Of course the million dollar question is: Just what does that participial phrase agree with…?
“Kissed By Fire”, written by my old compatriot Bryan Cogman, was low on action (outside the first scene), but high on drama. There were some outstanding scenes, and nearly every major character made an appearance (no Bran, no Samwell, no Theon, no Joffrey, no Melisandre, but everyone else). We haven’t gotten to see that very often of late! This week’s episode featured not one, but two scenes where Tyrion is demolished by an elder—first by Lady Olenna, and then by my all-time favorite Ice and Fire character: Tywin Lannister. And though usually an episode will end with a twist or a bit of high drama, I liked that we close with Cersei, of all people, finally getting the dressing down she deserves from someone (namely [who else?] Tywin). The man is a beast!
As a happily married man, I will refrain from commenting on any redheads that did or did not appear in this episode.
On a different note, though, I wonder how many people thought what I did when watching this scene:
So that’s Robb there staring over a large map with, well, what appear to be large Cyvasse pieces representing the various armies. Now, it’s no wonder that Robb would have a map. Maps are important. Cartographer is a noble calling even today, but especially back in the days before flight. Every lord worth his salt probably has dozens of maps, and has them updated routinely. Those figurines, though… They’re quite specific, no? He has figures for his house, for the Lannisters, and apparently for each of his bannermen. Just where do you think he gets them from? Did each bannerman bring his own…figurines? And does he have Frey figurines for the next part of his plan? If so, where does he store them? Does he go to his horse’s saddlebags and pull out the baggy of Frey figurines and put them in place on the map? And if he doesn’t have them, does he have someone carve them for him—one of his knights, perhaps? And is there any kind of quality control there? After all, these are not crudely made. They appear to be carved, shaped, sanded and finished. Quite a bit of work went into carving each and every one of those figurines—and transporting them. Even if he didn’t inherit them from Ned or some other bannerman, that had to be a conversation at some point—something along the lines of, “Okay, I have a big map. In order to discuss the movement of forces, I’m going to need about a dozen figurines—maybe more—with groups representing the various armies in play. I’ll need your finest craftsmen to get on this right away!” Not to say that they don’t look cool (they do) or that I don’t want some (I very much do), it just seems like this is the kind of detail we’re not meant to think about. And yet here I am…
Anyway, let us speak of language. Some major highlights and an oddity in this one. The scene across the Narrow Sea featured Barristan Selmy not so subtly disinviting Jorah Mormont to the Queen Daenerys party along with Daenerys having a discussion with the leaders of her new army.
First, a word. I have three versions of the translation I did, and three .pdf versions of this scene. Not one of them matches what eventually appeared on screen. Instead, there’s a mix of lines from the original translation I did and the revised translation I did—as well as a bit of a subtitle remix. I think I got everything, though, so I’ll do my best (though the same note applies regarding long vowels. I’ll try my best to get them all, but I may miss some; I’ll eventually get them all in). First, Dany addresses the group:
- Keso glaesot iderēptot daor.
- “You did not choose this life.”
- Yn dāeri vali sīr issi. Se dāeri vali pōntalo syt gaomoti iderēbzi.
- “But you are free men now. And free men make their own choices.”
Then comes a line whose subtitle changed, but I don’t think I was ever asked to retranslate (I could’ve; would’ve been relatively painless). I had this:
- Jenti jevi jemēle iderēbilātās, qogrondo jevo hēdrȳ.
- “You will select your own leader, from amongst your own ranks.”
But I believe the subtitle has her asking a question: “Have you chosen a leader from amongst your own ranks?”
Then comes a truly perplexing moment.
As one of the Unsullied approaches, Dany asks him to remove his helmet. I distinctly remember being asked to translate this line. In fact, I have the words “remove” and “helmet” in there that I specifically translated for this line. It should have been something like Geltī aōhe nādīnās. What she says sounds like derēpti, which means…nothing. (If it had a different ending, it’d be some irrelevant form of the verb “to gather, collect”.) I’ve scoured my e-mail, and I can’t find any record of the request, or of my sending off the translation. I also can’t seem to find the translation in my files. And yet I did not create the words for “remove” and “helmet” just because. I created them specifically because I was asked for the translation of “remove your helmet” for this season. I’m absolutely mystified by the entire situation, and am chalking it up to gremlins. And so I’m going to leave it at that.
