Say Your Right Words…

Part of the title of the blog.

A couple posts back I noted that a poster at the Westeros forum had probably asked for Dothraki translations for each Westerosi house’s words, rather than just me pronouncing the names of each house in Dothraki-accented English. My bad there.

Anyway, I’ve already translated the words of House Targaryen (“Fire and blood”), but there are loads more. Rather than translating them, I thought it might be fun to see if the readers of this blog can translate them themselves. Consider this the first of (perhaps…?) many translation exercises to come.

So here’s what I’ll do. There are way too many mottos that have been revealed to deal with in one post, so I’ll just grab a few of them, and provide what extra vocabulary is necessary (for the rest, go check out the vocabulary list at the Dothraki Wiki).

First, the words (though one of these I know I’ve already translated somewhere):

  • House Stark: Winter is coming.
  • House Greyjoy: We do not sow.
  • House Tyrell: Growing strong.
  • House Mormont: Here we stand.
  • House Tully: Family, duty, honor.

Those should be fairly manageable once you have the vocabulary. Now here are a couple that might be more challenging:

  • House Lannister: Hear me roar!
  • House Arryn: As high as honor.

Now here’s the vocabulary you’ll need (at least the vocabulary that I don’t yet see over at the the Dothraki Wiki):

  • aheshke (ni.) winter
  • atthar (ni.) duty
  • chomokh (ni.) honor
  • hajolat (v.) to grow strong
  • kovarat (v.) to stand
  • rhojosor (na.) family
  • yath (adj.) high
  • zorat (v.) to roar

The notations (ni.) and (na.) above refer to inanimate and animate nouns, respectively (see the page on noun animacy at the wiki). The only place where noun animacy would be relevant is in assigning noun cases, but you won’t need any noun case other than the nominative for the nouns, so no worries there! You may need a case other than the nominative for the pronouns, though, so go here for the wiki page on pronouns.

Aside from that, these wiki pages may prove useful as well:

I was looking for a page discussing coordinating particles, but didn’t find one… Oddly enough, the relevant translation itself might provide a clue to their use.

Happy translating! I’ll post the first correct translations (along with the translator) up on the blog after everything’s been translated (which, now that I’m looking at it, I suspect won’t take very long…).

P.S.: Bonus points for whoever gets the title reference. The photo associated with this post on the main page is a clue (should you need it).

17 comments

  1. Here is my guess (not sure all are correct but some are):

    Winter is coming – Aheske jada.
    We do not sow – Kisha vo velaineroki.
    Growing strong – Hajoy. (Not sure if it should be participle or not)
    Here we stand – Kisha kovaraki jinne.
    Family, duty, honor – Rhojosor, atthar, chomokh.
    Hear me roar! – Charas meanha zorak!
    As high as honor – Ven yath ven chomok.

  2. Didn’t read the comment above because I still want to try. Only one I got was ‘We do not sow’,
    and got it wrong.
    I came up with ‘Kisha vos velaineri’.

  3. Since ingsve already offered good literal translations, as far as I can see (though meanha should IMO be m’anha), I’ll try some slightly more artistic approaches.

    Aheshke zin jada. (“Winter keeps on coming”)

    Kisha velaineroki vosecchi. (“We do not sow”)

    Hajoki. (“[we] grow strong” or “strong-growers” not the most plausible, yet interesting solution … This has so many possibilities, like ZALAT in that poster)

    Jinne kisha kovaraki. (Adverb-thingy fronted for emphasis. I almost flipped the word order to VS, too, while I was at it, but then I felt that the phrase sounded more solemn than lofty, so I left it simple)

    Rhojosor ma atthar ma chomokh. (“Family and duty and honor.” The straight-out list might sound to dothraki a bit too much like “Family is duty is honor”, so maybe this way)

    Charas anna fin zora! (“Hear me who roars!” Look! I managed a relative clause on this one.)

    Ven yathat ven chomokh. (“As high-being as honor.” Will comparing an adjective to a noun carry a right sense? Will infinite do any better? Maybe this would just need more words; the english version is cropped quite tight.)

  4. Ok here is my try.

    Winter is coming: Aheshke jadi.
    We do not sow: Kisha vo velaineroki.
    Growing strong: Hajolaki.
    Here we stand. Kish kovaraki jinne.
    Family, Duty, Honor: Rjojosor, atthar, chomokh.
    Here me roar: Charaki m’anhaan zorak.
    As high as honor: Ven et yath ven et chomokh.

    Still trying to figure out the bonus…

  5. Ok, here we go. I have a feeling I’ve managed to get almost all wrong (if not all). I need to spend more time studying the language. Right now this is really doing my head in. :-)

    ‘Say your words right…’: Astaki yeri asei haje…

    Winter is coming: Aheshke jady.

    We do not sow: Kisha velaineroki vos.

    Growing strong: Hajoaki.

    Here we stand: Kisha kovaraki jinne.

    Family, duty, honour: Rhojosor, atthar, chomokh.

    Hear me roar!: Chari anna zorat!

    As high as honour: Ven yath ven chomokh.

  6. Graddakh! Some time ago I flipped the rows and columns at wiki verb conjugation table (the initial layout was getting unwieldy) and it seems I messed the table quite badly. I have no idea, how I managed not to notice. At least for a few strange miss-conjugations from Laura I believe I’m to blame.

    jady → jaday
    hajoaki → hajoki

    Sorry, sorry.. It should be right now.
    Jini affesa anni.

  7. Athchomar chomakea (?)

    Qvaak, thank you. But I don’t think anyone can take responsibility for my miss-conjugations. This was my very first contact with the language, other than what I had read in the books and heard in the TV series. And grammar, well let’s just say it’s not my forte, in any language. I have much and more to read and study, and will do so as soon as I have some free time.
    As to the title reference, my previous post is my try:
    Ring ma qoy – Fire and blood.
    Cheers,
    Laura

    1. You have another mistake in your title reference translation.

      It’s true that “ring” means “fire” but in that pair “ring” is the English word and “fire” is the Dothraki word.

      The word for “fire” in Dothraki is “vorsa”.

      1. OH! Ha. Now I get it. lol Yeah, fire is “ring”, though it looks like the English word “fire”. In fact, the two are pronounced differently. That’s a really cool misinterpretation, though!

  8. So, would it be ‘vorsa ma qoy’?
    I felt really stupid about having used’ring’ when I checked the dictionary now.

    1. Yes, David lists it as Vorsa ma Qoy. Though given what he writes in the latest blogpost I wonder if the correct wording should rather be “Ma Vorsa ma Qoy” but since it is an expression there is room to play loosly with grammar.

      1. Actually (and don’t hate me for this answer!) you just use the one because there’s only two items, and they occur in isolation. If you wanted to say, for example, “Give me fire and blood”, you’d need both (i.e. Azhas anhaan ma vorsaes ma qoy!). That’s because there’s two different types of “and” here: One that connects two like phrasal heads (two nouns, two noun phrases, two verb phrases, etc.), and another that strings elements together in a list—and they’re homonymous.

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