I know it’s not the most popular costume this Halloween, but some may have the idea of going trick-or-treating as Khal Drogo. You could probably grab a Conan the Barbarian costume and modify it, sure. That’s cool.
Or you could make your own Khal Drogo costume. Authentically. From scratch.
Sound impossible? If you’re someone like me, yes. If you’re someone like Skxawng over at the Dothraki forum, though, it’s entirely within the realm of possibility.
Way, way back on June 10th, Skxawng announced his intention of creating a Khal Drogo costume. He mentioned the materials he thought he’d need to create a leather girdle, bracers, a medallion belt, an arakh, etc., which sounded impressive, but it’s the pictures that really tell the story.
Here, for example, is an arakh in the process of being made:
And here’s one of the knives that Drogo carries with him:
And here’s the girdle in the early stages:
But perhaps the most impressive shots are these before and after shots. Here’s the cardboard mock-up Skxawng made at the beginning:
And here’s what it looks like today:
Are you kidding me?! That’s outstanding! Great job, Skxawng!
If you want to read more details about the creation process, you can go to the original topic at the Dothraki forum, or you can go to Skxawng’s (real name Bryce Homick) blog zombatart.blogspot.com. In fact, there’s quite a bit more detail at Skxawng’s blog (including how he made these incredible horse medallions!); I highly encourage you to go check it out.
There is one bit remaining issue, though. In the original post, Skxawng was looking for some Dothraki phrases to memorize to go with the costume. I’m not sure if he ever got them, so here are some that might serve:
Greetings/Farewells
- M’athchomaroon! “Hello!”
- M’ath! “Hi!”
- M’ach! “Hi!”
- Athchomar chomakea! “Greetings to you all!”
- Hajas! “Be strong!” (Like “Goodbye!”)
- Dothras chek! “Ride well!” (Another farewell.)
Insults/Exclamations
- Ifas maisi yeri! “Go walk with your mother!”
- Yer affesi anna! “You make me itch!”
- Ezas eshna gech ahilee! “Find another hole to dig!”
- Ki fin yeni?! “What the heck?!”
Some Compliments
- Yer chomoe anna. “You do honor to me.”
- Hazi davrae. “That’s good.”
- Yer zheanae (sekke). “You’re (very) beautiful.”
- Anha vazhak yeraan thirat. “I will let you live.”
Questions
- Hash yer asti k’athijilari? “You’re speaking truthfully?”
- Hash yer dothrae chek asshekh? “Do you ride well today?”
- Hash anha atihak yera save? “Will I see you again?”
- Fini hazi? “What is that?”
Statements
- Yer ojili! “You’re wrong!”
- Anha efichisak haz yeroon! “I disagree!”
- Anha dothrak chek asshekh. “I feel well today.”
- Athdavrazar! “Excellent!”
Update: lol It’s literal years later, and I finally got the audio working here, only to notice that I misread Yer ojili! as the ungrammatical Yer ojila! Oh well… It’s right on the page; not in the audio file.
Skxawng’s going to have some more pictures after Halloween, so stay tuned! Again, great job!
This just made my day! There are more photos up, and will be more and more photos as things go along. Thanks so much for the Dothraki Phrases, I’ll definitely be putting them to use when I go to a con or otherwise wear this further!!
Vitteya Haji Halloween!
Zhey Skxawng, “costume” yeri athdavrazar! (As I mentioned in the forum.)
Zhey David, athchomar yeraan (for the phrases)!
Thank you very much for those useful phrases. Stuff like this makes learning Dothraki bother easier and more enjoyable!
And yes, ‘awesome’ hardly describes Skxawng’s outfit! I am planning on copying a couple pieces of it for my Celtic warrior costume.
Yeraan eth nem viqaferi ayyey! [yeah. there might be a few mistakes there..]
In “Ezas eshna gech ahilee!” the gech is an accusative of “hole” and ahilee a second person future of hilelat, “to dig”? The sentence structure seems similar to “Khal vos zigereo adoroon anevasoe maan.” (from ep.7)..?