UPDATE: Okay, I’ve scoured my records, and I have found the answer. At 3:24 p.m. PST on Friday, February 8th, 2013 I was asked to translate “Remove your helmet” into High Valyrian (so this was for postproduction). I e-mailed back asking how quick they’d need it, but actually started recording then just for the heck of it. By the time I got a response back (they wouldn’t need it until Monday the 11th), I was done, and I sent off the translation and .mp3 that same day at 4:01 p.m. PST. The translation was:
- Aōhi geltī nādīnās.
- “Remove your helmet.”
Which, of course, was incorrect (it should have been aōhe), but I was working quickly. I received a response at 4:10 p.m. PST, and that was the last I had to do with. For whatever reason, it never made it to the screen.
Now I’m sure it wasn’t the messenger’s fault (the person I was e-mailing with); I’m sure they passed on the .mp3 and translation like they’d always done in the past. No, I think I know who’s behind it—and if it is, this is a person that’s run afoul of me before. And if, indeed, it was that person, they should know that my memory is long. Very long.
Back to the post…
Then things start cooking. One Unsullied steps forward and says:
- Bezy eza ji rigle.
- “This one has the honor.”
Dany asks him:
- Skoroso jemēle brōzā?
- “What is your name?”
He responds:
- Torgo Nudho.
- “Grey Worm.”
Dany turns to Missandei who explains that the Unsullied take vile names to remind them of how low they are. She doesn’t explain how they get a new name every single day (they draw them out of a bowl, or something). That’s kind of a neat little factoid that’s probably way too specific for TV, but I liked it, so I thought I’d mention it here. The well-meaning Daenerys, after learning this, tells the Unsullied:
- Hēzīr, brōza jevi jemēle iderēbilātās. Mentyri idañe jevi ivestrilātās keskydoso gaomagon.
- “From this day forward, you will choose your own names. You will tell all your fellow soldiers to do the same.”
When Dany continues, she uses an Astapori Valyrian word for “slave name”:
- Gadbag aōhe qrīdrughās. Muñar aōt teptas lue brōzi, iā mirre tolie iderēbās. Avy hoskas lue brōzi.
- “Throw away your slave name. Choose the name your parents gave you, or any other. A name that gives you pride.”
Then…this. Man alive! Who the hell is Jacob Anderson?! And I mean that in the best possible way. I mean, he may have messed up one vowel somewhere in this long, long speech, but if he did, I didn’t hear it. Jacob Anderson is now and forever afterwards my hero. If you didn’t get a chance to see this scene, watch it—by any means necessary. Seriously. This performance? Un. Be. LIEVABLE. I want to bake this guy a cake—or wash his car—whatever! I’ll drive him to the airport for the rest of his life for this performance. If I could, I’d have him do recordings for me, because I think he’s better than me. He may as well have created this language. I want him to teach me how to speak this language. I want to make this speech my ringtone—in fact, I’m tempted to record the audio straight off HBO GO and upload it here… But, no. I’ll be good.
Here’s his line:
- “Torgo Nudho” hokas bezy. Sa me broji beri. Ji broji ez bezo sene stas qimbroto. Kuny iles ji broji meles esko mazedhas derari va buzdar. Y Torgo Nudho sa ji broji ez bezy eji tovi Daenerys Jelmazmo ji teptas ji derve.
- “‘Grey Worm’ gives this one pride. It is a lucky name. The name this one was born with was cursed. That was the name he had when he was taken as a slave. But Grey Worm is the name this one had the day Daenerys Stormborn set him free.”
And that sound you just heard? That’s Jacob Anderson dropping the mic. IT’S DONE! Bar just got raised. This is the new standard—for everything. To everyone in the future: You must be at least this cool to ride. This man’s got serious skills—and he’s like ten years younger than me! Where does he get the nerve to be that good?! How can he do that?! My mind boggles…
Next week my post may be a day or two late, as I’ll be in Austin, Texas for the Fifth Language Creation Conference. If you live nearby, please come and visit! It’ll be a great event with a host of incredible conlangers both presenting and in attendance. Loads of fun.
So, until Monday or Tuesday of next week, geros ilas!
Update: And just in case you didn’t see it, here he is: Jacob Anderson as Grey Worm. My hero.
So, do you plan to retcon derēpti like you did for itte oakah?
As for those figurines, did you hear about http://gameofthroneswinthemap.com? (The pics of them here are actually better)
From the official rules:
That covers me.
