And so Game of Thrones is ready for another 8 month or so break. I’m sad to see it go, but looking forward to getting to work on season 3 (no further details yet). Today’s season finale had quite a bit of meat on its bones, though, so let’s get right to it!
Incidentally, before going into it any more, I realize that these posts have been “spoilery” in that they’re reviews of episodes that have aired, and are written under the assumption that an episode that has aired has been watched by whoever might be reading it. I know that this is not always the case. As such, is there anyone reading who’s a WordPress user who could recommend some sort of spoiler-friendly plugin that functions, essentially, like the LiveJournal cut tag? All it would do is require the reader to click a link to get to content that contains spoilers (and I’d prefer that to a blackout tag like you see commonly on fora). It won’t work for this post (though if it’s pretty good, I may go back and edit previous posts), but I’d like to use it for when we eventually get to season 3, and thereafter.
Anyway, now that that’s dispensed with, we’ve gotten our first look at some actual High Valyrian in the show! It’s nothing that wasn’t in the books, but I think many were curious how the phrase would end up being pronounced. In IPA (transcribing broadly), what we had was /ˈva.lar mor.ˈgu.lis/ for the phrase written Valar morghulis. I know there are those who would’ve preferred that the gh be pronounced as a voiced velar fricative, but for me, that doesn’t matter much at all (after all, this is High Valyrian as pronounced by someone from Braavos. A change like *ɣ > g isn’t impossible): what mattered to me was the intonation. And, as it happens, the stress pattern is exactly what I was hoping for—and no English long “a” to boot! (Which, by the way, is how it’s pronounced in the audio book—something like “veil-are”, done in English fauxnetics.) All in all, I was quite pleased.
As for the episode itself, how adorable was it that Dany’s dragons had itty-bitty little chains holding them down?! I mean, sad, but adorable!
And though they’re still little bitty things, they’re already breathing fire! Bitey has served our khaleesi well! (Though Pyat Pree’s kind of stupid. Really, brah? You can produce mirror images of yourself but can’t anticipate—let alone put out—a fire? Fail.)
Before getting to the Dothraki, a couple quick comments about Tyrion’s scenes. Something I’ve been wondering about since the beginning is what they would do about Tyrion’s scar. In the books, the scar is supposed to be right across the nose and make Tyrion look pretty ugly. But Peter Dinklage, of course, has been blowing up ever since the show’s premiere. How could they give him a scar that was faithful to the books without making Peter Dinklage (the actor) look so hideously ugly that the audience wouldn’t be repulsed by him? Would they short change it and give him a tiny scar on the cheek that no one would even notice in real life? Would they actually cut off part of his nose? Neither, it turns out. The scar is there—and right across the face and nose—but, at the same time, I thought he still looked pretty cool! Obviously the wound’s still fresh in the finale, but come season 3, it’ll heal up and make him kind of look like a badass! Well done, sirs.
Also well done to Conleth Hill on Varys. I was reflecting on this after the finale ended. I was, honestly, kind of cool to his interpretation in season 1. Admittedly, I was largely biased by Roy Dotrice’s portrayal in the audiobooks. His Varys just drips slime—like you’d be afraid to touch him, lest his grease would just rub off on you. Hill’s Varys is quite different: less self-assured—almost meek. And yet, especially in his last scene with Tyrion and Shae, I bethought myself. Varys in the show is so…credible. You almost do feel sorry for him at times, and even like him. And after all, just how could he obtain the influence he has—and stay alive—if he wasn’t such a believable liar? He has to be likable, or someone somewhere would just put a knife in him, consequences be damned. So kudos, Mr. Hill (and writers)! I’ve come around.
Now for the Dothraki. There was quite a bit of Dothraki dialogue in this episode, but none of the missing dialogue from episode 8: looks like those scenes were cut entirely. (Not a big loss, storywise: just setting up other scenes.) As for what was kept in, I was quite pleased with the first line, given below:
- Vaes leisi, zhey khaleesi. Me nem nesa.
