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Dedalvs (3) 2 days ago

And this is a pretty late response, but on the off-chance you head back, this is worth answering.

First, I come from an anti-Chomskyan tradition, and have never thought much of transformational grammar. I do have a background in it (as well as some experience with HPSG thanks to a good friend), but I don't buy it. So you won't find a series of transformational "rules" or anything (e.g. S > NP VP, VP > Spec V', etc.) in the Dothraki grammar and dictionary.

Instead, most of the "syntactic" information is encoded directly in lexical items, and is phrase-based. Thus, you'll have an exemplar, and then a list of lexical items that fit that pattern. As a result, most of what you'd get from syntax comes directly from the lexicon.

There are a few extra-lexical processes that I've written about on the blog that might prove interesting. This is a description of relative clauses which also touches on the older word order and topicalization patterns of the language. This one talks about adverbs and adverb placement, but also touches briefly on heavy-shift in Dothraki. And this one talks about the lack of a copula and how the modern system came to be. That's a start, at least! As the blog goes forward, I'll add more info (e.g. about coordination; have yet to do that).



^YinAndYang ^(1) ^4 ^days ^ago
Having studied Arabic, are there any programs you would recommend? I'm studying it at school, but unfortunately the professor isn't much of a teacher and the book we use is not very effective. I'd like to get as good a grasp on it as possible, and hopefully translate those skills into my career. I do have Rosetta Stone, although I haven't started it yet.

Dedalvs (2) 3 days ago

I used Al-Kitaab, and I liked it well enough. The professor is everything, though. I think I was very fortunate: I had excellent language instructors all throughout college. For me, I really need that classroom experience to be able to feel comfortable using the language. I haven't found a good substitute otherwise (aside from having to actually use the language in real life, which is the best teacher).





^dopaminer ^(179) ^5 ^days ^ago
Did you embed any "Easter Eggs" or inside jokes in any of the words?

Also, is the grammar of Dothraki similar to any existing language?

Have you received requests from friends to make their names sound like the word for "awesome" or anything like that? (PS, if you still need to some up with a word for awesome, can it have the sound "rachel" in it?)

Dedalvs (88) 4 days ago

See above for the middle question. As for the other two, the simple answer yes. The longer answer is that since Dothraki isn't related to any natural language—and since the universe itself isn't related to our universe—you can drop in references without fear of contamination—something that might not be appropriate for a language that was intended to be used in our own universe (like the one on [The Interpreter](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_interpreter)). And, indeed, I've had some fun with it.

First, of course, I had to drop in my wife's name as the word for "kind", erin. Unfortunately, that word's pretty much never seen the light of day in the series (not too much kindness in the Dothraki scenes). Both of my friends here at the moment have Dothraki words: jano, "dog", comes from my friend Jon's name, because just before I started Dothraki he lost his dog of many years (had a large tumor). My other friend Kyn over here has the word chonge, which means "solid" (his last name is Chong). I made words based on the names of the people who asked questions at my presentation at WorldCon last year.

And, of course, I had to have a word based on Stephen Colbert's name, so kolver is the word for "eagle" (mighty and proud). [Note that older Dothraki b became modern Dothraki v.]

Dothraki has a few words for "awesome" or "excellent", but I think I'll have to find a word for the form rachel. Stay tuned; I'll come up with something good. :)





^Scottiedontdunk ^(127) ^5 ^days ^ago
How long do the characters have to practice to get the sounds right? And how often are they actually saying what you intended them to say as opposed to "ehh, close enough?"
Which character does the best job of speaking how you envision it?

Dedalvs (54) 4 days ago

In a best case scenario, the actors had a couple weeks. During the first season, I was often asked to get Jason's lines done early so he could spend time with them, and I think he did a really good job. He actually did something really cool: He developed a unique—yet realistic—accent. If you listen to any of his lines, everything that ends with the vowel /i/ he lowered to [e]—something like the way Robert Plante pronounces "baby" when he's singing (like "baybay"). It's totally consistent scene-to-scene, episode-to-episode, and it's a peculiarity that might have cropped up in any individual Dothraki speaker's speech.

I thought, personally, that Dar Salim did the best job with Dothraki (or at least the parts I'm remembering). He had the best-pronounced (or most authentically-pronounced) line of the entire first season—and he pronounced like almost seconds before he was killed off. So it goes. ;)

Both Elyes Grabel and Amrita Acharia are also really good, and both Emilia Clarke and Iain Glen are appropriate, in that they're faithfully pronouncing like a foreigner would.



^aweshucks ^(2) ^4 ^days ^ago
Do I see a Slaughterhouse-Five reference?

Dedalvs (3) 3 days ago

To Vonnegut (he's the man)! Here's another one (from one of my other languages).





^endlesscatpuns ^(65) ^5 ^days ^ago
Had you read A Song Of Ice And Fire before you were asked to create dothraki? Did you have any connections to the series before Game of Thrones?

Dedalvs (32) 4 days ago

I had not. My wife had read them and told me about them, and then I started reading them while I was putting together my application. I'm now caught up and waiting for The Winds of Winter.





^pixiemotion ^(94) ^5 ^days ^ago
Will you make more ASoIaF con-languages for HBO?

Dedalvs (37) 4 days ago

I'd love to, but at this stage there aren't any official plans for seasons beyond the second. There won't be any discussions until (crosses fingers) there's a green light for season 3.





^Syklon ^(91) ^5 ^days ^ago
How long did it take to create Dothriaki? And did GRRM have any demands or preferences regarding how the language should sound/be built up?

Dedalvs (35) 4 days ago

Answering this and the reply: All of the phrases that are in the book match up exactly with Dothraki as it exists today. So, for example, if you were to just go to the dictionary and look for how to say "A prince rides inside me", you'd get exactly Khalakka dothrae mr'anha. It's true that this language was for the show, but everyone involved in the production knows that there is a much larger fanbase that existed before the show, and we all have the idea that we're trying as best as possible to realize the vision GRRM laid down in the books.

Dothraki was created in various stages. It took about 400 hours to get it to stage 1, where I could translate the stuff in the pilot. After that, there was a lull while they filmed the pilot and the show got picked up for a full season. In that time, I took it to stage 2, where, for the most part, the grammar was set, and all that was needed was vocabulary. That said, Dothraki's still growing, and occasionally new verbs, in particular, will add new corners to the grammars by introducing a new paradigm for a particular set of verbs (to see a detailed explanation of how this works in English, take a look at Beth Levin's awesome book English Verb Classes and Alternations).

GRRM didn't, in fact, have any notes on the language. In his own words, when he needs a new word in some language, he makes it up on the spot. Ordinarily it would be difficult to make sense of that, but whatever he says about what he was doing, all the Dothraki names and words and phrases in the book seem (to me, at least) to fit a very clear pattern, and that made fleshing out the rest of the language much easier than one might expect.a

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