And, no, I’m not doing anything with that phrase. Just going to leave it alone…
You could make it an imperative meaning something along the lines of “Present (yourself)!” That would fit quite well in context, and a military command like that could easily get frozen, if that term doesn’t already work with your existing verb inflections.
It doesn’t end with the write sounds to be an imperative, though. Wouldn’t work.
Though a thought just occurred… Though I can’t resolve that in HV, I could say it’s an AV word for “visor” or a very specific type of helmet (as opposed to a general one), and she could simply be saying that. Hmmm…
It sounds like a feasible work-around. I imagine that it may have been cut audio from another take. They didn’t show her face when she said it.
Yeah, it looks like a missed audio cut from the last word of her second sentence.
Yn dāeri vali sīr issi. Se dāeri vali pōntalo syt gaomoti iderēbzi
What is heard is “derēbzi”.
That’s so silly… I did that translation. I wonder what happened to it…
BTW, I found the article whose author mistook “dracarys” for Drogon’s name. One of the respondents in the comments section corrected him on this, and so he went and changed one of the instances to “Drogon”. The next paragraph, however remains uncorrected. Here it is:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joe-satran/game-of-thrones-and-now-his-watch-is-ended_b_3129026.html
I imagine that the audio got lost in editing so, rather than call Emilia Clarke in to re-record her dialogue they just spliced in a piece of a dialogue that they had and figured that noone watching would notice.
I wonder if they might go back and fix it for the DVD release.
I doubt they’ll change it. And usually they don’t do that. I know they asked me for a translation. I wonder if I sent it on my phone…
AH HA!!! I have the answer! And no, it wasn’t me that screwed up!
Okay, I’m going to add this to the post.
Here’s the video of that scene, queued up to the appropriate time: http://youtu.be/W43BTdt6gOg?t=1m34s
Quite chilling the way he delivers that.
Bless you, sir. Awesome.
Valyrian is currently on the front page of Wikipedia! Specifically the did you know section. Congratulations!
Fron the actual article I find a source I had previously missed: “Learn to Speak Dothraki and Valyrian From the Man Who Invented Them for Game of Thrones“, which gives a new official Astapori transcription: Si kizy vasko v’uvar ez zya gundja yn hilas — now it makes so much sense! Man, did I get that wrong. Sorry I accused you of trying to fit rovaja in here again, David—to hear it that way in the first place, I must have been, well, Mad
And sorry as well for taunting you with that Win The Map sweepstakes. It didn’t occur to me that I was just adding insult to injury!
LOL No problem! Taunt away!
And know, I didn’t know it was on the front page of Wikipedia! How cool!
Loved the episode — if only all had this kind of drama/gore ratio. The previous one had been sickening.
Grey Worm was good indeed, but I also liked Daenerys’ delivery again. Pity she’s the only one who gets to speak HV! It sounds much cooler than Astapori…
As for “take off your helmet”, I figure you don’t owe them to shoehorn their screwup into your language if it’s all their fault. If you wanted to, though, you could always make it the accusative of a noun, something like “presentation” or “face” used idiomatically.
Unless the scenes have been cut, she is not the only one to speak High Valyrian. Stay tuned.
Quick question: How does the name “Targaryen” fit into all of this? Is it a Westerosi rendering of her Valyrian name, is it proper Valyrian or is it originally from a totally different culture?
The name always sounded weirdly Armenian to me, though.
First, the -ian suffix of Armenian is identical to the -son suffix in my name. That’s why you see it in a lot of Armenian last names. And, of course, given how characteristic that ending is of Armenian names, any word that ends in a similar sound pattern can sound Armenian, even if it isn’t (e.g. “median”, “comedian”, “contrarian”, “Valyrian”, etc.).
The name Targaryen is a High Valyrian, which would be spelled in the romanization Targārien. It’s a terrestrial noun and fits in to the usual declension pattern of other nouns with the same ending.
Wait wait wait… “terrestrial” noun? Four genders?
O… M… G. Is that it?
Should we call them “genders” or “noun classes”? For some reason, I remember reading an argument someone made that “gender” was a somewhat European-biased way of looking at noun classes, as European languages tend to divide their nouns into m/f/(nt)… Whereas worldwide, the more common way of dividing up noun classes is actually animate/inanimate or some expansion thereof.
But then, I also remember reading other articles that were arguing that there is a demonstrable difference between gender and noun classes.
