Text
Anha vo thirok ki sani assokhi. Kash anha thirak atthiraride, kash anha laz tak movekh qemmemmo. Anha shillok mehash anha laz movesok mae, hash anha laz tak mae.
Anha kis gach rekke anha zigere elat, vosma ei idrikh solottisi anni idosh.
Majin anha mov liwasares assokhi h’anhaan adothrasok athyofizar atthirari. Kijinosi, anha azhak atthiraridaan attihat anna osqoy.
English Translation
I don’t live by many rules. While I dream, I can do strange magic. I believe that if I can imagine it, I can do it.
I tried to figure out where I needed to go, but all the directions on my map were fake.
So I created a collection of rules for myself to navigate the insanity of life. In this way, I let the dream show me the Blood Path.
Grammar and Vocabulary
Official Website: http://dothraki.com/
Unofficial Website: http://wiki.dothraki.org/
-All the grammar you’ll need should be on the unofficial site. It also explains the romanization system, which I hope is straightforward.
-Typological facts: word order = SVO; prepositional; NG; NA; NR. Adverbs generally come sentence-finally.
-The infinitive form of a verb ends in /-(l)at/. Strip off this suffix to get the verb stem. The verb stem by itself serves as the past tense form of the form in the positive grade. In the negative grade, a suffixed -o is added to the verb stem in the past tense. In the present and future tense, verbs take personal suffixes. There are both positive /-ak/ and negative /-ok/ first person singular present tense forms in this text. The future tense of a verb is built off the present (the stem plus the personal ending). To the form the future tense, prefix /a-/ to the present tense form.
-There is no copula in Dothraki. If you have X-NOM Y-NOM, it means “X is Y”. The nominal forms listed in the lexicon are the nominative forms of a given noun, unless otherwise stated.
-Dothraki has five cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, allative and ablative. Only the first four feature in this text. Unless otherwise stated, the subject of a verb takes the nominative, and the object takes the accusative. The genitive is used in possessive constructions (such that X Y-GEN means Y’s X). Otherwise, the various prepositions will state what case they assign to their governed noun phrase.
-Aside from the pronouns (whose relevant declensions are listed in the lexicon), you’ll find a few declined nouns. Inanimate nouns drop their final vowel before being declined. The genitive ending is /-i/, and for animate nouns, the accusative ending is /-es/ (which is added regardless of whether the word ends in a vowel). The allative ending is /-aan/. Where an irregular form is needed, it will be listed in the lexicon.
-Dothraki has a series of adverbial conjunctions which work a little differently from English. One such is /kash/. A phrase like “kash X kash Y” means “while X, Y happened” or “X when Y”. The other, /hash/, works the same, but it’s “if x, then y”.
-An odd facet of Dothraki grammar is “in order to” constructions. To say something like “I X’d in order to Y”, you’d simply add the future tense first person singular form of Y directly after the equivalent of X’d. This happens in one spot in the text.
-To say something like “I let him X”, you’d say “Anha azh mae X”, where X is an infinitive.
-The word /osqoyi/ I’m leaving vaguely defined, because it came vaguely defined. The word /os/ means “path”, and /qoy/ means “blood”, so this literally means “Blood Path”, but what that means is up to you. Here are some other blood compounds in Dothraki: /asqoyi/ (word + blood) = oath; /asshekhqoyi/ (day + blood) = birthday; /jalanqoyi/ (moon + blood) = total eclipse of the moon; /kathqoyi/ (net + blood) = weighted net; /shoqoyi/ (mark + blood) = evidence; /vorsqoyi/ (blood + fire) = funeral pyre.
LEXICON
anha (pron.) I (first person singular nominative pronoun)
anna (pron.) me (first person singular accusative pronoun)
anni (pron.) my (first person singular genitive pronoun)
anhaan (pron.) to me (first person singular allative pronoun)
assokh (ni.) rule, order
atthirar (ni.) life
atthirarido (ni.) dream (accusative is atthiraride)
athyofizar (ni.) insanity
attihat (v.) to show
azhat (v.) to give, to allow
dothrasolat (v.) to navigate
ei (det.) all, all of
elat (v.) to go
gachat (v.) to figure out
ha (prep.) for (assigns the allative case)
hash (adv./conj.) if/then (see grammar notes)
idolat (v.) to be fake
idrikh (ni.) direction, landmark
kash (adv./conj.) while, during, when (see grammar notes)
ki (prep.) by, because of (assigns the genitive case); also precedes quoted speech
kijinosi (adv.) in this way, thus
kis (part.) a particle meaning “to try to”
laz (part.) a particle meaning “be able to”
liwasar (na.) collection
mae (pron.) him, her, it (third person singular accusative pronoun)
majin (conj.) and then, then, so, and so, consequently
me- (pref.) complementizer used to introduce subordinate clauses
movekh (ni.) magic trick, trick, amazing feat
movelat (v.) to create (note: past tense is mov)
movesolat (v.) to imagine
os (ni.) path
osqoyi (ni.) Blood Path (see grammar notes)
qemmemmo (adj.) strange
qoy (ni.) blood
rekke (adv.) where, wherever, the place which
san (ni.) pile (used attributively to mean “a lot” or “many”, but still inflects as a noun)
shillolat (v.) to believe
solotti (na.) map
tat (v.) to do
thirat (v.) to live
thirat atthiraride (vp.) to dream
vo (part.) no, not (negator)
vosma (conj.) but
zigerelat (v.) to need
GLOSSARY
A = adjective
ALL = allative
adj. = adjective
adv. = adverb
conj. = conjunction
expr. = expression
G = genitival phrase
GEN = genitive
N = noun
n.= noun
na.= animate noun
ni. = inanimate noun
nm. = name
NOM = nominative
O = object
P = preposition
part. = particle
prep. = preposition
pron. = pronoun
R = relative clause
S = subject
V = verb
v.= verb
X = an argument of the verb or clause
Y = a different argument of the verb or clause