, but it's very likely odaya is /-ya/ type of word (we seem to call them meronymics), and those by rule should be inanimate, so if odaya works in the regular and expected way, it does not have plural.

Yer akka zheana – You are beautiful too

Akka is an adverb and should thus be at the end of the sentence.

Usually you can't use bare adjectives in zero-copula sentences, but for ...um... intrinsic? remaining status? qualities you can (though don't have to), so it kinda makes sense to say yer zheana instead of the regular yer zheanae - at least if there's no danger of being mistaken meaning "You were beautiful."

Kis heshahat jin - Try to ride this

Funny story: Heshahat seemed dubious. An intransitive word for "to ride"; having no quotes to back it up; I did not remember it being used anywhere. So I did a bit of digging, and noticed it was added to the wiki by yours truly back in 2011, from season I episode 9 dialogue. And no-one ever before now noticed that I had made an error: the word is actually hezhahat. That certainly wasn't what I expected. It's an error as old as the gech confusion! The correct form has been later added from completely other source, but the translation is different: to navigate. Both meanings are likely fair approximations, but the latter probably hits closer to home, since we have also an adverb hezhah meaning "far". In the original dialogue the sentence was Kisha ray hezhahish chek asshekh. - "We have ridden far enough," and if you look how it breaks down, hezhahat does not really translate to "to ride", it translates to "to ride far" or "to make distance". But I guess that might still be a fun word for metaphorical sex talk

Kis is no verb; it's one of those slightly mystifying verbal auxiliary particles. Thus you need to conjugate hezhahat: kis hezhahas.

Despite all the confusion, hezhahat is probably rightly deemed intransitive. That means it should not take any straight accusative object. You might try eg. Kis hezhahas vi jinaan. - "Try to navigate through this." or Kis hezhahas ma jinoon. - "try to navigate with this".

Vosma yer darif diwe - but your saddle is wet

hehh... "but you are a wet saddle!" Again possessor should be in genitive (for alienable) or ablative (for inalienable) and come at the end of the noun phrase it's modifying. Given the context, you might boldly use "saddle" as an inalienable possession, even though that is of course very unusual.

Here you can't really avoid using verb form diwelat.

So: Vosma darif yeroon diwee.

[KingAlanI]

You never cease to amaze me.

Yeah, I'm still bad with ablative (and allative) case.

For once I could drop it and I don't. I think I will get rid of it, if only to reflect the extremely casual nature of the usage.

It had seemed obvious to conjugate according to the pronoun.

I don't see why you use yera instead of yer or yeri. Also, could I replace that with the name of the person being addressed?

So the to ride one isn't exactly my fault. yay.
I may want to switch to sajat (to mount) though
Kis was a new word to me, so I'm not surprised I screwed that up. Yet since I was trying to translate the infinitive, I thought I wasn't supposed to conjugate that. I haven't used imperative much, so no wonder I missed that. I think decline jun in the allative, since the speaker definitely wants movement towards her 'noun'.
Kis sajas jinaan

[Hrakkar]

Thwew ia no problem with this discussion as long as it stays linguistic in nature. We do have a legitimate need for these words, as does any language.

[Qvaak]

OK. going on a tangent, a small bout to Dothraki 101
As languages go, Dothraki could be much more exotic than it is. Many basics are actually pretty close to how English works.


The most rudimentary top-level word order is the same, and when you zoom in the players of the sentence (noun phrases, that is), the most rudimentary word order is the exact reverse. So if you were translating "My green dog frightens father's fat sheep," you can guess that on the top level "my green dog" comes first, then "frightens", then "father's fat sheep", but "my green dog" is reversed to "dog green my" and "father's fat sheep" is reversed to "sheep fat father's". Even if you have trouble dealing with more delicate stuff, this should be fairly easy.
Jano dahaan anni arrokha oqet oiro avesi. - "My green dog frightens father's fat sheep."


Though verbs in English inflect much less, the basic principles of conjugation are the same. The person conjugation always reflects the grammatical doer (subject, that is).

If you were translating a sentence "Warriors hated me," and somehow had trouble deciding, which word the verb should agree with, you could just turn the verb to present tense (so that in English there is some conjugation according to person and number), "Warriors hate me," and then try to affect the verb by changing words. Changing me does not affect the verb: "Warriors hate me/it/coins/heating," but changing warriors does affect the verb "Warriors hate me," but "It hates me." So in Dothraki too, "warriors" is the word that the verb should agree with. In past tense Dothraki does not make difference between second and third person, but plural still matters:
Lajaki fejish anna. - Warriors hated me.

Also, the information encoded in the conjugation does not warrant skipping other words and neither is it elective. Let's look at a sentence "I am a dog."

You might think that since am is visibly conjugated to first person singular, you could drop the pronoun as redundant, and say just "Am a dog," but this is not grammatical. The verb conjugation agrees with subject's person (and number), but English still requires the subject to be there so that it can be agreed with. The same goes for all verbs Dothraki.

You might think that since I already tells who is doing stuff, you might just eliminate the redundancy and elect not to conjugate "to be" and say "I be a dog," but this is not grammatical either. The verb automatically accentuates the subject. The same goes for all verbs Dothraki.


As verbs, nouns in English inflect much less than in Dothraki, but luckily pronouns keep more complicated declination patterns, so again comparing to English works actually really well. Nominative, accusative and genitive work in the most rudimentary use pretty much the same.

For the third person masculine singular English has a nominative, he; accusative, him and genitive his. If you are translating to Dothraki, and wonder, in which case you should use for some noun or pronoun, replace it with whatever of those fit, and you'll probably get the right answer for the needed case.

Yeah, I'm still bad with ablative (and allative) case.

There's no magic. At the most basic level these are equivalent of from and into/onto. So for a word meaning "cart" (rhaggat), you'd basically use ablative when you'd say in English "from a/the cart" (rhaggatoon) and you'd use allative when in English you'd say "into/onto a/the cart" (rhaggataan). But there is half bajillion uses for ablative and allative that are outside that basic use, and they are pretty much all fixed "it's just done this way" stuff that just has to be learned. Intuition may help a bit, but the use is not elective.
For example "I hit him with a whip." is said Anha loj mae ma orvikoon. The ablative case does not really add anything to the meaning of the sentence other than it clarifies that ma is used in the sense "with". That's just a rule: whenever ma is used as a preposition meaning "with", the noun following the preposition is in ablative. All prepositions assign the case of the following noun this way, and the case does not always mean much anything.

It had seemed obvious to conjugate according to the pronoun.

Ya. That's not how it works. Hopefully the explanation above helps.

I don't see why you use yera instead of yer or yeri. Also, could I replace that with the name of the person being addressed?

Hopefully the explanation above explains yera too. It's an object, so it's in accusative. As for replacing with the name of the addressee, I think it sounds pretty much as natural as it would in English. If I were speaking to Mary, and asked "Does this please Mary?" that'd sound odd. Of course there's some playful use where it would work, very possibly in bedroom. I'm not sure, if the playful connotations would be similar for Dothraki, though. And you would probably need to decline the name to accusative, and possibly also use zhey, though maybe not, since it sounds like you are pretending to be not addressing directly. On the other hand, as it's no oddity to say in English "Does this please you, Mary?" it's no oddity in Dothraki to ask "Hash jini allayafa yera, zhey Mari?"

Yet since I was trying to translate the infinitive, I thought I wasn't supposed to conjugate that.

Ya. If kis were a verb, you would have been on a right track.

[KingAlanI]

Yeah, it is much more similar to English than it could be.
I admit it's too late to process the rest of your grammar lessons right now.

PS
Hrakkar, that's what I thought.