Not sure. Need to go read wikipedia and refresh my memory…
There’s no real difference, just two different conventions for what they’re called.
So… “should” we call them noun classes in HV then, if they don’t reflect biological gender in any way?
Though I can totally understand if you want to keep the Latinesque-European-classical-tradition associations of calling them gender.
Let me throw in a couple comments here.
“Gender” did originate in linguistics because of the Western tradition of having noun gender tied to biological gender, but the reason the term “gender” was used was actually much more metaphorical than the simple tie to the fact that there are masculine and feminine genders in a lot of European languages. The reason that “gender” was used is that it’s something that’s determined to be an inherent property of the noun. It’s like biological gender in humans (ignore modern discoveries about gender identity and also chromosome sets like XXY and XYY for the moment): if someone’s born with XX or XY, it defines their inherent gender. In Indo-European languages, a noun is simply masculine or feminine (or neuter) by definition, and the designation has no connection (necessarily) to semantics. So calling it “gender” was kind of a metaphor—like calling a noun Marvin, or something.
This is why “gender” was still used with other languages that had either different genders than masculine/feminine/neuter, or more genders than those. Noun class, though, was used a way of distinguishing (at first) Bantu languages, where the connection between the “gender” and the semantics was more transparent—and sometimes even seemed inflectional. It also is much more obviously separable from the root than European genders (compare French “chat”, “porte” to Swahili “mbwa” [regular dog] and “jibwa” [large dog]). In some cases it’s like they can be used for somewhat regular derivation, whereas it never happens that you can reliable take a word and change its gender from masculine to feminine to produce some sort of reliable semantic effect (save with words referring to humans, but there it’s more like they’re making use of the already existing gender system to do something that most languages do anyway [e.g. actor vs. actress]).
Chinese and Japanese classifiers (or measure words) are considered different from gender because there will be occasions where you can use one classifier with one word, and an entirely different classifier with the same word to produce a different meaning (maybe something like “an ear of corn” vs. “a bushel of corn”, if you don’t know a classifier language). That’s not something you can do with inherent gender, and why the phenomenon, while related, is classified as something different.
Not sure if this answers any questions, but I wanted to throw this in here.
According to the OED, the grammatical sense does actually predate the sexual sense. From their historical note:
“Originally extended from the grammatical use at sense 1 (sometimes humorously), as also in Anglo-Norman and Old French. In the 20th cent., as sex came increasingly to mean sexual intercourse (see sex n.1 4b), gender began to replace it (in early use euphemistically) as the usual word for the biological grouping of males and females.”
Well leaving aside most of this discussion:
We say “gender” because the French say genre, and they say genre because the Romans said genus. The Latin word already in antiquity means “grammatical gender,” but not “sex.” Yes, the metaphor is already there, because the genders are māsculīnum, fēminīnum and neütrum, but if we are talking about the word “gender” itself, as we seem to be… well it just does not yet mean “gender” in the modern, non-grammatical sense.
That much I know. Now, here’s where I could be wrong about this: the Romans themselves said genus because the Greeks said γένος. I can’t get at the Greek primary sources from here, so I couldn’t tell you for certain that γένος never means biological sex.
“Gender” does not mean “sex”: http://jdm314.livejournal.com/197356.html?thread=689900#t691692
A couple notes on that … in contemporary spoken English, “gender” does have meanings related to sex. Just because we have a technical definition doesn’t mean we can wish away all other meanings. It’s just a word with several meanings.
Also, Chinese numeral classifiers are somewhat gender-like, but not really. It’s sort of a weird grey area. It’s also a little hard to argue that this is agreement when there is no inflectional morphology at all. You’d have to argue that this one word – which exists solely to make count nouns actually countable – has a truly massive suppletive paradigm.
Yes, of course – you are correct, particularly as I presume the English word “gender” is from Latin “genus” via “genre” or something? (Will look up in a second – Germans call grammatical gender ‘Genus’ though, so I’m guessing this it the etymology in English too).
But I would also argue that due to modern English usage of gender as the social/psychology analog of biological sex, then the grammatical term could be misleading to the layman, in which case “noun class” could be more useful.
…Not that I think we should dumb down academic terminology for the sake of the average Joe who probably won’t ever try to learn Valyrian anyway
Ah yes, I clicked on your link after posting that reply and saw that you confirmed the genus etymology.