- “A house of ghosts, khaleesi. It is known.”
Why pleased, you might ask? Not only is Leigh Bardugo’s word in there, but, believe it or not, this is the first time “It is known” is used in the show in Dothraki (all other instances were in English). Huzzah! Glad it made it in before there were no Dothraki left to speak it! Next is another line from Kovarro:
- Finne loshaki?
- “Where are the guards?”
The word loshak derives from the verb loshat, which means “to carry” when the thing doing the carrying is a cart, sack or contraption. It’s also the version of “to carry” used to refer to carrying a child in the womb, and also means “to contain” in a figurative sense (e.g. to say that there’s gold inside a chest, you’d say the chest carries gold). Loshak, then, plays on the sense of containment. Valuables are put into a chest to protect them and ensure that they remain safe if they’re moved from one place to another. Similarly, the guards outside a tower are there to protect the contents of the tower—thus, loshaki.
Next, Jorah responds to Kovarro:
- Vo loshaki. Moveki addrivi k’athmovezari, vo ki tawakofi.
- “No guards. The warlocks kill with sorcery, not steel.”
Sounds like Jorah actually says addrivat, which is an error a non-native speaker would make from time to time. To this Dany responds:
- Azhi morea kis tat.
- “Let them try.”
Kis is a particle like ray or eth and it means “to try to”. Literally, this would be “Give to them to try to do (so).”
Afterwards, Dany heads into the tower, and the next Dothraki we here is from none other than Jason Momoa. Khal Drogo may be dead, but that doesn’t mean he can’t come back for a scene as a result of a warlock’s spell! He greets Dany with his familiar greeting (jalan atthirari anni), and then Dany says much of the following:
- Jini athmovezar qoyi ven athmovezar fini fich yera anhoon—fini fich yera anhoon hatif…
- “This is dark magic, like the magic that took you from me. Took you from before I could even…”
After this, things changed a bit from what I sent, so here’s everything I’ve got:
Daenerys
- Ishish anha drivak vosma anha ray nesok mae vos. Ishish anha ma yeroon she Rhaeshi Ajjalani.
- “Maybe I am dead and I just don’t know it yet. Maybe I am with you in the Night Lands.”
Drogo
- Ma ishish anha zajje emralat Rhaeshis Ajjalani oma yeroon. Ishish anha ast Vezhofaan memé jifo hilee ma anha jad jinnaan haji ayolat yera.
- “Or maybe I refused to enter the Night Lands without you. Maybe I told the Great Stallion to go fuck himself and came back here to wait for you.”
Daenerys
- Jini vena tikh meyer jif ti.
- “That sounds like something that you would do.”
Drogo
- Ma ishish me atthirarido. Atthirarido che yeri che anni… Anha vo nesok. Jini qafe ha mahrazhea ville ma qorasoa reddi.
- “Or maybe it is a dream. Your dream, my dream… I do not know. These are questions for wise men with skinny arms.”
Drogo
- Yer jalan atthirari anni. Haz nesak anha disse, ma anha zigerok nesat vos alikh. Ma hash jini atthirarido, hash anha vaddrivak mahrazhes fin kis vallatha anna.
- “You are the Moon of my Life. That is all I know, and all I need to know. And if this is a dream, I will kill the man who tries to wake me.”
Then in the last scene (which, by the way, I thought was pretty wicked. That’s what Doreah gets for tipping them off about the dragons!), Jorah has a line which would require its own blog post to explain, so I’m going to have to save it for another time. The line is:
- Mas ovray movekkhi moskay.
- “The remaining valuables are for loading.”
And that’s a season! Things are really starting to pick up steam. It’s been outstanding to get to work on a production as vast and fantastic as this one. Now that the season is over with, there’ll be more Dothraki-specific posts in the coming months, so stop by if you’d like to learn a little bit about the language of the dear departed Irri, Rakharo and Drogo (and Mago and Qotho, too). Here’s to 2013!