In “Yer ojila!” what kind of word ojila is? A noun? A past tense verb?
Yeraan eth nem viqaferi ayyey!
Hmm… “To you must be begged always!” If something is passivized, the subject is always nominative.
In “Ezas eshna gech ahilee!” the gech is an accusative of “hole” and ahilee a second person future of hilelat, “to dig”? The sentence structure seems similar to “Khal vos zigereo adoroon anevasoe maan.” (from ep.7)..?
It is. I was wondering if anyone would notice that… It’s a very specific construction that exists because of the history of the language. Literally, it’s, “Find another hole you will dig!” The semantics derives purely from the construction, not from the elements in the sentence—and it does so because of how the future tense arose in Dothraki.
In “Yer ojila!” what kind of word ojila is? A noun? A past tense verb?
It is, of course, a typo. You’ve done it again, zhey Qvaak! It should, of course, be ojili. I will fix it.
So is the translation of Ezas eshna gech ahilee. into “Find somewhere else to stick your cock” from episode 8 not at all literal or is digging a synonym to “fuck” in Dothraki?
It means literally “to dig” and is also used for intercourse—kind of like “hit” in “I’d hit that”.
Hmm… “To you must be begged always!” If something is passivized, the subject is always nominative.
Hahh. I was aiming more for “you must always be bugged with questions”, but the chances for success weren’t too high, I gotta admit. Some kind of repetitive auxiliary or affix would have been a better bet than durative.. Viqaferat is “to beg”? Makes sense.
Do object case based meaning differences just disappear in passivation?
Hahh. I was aiming more for “you must always be bugged with questions”, but the chances for success weren’t too high, I gotta admit. Some kind of repetitive auxiliary or affix would have been a better bet than durative.. Viqaferat is “to beg”? Makes sense.
Do object case based meaning differences just disappear in passivation?
Ahh… Okay, I see what happened here, I think. First, viqaferat is, indeed, its own word, and is no longer merely a modified version of qafat. It means “to beg” or “to plead”. However, neither qafat nor viqaferat subcategorizes for an allative argument (partly what I found confusing). In fact, both verbs subcategorize for every case except the allative, so I was completely baffled by your use of the allative there—especially in subject position.
Anyway, because viqaferat has its own meaning, there is no “question” in there at all. In order to say something like “You must always be bugged with questions”, the word “questions” has to be in there. I’m not sure if I’d use the same word for “bugged” as “begged”, but if I did, I’d probably translate it:
Yer ethim viqaferi ma qafoon ayyey.
Though I don’t think we’ve ever seen any of the fronting particles “decline”, as it were… They can encode passive and reflexive (so not yer eth nem but yer ethim).
As for passivization, there are two types of languages (well, many more, but two I’ll look at here): those with applicatives that have a narrow range of nominals they can passivize, and those without that can passivize many if not all nominals. Dothraki is the latter (since I thought applicatives might be too difficult for speakers of Western languages). So yer in my sentence above could have originally been in the accusative, ablative or genitive, but given the context, the ablative seems like the most obvious choice.
I want penpals to study dothraki with. Please respond. I have acquired the book and cd.
Dothgirl-V
M’ath, I’m interested in learning too!
I’d love to be ur penpal and study Dothraki with you
my email is white.dionysus@gmail.com , email me what ud like to do okay? ^_^
let’s do this
Thank you very much for your work on the language and the coursebook. I am really enjoying building sentences and exploring the language further.
As part of my sentence building, I intended to say goodnight and ‘good dreams’ as an idiom that would make sense in Dothraki culture. Would this phrase, “Chetiri shieraki chek sanekhi” have been correct?
At the very least, does the phase literally translate as, “Cantor well beside the stars again and again”?
I own the cousebook but I was not clear on the placement of adverbs within sentences. Is there a preferred order, adverbs of place before time or degree before manner, like in English?
As a final question, was the Dothraki language at all inspired by Arabic? I noticed some minute similarities but they could simply have been coincidental.
Is the re e a translation for When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves?
Anha viqaferat yer = I beg you ????