GAC:
Yes, of course. But even if my statement is sweeping and over-simplistic, for our case it applies: noun-classes weren’t called “gender” because of sex, rather sex was called “gender” because of noun-classes. There’s no need (at least not in this case) to do away with the technical definition because of other meanings.
Anyway, I might agree that the Chinese case is debatable (though, I think, for other reasons), but it’s kind of academic (six loaves of one, half a dozen loaves of the other, right?
)—I think we are both in agreement on the larger point:
Chickenduck:
Furthermore if they do want to learn Valyrian they’ll be too busy learning words like “comitative” and “paucal” to worry about whether or not the word “gender” should apply
True… I’ll admit I had no idea what comitative case was until reading the comments on the last thread. Paucal I’d previously only encountered when listening to conlangery!
The name just derives from the Valyrian names. You could call them whatever you want (e.g. genders 1, 2, 3 and 4). The Valyrian names of the genders are:
Most animate and individuatable nouns end up in the solar or lunar, while others end up in the terrestrial or aquatic. The names come from the nouns themselves which are prototypical members of each gender. Gender is inherent, though more predictable phonologically than French gender, and it does share some of the derivational properties of the classes of a Bantu language. So it sits somewhere in the middle of all of these languages’ systems.
Cool
Not directly relevant, but are there any (not sure if this phenomenon has a real name) gender-based minimal pairs?
e.g. French: le voile = veil, la voile = sail
or German: der See = lake, die See = sea
der Schild = shield, das Schild = road sign
Maybe I’m not understanding the question, but didn’t you just give three examples right there…?
Oh wait, did you mean in HV? None come to mind, but there are a few. Probably more in AV, but those are due to sound changes.
Yes, I meant in HV
Obviously I already know about the examples given above!!
Couldn’t you argue that in German all diminutives (meaning Hochdeutsch “-chen diminutives) being neuter contradicts that?
die Katze vs das Kätzchen
die Stadt vs das Städtchen
Of course, you do need to affix something, can’t just change gender in this case.
Also, I think I remember some other Indo-European language marking diminutives by changing gender to neuter… Maybe Slovak? That probably also involved a suffix though.
The latter would be an example, but for the former it’s just words that end in -chen that are neuter. It’s kind of like how all words in Spanish that end in -ión or -ad are feminine. It’s not the case that the gender changed and the word did: the word changed, and, as a result of the ending change, the gender changed. For example, it would be more telling if when you added -chen to a German m/f noun, it always produced a word of the opposite gender.
In other words, let’s see some Slovak!
Greek does.
Not good enough. We need examples.
Well, the most common Greek diminutive suffix is -ιον, which in antiquity was already contracting to -ιν in sub-literary Greek. In Modern Greek these are just reduced to -ι.* Anyway, these are just 2nd declension neuters.
I’m not sure this qualifies in terms of our discussion: I suppose it doesn’t because of the added ι on the ending. But that’s not really why I posted this anyway… just wanted to contribute another language to that list.
I’ve always been fascinated by obligatorily neuter diminutives. This is also the case for Yiddish -l and -ele (plural -(e)lekh), and I believe this holds out for German dialects that use that ending as well. I can’t remember if the Gothic equivalent suffixes (-ila et sim.) also made words neuter, but my cursory glance at Wright’s Gothic Grammar seems to hint that they didn’t.
* It may be worth noting that when Greek borrowed a word from, say, Egyptian, or Hebrew, it was very often given this diminutive ending as a simple trick to make it declinable. Whit the results that many ancient borrowings in Greek end in -i, just like in High Valyrian
Yes, the Yiddish ending works the same in German dialects that use -el or -ele (basically all original dialects of southern Germany, Switzerland and Austria).
For the record, I normally say it that way too if not in a formal context – e.g. I would usually say “bisserl” instead of “bisschen” and “Mädel” instead of “Mädchen”. South western dialects I think usually say “bissele” and “Mädele” for those, depending exactly where you are. But I’m not an expert on Allemanic.
I mostly only use “real” Hochdeutsch when I’m teaching, and even then I quite often forget to say “wir” and some other things.
Since Allemanic was mentioned: Swiss German is notorious for its ubiquitous /-li/ diminutive, which does indeed turn everything neutral. Mädchen and bisschen are /maitli/ and /bitsli/. ;o)
Of course, the whole -lein/-ele/-erl/-li family would have to be derived from the Middle High German (?) -lîn ending, so it’s not surprising they behave the same.