Error watch: “Ma ishish anha zajje emralat [etc…]” has a wrong translation (copy of the one before it) and some stress marks, which probably were not meant to be there, as there are none anywhere else.
“Ishish anha ma yeroon she Rhaeshi Ajjalani.” Is, I believe, the first instance we’ve seen of being-at-location type of sentence formed in a fully copulaless style. Some time ago at the forum we had some discussion about how Lord’s Prayer might translate into Dothraki, and one thing that we puzzled about was, whether “who art in heaven” might work as “fin she asavva” or should properly be “fini vekhi she asavva”, me and ingsve both betting for the latter. Now it seems to me the former might well go along the lines of good normal speech. Huh?
Bah! Thank you. An old copy-and-paste-o. Fixed. As for the accent mark, that one is there intentionally so readers know that meme is stressed on the second syllable (which, of course, isn’t usual).
For the Lord’s Prayer, in true Dothraki style, I’d say fin dothrae yomme asavva—maybe even asavvasar.
As for the accent mark, that one is there intentionally so readers know that meme is stressed on the second syllable (which, of course, isn’t usual).
Ya. I thought that might be the reason, but then I noticed ishish had an accent mark too.
For the Lord’s Prayer, in true Dothraki style, I’d say fin dothrae yomme asavva—maybe even asavvasar.
Well, that is a cool wording. But I’m still kinda interested in the grammatical side of the question. When to use vekhat and when just copulaless expressions? Are they often both good alternatives (for x is in a location y type of expressions), or is one or another usually clearly preferable?
Ya. I thought that might be the reason, but then I noticed ishish had an accent mark too.
Oops! So it did. Fixed!
I wouldn’t ever use vekhat for a standard locative expression. It’s more of a presentational thing (e.g. “There is a horse on the grass.”). It wouldn’t make any sense in this relative clause (“Our father is there in heaven”…?).
So I got that right! Yay! Now I’m 2 for 2. I was of the idea that there should be no verb at all there as was said above. I did the same thing in one of my zero copula conlangs myself.
Kudos for the good job in the season! I’m hungry for more GoT and more Dothraki! The blog is cool and I can’t wait to see more ramblings about its grammar and usage. How about the comment for the episodes title?
So no news about High Valyrian? I watched a show where they interviewed you and you said you were officially offered to make the language… isn’t that so?
Thanks again, zhey David for all you have done here, and documenting all of the dialogue from this season!
The server with much of the online Dothraki language resources continues to be down, but it should be up soon. If this continues much longer, I will have to talk to you about an alternative server setup.
Just got back from the Glasgow (Kentucky) Highland Games, where I had a really good time. I thought a lot about GoT and the community while running around in kilt and chainmail!
The dragons and cute, but not as cute as Drogo Jr.
Very cool that you got to you Leigh’s word. I’ve been listening for my own all season (I’m the John from WorldCon).
I thought I had heard somewhere that you were working on Old Valyrian for the show. Is that not true?
Yeah, you know you’d think your word would come up, since it’s pretty common (i.e. “to shut”). Hasn’t come up yet. As soon as a Dothraki orders someone to close a door, though, bam!
As for High Valyrian, no news yet. If anything changes, I’ll be sure to let everyone know.
I had no idea about this Blog until today, very excited to go through what you have and also the Dothraki language being documented, thank you.
Agreed on Tyrion’s scar, they did a good job with it, to me it also appeared to copy Underworld slightly with the way the blade was drawn across his face. But next season should be pretty exciting!
M’atchomaroon! Loved this episode…Khal Drogo, Khalakka Rhaego and all the Dothraki language!!
So how would the rest of the Lord’s Prayer go, since we are on the topic?
Miss you all at dothraki.org. Hope it gets back up soon!
Zhey David, it was athvezhvena that Crown of Gold and I could share company with Erin, you and your friends. Also, thank you for indulging in some gelato with us ! See Captain Blood yet?
