#dothraki grammar

[dedalvs]

Dothraki Grambank Features List

I’ve made a new conlang Grambank entry for Dothraki! Jessie Peterson created a Google Sheets spreadsheet that conlangers can copy and fill out in order to share their work. I did one previously on High Valyrian, and now there's one for Dothraki. This won’t tell you everything about the language, but it’ll tell you a LOT in a very small space. If you’d like to do something like this for your conlang, the blank one can be found here.

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What was is like hearing someone else speaking one of your conlangs for the first time?

Disconcerting, because I thought they made a mistake. The first time I heard anyone was in the first episode of Game of Thrones, and it was Roger Allem as Illyrio Mopatis (ha. There’s a trivia question for you. Who was the first character in Game of Thrones to speak Dothraki? Not Drogo!). He says, “Athchomar chomakaan, khal vezhven”. I thought it should’ve been Athchomar chomakea, but it turns out I had changed my mind on that translation at the last minute (reasoning he would address the khal solely and not him and his bloodriders). I just forgot. I also noticed that I omitted zhey before the name, which was my error, but I hadn’t settled on that at the time where I did that translation. So a mixed bag all around, but indicative of how it was going to be moving forward. Nothing is ever good enough for me. But I’ve come to accept that that’s the way I’m going to feel and it’s not necessarily a reflection of reality, so it’s fine.

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what is the word for cat in the language of game of thrones and trig?

Dothraki is havzi; High Valyrian is kēli; and Trigedasleng is sofstepa. And here’s a cat to prove it:

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M'athchomaroon zhey David J. Peterson ! We tried to translate "to grumble" in Dothraki, but we don't find any word looking like. Does it exist ?

I got something good for this. It’s not for yourself, but when you hear someone grumbling or a commenting on someone grumbling, you can use the phrase charat drogikh hezhaha, which means “to hear a distant herd”. It’s a kind of low rumbling that you hear that’s not quite loud enough to discern. That’s what you call grumbling.

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What’s the word you created that you like the least?

I’ve probably mentioned this before, but it’s actually a combination of things. In Dothraki, there’s a word rhaesh that came directly from George R. R. Martin. It means “land”, or something thereabouts. A fine word. There’s also a phrase “The stallion who mounts the world” in the books. This requires something to stand in for “world”. My thought (which was a good though, etymologically speaking) was that since Dothraki recognizes a collective number, it might be cool if the collective form of “land” meant “world” (i.e. all lands combined is the world). The way that works is you add a suffix -(V)sVr, where the V is whatever the last vowel is. Thus you get rhaesheser. Collective nouns are animate (something I decided long before this), and so take animate case marking. In the translation of the phrase, “world” is the object, so rhaesheser is in the accusative, which, since it’s animate, results in rhaesheseres. Thus the phrase is Vezh fin saja rhaesheseres.

That last word is an absolute disaster. It sounds like someone saying “worcestershire” in a cartoon. Due to the conflux of all these grammatical bits, though, that was the form. And they chanted this over and over again in one episode in season 1. It sounded awful. I still stand behind the etymology (I’ve probably even used it in other languages), but I didn’t realize until it was too late how dumb it was going to sound. It would’ve been better if I just created some root and just said, “That means ‘world’!” Ugh.

Anyway, that one is one I’d like back, but we’re stuck with it now. :( I learned my lesson.

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M'athchomaroon zhey lekhmovek ! We continue to source all words on the wiki and I find a old article with a plot translation. We doubt of the exact translation of some new words : dranelat (to counsel, to mother) ; affashilat (to quell, a link with "affa" ?) ; ajjorat ostirge (to plot, meaning of ajjorat/jorat ?) ; athemrasozar (invasion) ; nemo annevalat (to preside itself something ?) zirathe (castle)

M’ath! Here are some responses:

Dranelat is probably best understand as “to nurture” or “to foster growth”. Can be used metaphorically in any number of situations.

Affashilat is “to calm” but only used with a horse or another animal (be insulting to use with a human, unless it was a baby, I guess, in which case it might be amusing).

Ajjorat just means “to carve”, but when used with ostirge, it means “to plan” or “to plot”.

Athemrasozar is good as “invasion”.

Beats me with nemo annevalat. It means “to seat oneself”. I’d have to see the context.

Zirathe is an adjective that means “beat up” or “ragged”. No idea how you got “castle” out of that! What’s the context?

Just out of curiosity, which article are you talking about? Did someone summarize an episode of GoT in Dothraki?! That’d be quite a thing to see!

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In Dothraki, I've been having trouble understanding when to use kash and affin properly. Beyond the basic use of them as adverbs, and kash's use in adverbial clauses, how do we distinguish the two? ie, why is it correct to say "Mahrazhi aqovi affin mori atihi mae," and not "Mahrazhi aqovi kash mori atihi mae."

It shouldn’t be kash, but it also shouldn’t be affin: It should be arrek. That is:

Mahrazhi aqovi arrek mori atihi mae.

Eh. My bad. Not that Dothraki speakers wouldn’t use affin if they felt like it. Seems like a likely variation.

As for kash, the meaning would be “Men will tremble while they see it.” I mean, you can say that, it just means something a little different. Using arrek means “at the moment they see it” while using kash would be “while they’re in the process of beholding it”. Using kash might actually change the whole thing to “Men will be trembling while they behold it”. Does that make sense?

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Dothraki follow up question: I do see the difference between kash and affin now, but I am now confused about the difference between arrek and affin. If you don't mind, could you explain this to me?

Arrek means “then” but in the distant future (as opposed to ahhaz which is regular “then”). The entire rek series, though, is used for precisely this function:

Jini reki tih anha. “This is what I saw.”

Anha vo nesok rekke dothra me. “I don’t know where he went.”

It stands for “that which” or “the place that” or “the time that”, etc.