Yay! We finally have this information!
Any chance you’d give us the clue of what exactly these prototypical nouns look like without the adjectival suffix(es)?
I love it when concultures have their own linguistic traditions! I should probably come up with more conworld-specific names for my genders in Aeruyo and its (forthcoming) decendants, seeing as it also has a four-way distinction.
Do the Valyrian genders correspond with any categories we know from real languages, like one for humans, one for animals, etc. or even the famous “women, fire, and dangerous things” gender in Dyirbal?
It’s more like the declension classes correspond with some basic categories, and then those declensions fit into a single gender. So a lot of humans will be either lunar or solar, because many will have the ending -a or -ys (plus some others, but I mean words for humans that aren’t names). A lot of foods and plants will be terrestrial, because many end in -on, etc.
So maybe:
• *vēzes “sun”
• *hūra “moon”
• *tegon “earth”
• *embor “water”
?????
Of course, there is another branch of the family called “Targarvili”, who came from further north than the Targaryens. Interestingly, the Targarvilis revere someone who succesfully slew at least one of the Targayens’ dragons. They even named their country after him. And then another Targarvili named himself the “Man of Steel” and mounted a significant portion of Essos.
OK, I keep looking at this post, but I’m still not getting it. Unless, as a friend suggested, you are talking about Khal El?
It was a lame attempt at a joke…
Armenian surnames often finish in -ian, sounding a bit like “Targaryen”. Georgian surnames commonly end in -vili (I think that also means “son”). Targarvili.
Georgia is named for St George, its patron saint. The flag features the St George Cross.
Now, if you’re rusty on 20th century history, go look up Joseph Dzhugashvili!
Oh, ha! That’s right: It was named after St. George! I forgot.
OOOOH. Thanks!
In honour of the superficial, coincidental similarities between some Valyrian and Armenian surnames, I will now go and do a conscript for HV featuring, besides the glyphs, a syllabary based visually on the Armenian alphabet for the various grammatical endings etc. Do it Sequoyah-style, with no actual knowledge of what phonetic values the letters stand for in Armenian. Then work out what kinds of brush strokes you can break down the Armenian letters into, in order to create an aesthetic basis for the more complex glyphs that will represent the roots…
Did Ancient Valyrians mostly write with a quill, or a chisel, or a brush, or a reed pen, or a flamethrower? Maybe it should be a script that can reliably be drawn by an accurate trained dragon burning things into a field?
I don’t think David knows what implements the Valyrians used — but it would be quite useful information if they ask him to do the script in the future. The later books mention Valyrian ‘glyphs’, which could mean a logographic script — though it’s hard to say, considering that GRRM’s descriptions of languages range from vague to meaningless.
The line where Tyrion mentions recognising the glyphs for “doom” and “fire” imply that it’s at least partly logographic.
I had in mind something like Japanese kanji + kana, but I know David already has his own ideas for if they ask him to do it later, which are closer to Egyptian and the script he created for Kamakawi.
Or maybe something like Korean mixed script, where you get nice squarish-shaped chunks of syllabic grammatical odds-n-ends mixed in with fiendish classical Chinese semantic roots. But based aesthetically on Armenian penmanship. Because why the hell not.
You may be closer than you think. So, here’s something – and I am not sure if it has come up before:
The last royal dynasty in Georgia prior to annexation by the Russian Empire were Bagrationi. (Doesn’t that sound very similar to another royal/noble house of Westeros?)
And a potentially related dynasty (potentially related to the Georgian Bagrationi, though it’s not clear) ruled in Armenia – Bagratuni.
Well, “-vili” is a common name ending in…Georgian (R. R. Martin).
> groan <
I think I may need to go to bed now
Geros ilas
David, I need to ask.
Will you make the tutorial from those who want to learn Valyrian, as you did to Dohtraki?
Which Dothraki tutorial…? A lot of what’s on the internet was actually made by fans, and they’re currently at work on Valyrian. Unfortunately, I don’t have as much time now as I did when I just had Dothraki to contend with. I’m going to keep posting here, though—promise!
On HV genders: I’m wondering whether there are four noun paradigms that mirror the four genders (although there must be lots of exceptions). So far the adjectives in HV have shown an uncanny ability to mimic their nouns’ endings; if the endings are closely tied to the genders, that would make sense. In Latin, you’ll get things like “rosa alba” vs “rosa viridis”, or “templum altum” vs “templum mirabile”; this sort of thing seems to happen less often in HV.