Thanks for reminding me! Captain Blood isn’t available on Netflix. Darn! I’m going to have to wait till I can acquire it somehow…
Nice to hear some fluent Dothraki on screen again… and I really like the etymology of loshak.
I somehow missed the bit where Doreah betrayed Dany. To me, it just seemed Doreah was kidnapped as part of the dragon heist, and Dany was pulling off a They Lay With Lions (of the slow death kind). I suppose that scene makes more sense if there is reason to believe Doreah was in on it.
Overall, I was rather disappointed at the whole Qarth storyline. It’s hard to imagine someone reading Martin’s books and thinking that there’s not enough gore and cruelty… Yet they had to add a bloody coup, vilify a friendly character, and sacrifice most of the named NPCs of that storyline. Pity.
The House of the Undying was also way creepier and cooler in the original, but I can understand they had to limit the scope for the screen. Still, why is there apparently only a single warlock in Qarth…?
Oh, ObConlang:
I suppose valar morghulis went as well as could be expected, although it was a bit too non-rhotic for my taste. I am also of the [ɣ] persuasion, but as you say, that could just be Jaqen’s Lorathi accent (which for some reason is quite different from Shae’s Lorathi accent?).
And I would have stressed Doreah on the first syllable, but never mind…
Why would the G in Valar Morghulis be a frictive? High Valyrian is their version of Latin, and Latin doesn’t have a frictive G.
I hope we see more High Valyrian/Low Valyrian next season.
http://gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/High_Valyrian
Also, you didn’t mention this in your post about “The Ghost of Harrenhal” — how did you arrive at the pronunciation of “Dracarys”?
The word is from the book, and the TV show arrived at the pronunciation “Druh-Kay-ris”.
I always thought it was “DRACKuh-ris” (or something vaguely resembling “Drake” for Dragon).
Why would the G in Valar Morghulis be a frictive? High Valyrian is their version of Latin, and Latin doesn’t have a frictive G.
While it has the status of Latin, one would hope that it’s not merely a duplicate of Latin. The reason one expects a fricative “g” (or [ɣ]) is the spelling “gh”. Typically a spelling of “gh” in that context is a fricative (if it’d been before a front vowel character like “e” or “i”, that would’ve been a different story).
Also, you didn’t mention this in your post about “The Ghost of Harrenhal” — how did you arrive at the pronunciation of “Dracarys”?
I didn’t.
I didn’t have anything to do with how any of the High Valyrian phrases or words were pronounced in the show.
The word is from the book, and the TV show arrived at the pronunciation “Druh-Kay-ris”.
If I understand your transcription correctly, that’s not how it’s pronounced in the show. At least in episode 210, it’s rather clearly “drah-KAH-ris”—which is what I would expect. That’s also the way it is in the audiobooks, and is about what I’d expect from an English speaker presented with the word (including the stress on the second syllable, as opposed to the first).
Gratias tibi ago. Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.
Sed…quomodo dicere “Valyria” et “Valyrian”? “Val-air-ee-uh”, vel “Vuh-lair-ee-uh”, aut “Veil-air-ee-uh”?
Dummodo possis dicere de his (sub lege), laborasne cum Lingua Veteri vel cum Lingua Alborum Ambulatorum?
Cum audiatur, lingua Alborum Ambulatorum similis sonis glaciei est, hac “Skroth”. Scimus, autem, sonas significare aliquid.
http://gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/Skroth
Quod legitur in scripto?
I don’t actually read Latin, but since evidently you do, maybe you can answer my Latin question here.
As for “Valyria”, I think they’re doing fine pronouncing the “y” as [i] (i.e. as the “ee” in “feed”). Ultimately I think that pronunciation makes sense. By the way, in talking about pronunciation, it’s quite helpful, I find, to use the International Phonetic Alphabet.
