Dothraki language

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The Dothraki language, is the language of the Dothraki, the indigenous nomadic horse people that roam the Dothraki Sea. It is known to be a gutteral, violent tongue.

In the Books

Interesting to note that:

  • The name for the Dothraki people and their language derives from the verb "dothralat" ("to ride"), mirroring the importance of horses in the Dothraki culture.
  • The Dothraki have four different words for "carry," three for "push," three for "pull" and at least eight for "horse," but no word that means "please" or "follow."
  • The longest word in Dothraki is "athastokhdeveshizaroon," which means "from nonsense."
  • The words for "related," "weighted net," "eclipse," "dispute," "redhead," "oath," "funeral pyre," "evidence," "omen," "fang" and "harvest moon" all have one element in common: "qoy," the Dothraki word for "blood."
  • Dothraki for "to dream" – "thirat atthiraride" – literally means "to live a wooden life"; in Dothraki, "wooden" ("ido") is synonymous with "fake."
  • The word for "pride" – "athjahakar" – is derived from "jahak," the traditional long braid worn by Dothraki warriors ("lajaki").
  • the Dothraki use "it is known" concerning a piece of common knowledge or folklore.
  • "my Sun and Stars", is used when referring to a husband.

Notable words and phrases

  • "Shierak qiya" means bleeding star (comet). The Dothraki see such signs like the Red Comet as ill omens.

Creation

The language was fully developed by David J. Peterson, a member of the Language Creation Society, for HBO's television series Game of Thrones. over 1700 words, Peterson drew inspiration from George R.R. Martin’s description of the language, as well as from such languages as Russian, Turkish, Estonian, Inuktitut and Swahili.[1]

The Dothraki language was developed under two significant constraints. First, the language had to match the uses already put down in the books. Secondly, it had to be easily pronounceable or learnable by the actors. These two constraints influenced the grammar and phonology of the language: for instance, voiceless stops can be aspirated or unaspirated, as in English.

Language Specifics

Phonology and romanization

In Dothraki the consonants d, t, s, n are dental, which sets it apart from many languages. David Peterson has said that "You know, most people probably don’t really know what Arabic actually sounds like, so to an untrained ear, it might sound like Arabic. To someone who knows Arabic, it doesn’t. I tend to think of the sound as a mix between Arabic (minus the distinctive pharyngeals) and Spanish, due to the dental consonants." [2]. Regarding the orthography, the Dothraki themselves don't have a writing system—nor do many of the surrounding peoples (e.g. the Lhazareen). If there were to be any written examples of Dothraki in the A Song of Ice and Fire universe, it would be in a writing system developed in the Free Cities and adapted to Dothraki, or in some place like Ghis or Qarth, which do have writing systems.[3]

Consonants

There are twenty-three consonant phonemes in the Dothraki language. Here the Anglicised form is given on the left, and the IPA in brackets.

Labial Dental Alveolar Postalveolar Velar Uvular Glottal
Language Creation Society t [t̪] k [k] q [q]
Voiced plosive d [d̪] g [g]
Affricate ch [tʃ]
Voiced affricate j [dʒ]
Voiceless fricative f [f] th [θ] s [s] sh [ʃ] kh [x] h [h]
Voiced fricative v [v] z [z] zh [ʒ]
Nasal m [m] n [n̪]
Lateral l [l̪]
Trill r [r]
Tap r [ɾ]
Glide w [w] y [j]

The digraphs kh, sh, th and zh are all fricatives, while ch and j are affricates. The letters c and x never appear in Dothraki, although c appears in the digraph ch, pronounced like 'check'. b and p seem to appear only in names, as in Bharbo and Pono. Voiceless stops may be aspirated. This does not change word meaning.

Vowels

Dothraki has a four vowel system shown below:

Vowels Diphthongs
i [i] iy [ij]
e [e] ey [ej]
o [o] oy [oj]
a [a] ay [aj]

In the A Song of Ice and Fire books, u never occurs as a vowel, appearing only after "q", and only in names, as in Jhiqui and Quaro.

In sequence of multiple vowels, each such vowel represents a separate syllable. Examples: shierak [ʃi.e.'ɾak] star, rhaesh [ɾha.'eʃ] country, khaleesi ['xa.l̪e.e.si] queen.

Phonotactics

Geminates

Following certain prefixes, initial consonants become geminates. Furthermore, initial consonant clusters become reduced in the romanization, such that a-th-th becomes atth, and not athth. We have examples for n, d, s, th, r, j. We also have mid-word geminates for k, g, v, q and r.

Vowel clusters

Dothraki appears to allow unlimited sequences of vowels in a word. Each such vowel represents a separate syllable. Examples: shierak star, and rhaesh country. Furthermore, Dothraki allows for two of the same vowel to occur near each other, as in khaleesi.

Grammar

Word Order

In a basic sentence, the order of these elements (when all three are present) is as in English: First comes the Subject (S), then comes the Verb (V), then comes the Object (O). Here's an example:

Khal ahhas arakh.
The Khal (S) sharpened (V) the arakh (O).

When only a subject is a present, the subject precedes the verb, as it does in English:

Arakh hasa.
The arakh (S) is sharp (V). In more complicated phrases, there is a specific order as well. The order is (maximally) as follows: demonstrative, noun, adverb, adjective, genitive noun, prepositional phrase. Prepositions always precede their noun complements.
jin ave sekke verven anni m'orvikoon
this father very violent of.mine with.a.whip
this very violent father of mine with a whip Adverbs normally are sentence final, but they can also immediately follow the verb. Modal particles precede the verb.[4]

Case

It is known to have at least four noun cases - nominative, accusative, genitive, and ablative.[1][5] It also may have the allative case, and probably lacks the dative. [3]

Lexicon

Peterson had created around two thousand words for Dothraki at the point of the shooting of the second episode. The publicly available lexicon, including the odd inflectional form, has been posted online. A few sample words are:[6]

References and Notes

This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Dothraki language. The list of authors can be seen in the page history of Dothraki language. As with A Wiki of Ice and Fire, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.

External links

Дотракийский язык]]