My guess is that the noun paradigms look like this:
(1) NOM:SG ending in -Vs, where V is a thematic vowel. This would cover words like Aerys, Meraxes, dohaeriros etc. Do we have any examples of NOM:SGs in -as or -us? They might not exist. I guess cases that supply their own vowel (like ACC:SG -i, GEN:SG -o) while others (like LOC:SG -ȳ) inherit the thematic vowel.
(2) NOM:SG ending in a thematic vowel. We have vala as well as, I believe, some words in -o attested. I’m also wondering whether the common name ending -ei could belong here. Maybe -ei is a Westerosi spelling for HV ē.
(3) NOM:SG ending in -Vn. We have havon, geron, urnēbion attested, so -on is probably the most common of these endings, but then there’s Targārien, too.
(4) NOM:SG ending in -Vr. Here again, -o- seems to be the favored (or sole?) thematic vowel.
I don’t think we have any information so far to help us link these paradigms to the genders.
Also, I’m wondering whether adjectives might actually not have any thematic vowels themselves. They seem to match their nouns perfectly, so maybe they adopt their thematic vowels as part of the agreement.
Brilliant. I’ll be keeping an eye out to see if it has the added virtue of being correct
David, any hints on the in-the-general-ballparkness of this?
The subjunctive is required for negative statements like this.
AHA! Well that answers my latest wacky theory. But I think Zhalio was asking about genders.
I apologize: I’m using the WP app to answer comments, so I can’t see the threads. Zhalio: you were asking about the genders…?
I was asking whether my guesses on the nature of noun paradigms (-Vs, -V, -Vr, -Vn) are anywhere near correct.
I believe you’ve meanwhile stated that the “genders” arise from noun paradigms, though there’s no 1:1 correspondence at the HV stage, right…?
Very, very much on the right track, but not 100%. But yes, you’re on the right track there!
I wonder what David is going to do in retaliation. Probably their name is going to have a very unsavory meaning in HV, and is going to make it on screen. ;o)
I should also add that there are two other possibilities here:
(1) Emilia Clarke never actually showed up for the ADR session (for whatever reason), and so she wasn’t available to record the new line.
(2) The new line was too long for the shot.
The latter seems most likely. In that instance, though, they should’ve just lopped off the verb and gone with “your helmet”. Oh well.
I just assumed the map and pieces were an integral par of any Lord’s castle. He is at Riverrun right now.
Ah… Very good point! That could well be it.
what are the two noun classes of common Valyrian? did solar & lunar merge into one as did terrestrial & aquatic, or were terrestrial & aquatic dropped and lunar & solar kept? which is “ji” and which is “vi”? also, which noun class is dragon classified as in HV and AV? I figure solar, but it’s better to ask.
This is correct (the merger you proposed). Ji goes with what I’ve been calling the celestial (solar + lunar [should probably have a different native name]) and vi with the terrestrial.
by the way, ignore the question I left on your Tumblr about zaldrize vs. zaldrīzes. it was 3am and I wasn’t thinking straight, lol. I think I finally figured it out: zaldrize is common Valyrian, and zaldrīzes is High Valyrian. am I wrong?
P.S. what is “(the) dragon’s daughter” in AV and/or HV?
Finally got around to analyzing this dialog: http://jdm314.livejournal.com/198110.html
Come offer your opinions, theories, emendations, and corrections!
Interesting: I had assumed perzo was instrumental, but now we know it can only be genitive. Genitive of impersonal agent?
I did think perzo as instrumental was rather weird considering all the other evidence. But the translation ‘by fire’ made it irresistible.
Regard the figurines:
Baggage (not luggage), or baggage train, can also refer to the train of people and goods, both military and of a personal nature, which commonly followed pre-modern armies on campaign.
So, like, no, they weren’t in his saddlebags, they are in one of the baggage train wagons, where someone is in charge of making sure they are where the master needs them, whenever the master needs them.
Right, but this means that a discussion about these things took place at some time. Robb gave the job to somebody to safeguard and render up (when necessary) his figurines. Even if the figurines are spread across several different horses and riders, it makes sense for one person to be in charge of all of them, so that he doesn’t have to chase down six or seven different guys to get figurines for six or seven different houses (well, presuming that they’d even be sorted by house). However it worked, this is a discussion I would have liked to have been present at.