Also, the information on Skroth there is wrong. I created something for the White Walkers initially called Skroth, and I believe they didn’t end up using it. And that was for season 1; I didn’t do anything for it for season 2.
This information on Skroth is useful; did you develop it as a language that actors can speak, then they ultimately didn’t use it, in lieu of actual cracking-ice sounds?
Well my question (the one I gave in Latin) was if you’re not working on High Valyrian yet, are you working on variants of Bastard Valyrian for Slaver’s Bay? (as this new setting features prominently next season). Meanwhile, given that Jon Snow will be in Mance Rayder’s camp in season 3, have you been asked to work on the Old Tongue? (given that its the only language the Giants know)
This information on Skroth is useful; did you develop it as a language that actors can speak, then they ultimately didn’t use it, in lieu of actual cracking-ice sounds?
I believe so.
And regarding season 3, I can’t say anything yet, I’m afraid. When I can announce anything, I’ll announce it here.
As for your Latin question,
1 – The man threw the stone at the house.
2 – The man threw the stone onto the house.
3 – The man threw the stone on the house. (The man threw the stone while he was on the house.)
4 – The man threw the stone on the house. (The man threw the stone that was on the house.)
How would Latin distinguish these?
A problem is that as an inflected language, word order isn’t very important in Latin. It loosely follows Subject-Object-Verb order, but you can theoretically move things around without changing the meaning; moving the words around changes their emphasis, but only a native Latin speaker would really notice. Even then, the emphasis might not be obvious. They change the word order all the time in poetry, though, to keep a rhyme scheme.
One of the *only* set rules on word order, however, is that a preposition *always* immediately precedes the word it is acting on (and thus there is less confusion).
In terms of just prepositions….to my limited knowledge, Latin doesn’t distinguish between “in” and “onto”. When you’re in a road, you’re “in via”. But the same preposition, “in”, is used to mean “on”….I do know that if you’re riding atop a horse, you’re “in equo”….context alone is what lets you know that you aren’t *inside* of the horse, but riding on it. I…*believe*, that it makes no distinction between if something is “in a box” or “on a box”. But that’s just relying on prepositions alone.
So I’d go with “The man threw the stone onto the house” = “Vir iacto petram in domo.”
I could move this around to “in domo vir iacto petram”, emphasizing that the destination of the stone was the house, but the meaning is largely the same. Note that the preposition “in” forms a unit with the word its acting on, “domo”, and they have to stay together in this order. “vir iacto in petram domo” is bad Latin, and “in” is now acting upon “petram” in Accusative, and would mean “the man threw with a house into the stone”, which is gibberish.
Latin has separate Cases for Direct Object and Indirect Object. So “The man threw the stone” = Vir iactat petram. (petram is in direct object case). And we simply add on “house” in Indirect Object case (the Dative Case), thus “Vir iactat petram domo” = The man threw the stone to (at) the house.”
Note that Latin doesn’t have definite or indefinite articles like “the” or “a”, they’re included in the inflection of cases. Also “House” might be a bad template word to use, as “House” is a very common word, and thus a very *irregular* word, alternatively using 2nd declension and 4th declension forms (for the sake of convenience I’m consistently using 2nd declension forms; it really depended on what a particular Roman felt like; modern Latin students going English to Latin can just pick one or the other).
But all of this runs into a deeper problem. Latin has five commonly used grammar cases: Nominative (the Subject case), Genitive (the possessive case), Dative (the indirect object case), Accusative (direct object case), and Ablative (…the adverbial/preposition case).
It also has two *uncommonly* used Cases. One is the Vocative, used for direct address, which almost always looks like the Nominative anyway (except with 2nd declension masculine singulars). The other, even less common, is the Locative Case. Some Indo-European languages have a full Locative case. In Latin…it was *almost* entirely absorbed by the Albative case, before the advent of writing made the change slow down. Locative almost always looks exactly like Ablative forms….*except* with first and second declension singular nouns, whose Locative forms look like their Genitive forms. Towns, cities, and small islands can take the Locative. Thus you don’t need to say “in Roma” to say “in Rome”, you can just say “Roma” (in the first, “Roma” is in the Ablative, in the second, its actually Locative but has the same form as Ablative).
but here’s the kicker: a handful of special nouns (maybe four or five) can also take the Locative Case, and the word for “House”, “Domus”, is among them.
So if I were to say, “a man at the house threw the stone”, it could be “Vir domi iactat petram”. “Domi” in this example is in Locative Case.
Closely tied to Locative are “Motion Towards” and “Motion From”. Technically they’re not the same thing as Locative but they’re taught side by side, given that the SAME few special words like Domus are the only ones that can do this. “Motion towards” means that if you put Domus in the Accusative, “Domum”, it means “to the house”. Using Ablative makes it “Domo”, or “from the house” (yes, the Dative and Ablative forms of the 2nd Declension singular happen to look the same, this is coincidence). The practical result is that while “the man threw the house towards the stone” would be “vir iactat domum ad petram”, “the man threw the stone towards the house” could be rendered as “Vir iactat petram domum”….in which case the thrown stone is in motion towards the house. “vir iactat petram ad domum” isn’t technically wrong, I think, but its redundant. Words that can use Locative don’t need a preposition, the Case already conveys this meaning.
You may recall the Monty Python scene from “The Life of Brian” in which a Roman Centurion angrily tells Brian that “Romanes eunt domus” is grammatically incorrect, pointing out that “domus” is nominative but “Romans go home” is motion-towards, at which Brian suggests “ad domum”, but the Roman points out that Domus takes the Locative, and they use simply “Romani ite domum”.
In summary,
1 – The man threw the stone at the house = “vir iactat petram domo” (indirect object “domo” in Dative case), but because “domo” is also the Ablative form, it might be misread as “from the house”, so I think it would be preferred to say “vir iactat petram domum” using the Locative Case. Or you could just use “ad domum” for emphasis, though I fear this may not be correct.
2 – The man threw the stone onto the house = “vir iacto petram in domo” (I think context alone could determine if he threw it on or within the house).
3 – The man threw the stone on the house. (The man threw the stone while he was on the house.)
“Vir in domo iacto petram” – moving the words around so that “Vir” is in front and followed immediately by “in the house” should stress that the man was on (or in) the house…but again, this is only slight emphasis by putting it first. It could still *conceivably* be read as “the man threw the stone onto the house”, though “context” (the fact that Vir is placed first) should give enough of a hint about what your meaning was.
I wouldn’t use Locative for this, because it only implies general two dimensional location; it’s a set phrase like “at home”. Notably, it cannot be used in plural at all – many Romans can “ite domum”. “Ite”= you all go! (plural command), but domum is singular. It’s a state of being or concept. “Each of you individually go to your separate homes”, with homes plural, would not use the Locative. For this reason it is probably *less* precise to use Locative to distinguish being at or in a house, than specifically *on top of* a house. I’d go with the preposition “in” for that.
Unless you want to resort to a more complicated and precise sentence, in which case I’d go with Ablative Absolute. This construction, at the beginning of a sentence, establishes the “setting”. You make it by having a noun and a participle as a word unit, both in the ablative. “urbe capta,, Aeneas fugit” = with the city having been captured (both words are in ablative), Aeneas fled. But here’s the kicker: the verb “sum”, to be, cannot be used in Ablative Absolute. You just leave it blank. You can’t say “with the king being good”, you just say “rege bono”, which is literally “with the king good”, and “being” is implied.
In a more complex sentence, I would put it as “Viro in domo, iactat petram” = “With the man (being) on the house, he threw the stone”. “with” can be finessed in translation to mean “since, with, because” or even “although”, but it gives the idea that the man was on the house already.
4 – The man threw the stone on the house. (The man threw the stone that was on the house.)
Similarly, I would solve this with the Ablative Absolute: “Petra in domo, Vir iactat” = “with the stone being on the house, the man threw it”
In conclusion, you can use Locative Case (including Motion Towards and Motion Away From), or resort to using the Ablative Absolute to specifically indicate where everything is. You could use Indirect Object (Dative), but unfortunately, for many nouns this also resembles the Ablative (which is also used in Motion Away From). Well, Latin has five Noun declension families, and of these only in the Second Declension do the Ablative and Dative Singulars happen to look similar (though as a rule, the PLURAL of Ablatives and Datives is the same, in EVERY Declension).
Given that “Roma” (Rome) is first declension, there would be no such confusion. “Vir iactat petram Roma” = the man threw the stone from Rome. “Vir iactat petram Romae” would mean “the man threw the stone towards Rome”, in which “romae” is dative. Unfortunately, first declension Dative singular is the same form as Genitive singular, and Locative for first declension looks like Genitive, so you’re stuck with “Romae” all over again, “the man, who was at Rome, threw the stone”
The short, short answer, is that Locative Case helps with some verbs of motion, but rather than using a relative sub clause, “the man, who was on top of the house, threw the stone”, its much more formal and convenient to rely on the Ablative Absolute to establish the “setting”.
“Thus you don’t need to say “in Roma” to say “in Rome”, you can just say “Roma” (in the first, “Roma” is in the Ablative, in the second, its actually Locative but has the same form as Ablative).”
I meant to type “Romae” as the Locative for “in Rome”, that was a typographical error.
lol It might have simplified things a bit if you’d assumed I knew the basic grammar of Latin (as I do), and what a case is. (I may not know the vocabulary, but studying linguistics for twelve years, you come to know these things.) That said, this answers my question. Thank you! I suppose it was really the way to disambiguate that I was looking for, and the ablative absolute is what does it, it looks like (which makes sense). Very cool!
By the way in that article they say David endorsed the pronunciation “Veil-ARE[3] Mor-GOO-lis”, when in fact this is not the case…
I added that; it was stressing the pronunciation of “Valar”, using the “veil” transcription (hench why the footnote appears after Valar, not Morghulis; we have to go by whats on-screen.
And, incidentally, I’d say the “veil” pronunciation is wrong—and I’m quite glad they didn’t pronounce it that way in the show.
Ack, I misunderstood. I’ll change it back.
Yes, friend, that’s what I meant. In any case I think you got it a little wrong again. David says: “what we had was /ˈva.lar mor.ˈgu.lis/ for the phrase written Valar morghulis.”
Which would mean the transcript should be something like “VAL-are Mor-GOO-lis” in your terms, I believe.
Thank you for answering the obsessive questions, the Game of Thrones Wiki’s page on “Dothraki religion” has been updated to “Great Stallion” to reflect their henocentric monotheism: http://gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/Great_Stallion
The Great Dothraki Theology debate is now over: http://gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/Talk:Great_Stallion
Also I’ve interlinked the “Dothraki language” article with the nice writeups on the Dothraki.org wiki: http://gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/Dothraki_%28language%29
I’m sorry that I didn’t get back to this sooner: the past few weeks I’ve been…putting the “heads of state” in their proper place, to restore Order to the wiki: gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/User:The_Dragon_Demands (Bottom of the page, see “Heads. Spikes. Walls.”) But Werthead seemed to think I was doing something right, so as a result he promoted me to be one of the Administrators over on the Wiki.
Thanks again for the info.
Wow! Great work there! Vezhof help Wikipedia if you ever take your talents there.
Wow! A not-so-new, new word! Somewhere along the line, Qvaak, Ingsve and myself all missed Vezhof! And an important proper noun to tim!
April and May of 2012 were tough for the Dothraki community because of a series of bizarre failures of the server that hosts the language project. Thankfully, those days are behind us!
I wouldn’t say it was missed. It hasn’t been added to the vocabulary thats’ all. It was part of the season 1 dialogue so I at least have known the word since I did transcriptions of that season.