In the latest Making Game of Thrones feature, HBO Dothraki language creator David J. Peterson shows us what words may or may not allow one to keep one’s head during an encounter with a Dothraki fonakasar whilst traveling on the Havazh. A snippet:
Achrakh yeroon zireyesee hrazef anni, zhey ifak!”
(“Your stink offends my horse, foreigner!”)
Responding in just the right way is crucial. One should be respectful, yet firm. Offend a Dothraki lajak (warrior), and he is likely to respond with his arakh; come across as weak or submissive, though, and one will likely find oneself taken as a slave. One possible response might be:
“Athchomar chomakea, zhey lajaki vezhveni. Anha goshok mehrazef shafki athiroe; me haja lekhaan k’athtihari.”(“Respect to you, great warriors. I’m sure your horse will survive; he seems strong enough.”)
Not exactly a ringing endorsement of one’s own martial skill, or the skill of one’s bodyguards. I’m not exactly certain this will keep the chains off of one’s wrists, so to speak, but it probably depends on how intimidating you could look.
You can read the entire article HERE.
Fire And Blood: I would probably handle the situation differently. First off, I would seriously question what in the name of holy sanity I was doing on the freaking Dothraki Sea. The task would have to be pretty important, especially given the fact that open plains do not have all of the comforts that I, like Illyrio Mopatis, have become accustomed to, like high-definition television, my 6′ couch, and Milk Duds.
Once I had my wits about me I would probably need the Dothraki translation for: “Khaleesi promised her phone number. I come to take it.”
If that didn’t look like it would work on this scowling fonakasar, I would then challenge the mightiest looking warrior amongst them to single combat to the death. I would need the Dothraki translation for “That is no braid I see. That is the hair taken from the heads of a hundred squealing little girls and weaved together. A Lhazareen would use it to hold you at bay while he forced you to service his sheep with your womanly face, but because it is a false braid it would come off in his hand, allowing you to flee like the coward you surely are. One cut from me will prove how bald you should be.”
I would then hope he is so angry he kills me quickly and cleanly.
Anyone else have any particular pain-saving responses to this situation?
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38 Comments
Well at least I’ll know what dorthraki are saying to me when I walk into the room.
;)
Phantomwriter05Quote Reply
You are to English what Beethoven was to music.
GaRQuote Reply
I would say one should take the Sam approach, piss yourself and look as pitiful as possible in hopes that he won’t kill you.
GrimtuesdayQuote Reply
Whatever you say to them, do not mention the Tea Party.
DennaiQuote Reply
Dennai,
We should find out what the words for “tea party” are. Certainly there would be more to drink than fermented goat’s milk, and tea has a longstanding tradition amongst many of the nomadic peoples of the far east.
And “party” in Dothraki probably translates somewhere close to “gathering where we drink, fornicate, and sometimes die.”
Fire And BloodQuote Reply
No woman would stand a chance, unfortunately. We know the Dothraki aren’t really into taking ‘no’ for an answer, and if you’re allowed to live afterwards… ugh. I suppose your best bet would be to be armed (incidentally with a machine gun) or to be so terribly ugly/old or so very already dead that they take no interest.
Hard knock life.
reedgirlQuote Reply
Dothraki – The klingons of Essos.
PierceQuote Reply
Fire And Blood,
Indeed. Wasn’t it said that a Dothraki wedding without at least three deaths was considered dull?
ZackQuote Reply
Yes, I’m pretty sure that if you ran into a horde of Dothraki they would kill you and assault your women, and then kill them too, no questions asked – in any language. I kinda always had the impression the Dothraki don’t say much, so I don’t really understand the whole developing a language for them.
NicoleQuote Reply
Pfft. Fearsome Dothraki. Only if they have a khalasar backing them up. How do you say “Show me your (crudely made) steel horse-boy!” in Dothraki. That’s what I want to know.
PacmanQuote Reply
Okay, I am bent double in stitches :D
That’s a dramatic depiction of the horse gate, haven’t seen it before. Next time I see it, it will be on the show. Whoa :)
Hear Me RoarQuote Reply
Hear Me Roar,
I suppose it was a matter of time to have a gate gate.
DennaiQuote Reply
It is known that the Khaleesi is a fine Philly, but I don’t think the Khal would appreciate you calling her a horse.
FeeblegeniusQuote Reply
It’s an illustration from chinese edition.
Here’s more:
http://akizhao.deviantart.com/art/Sansa-51420757
http://akizhao.deviantart.com/art/the-song-of-the-ice-and-fire-24978471
http://akizhao.deviantart.com/art/the-song-of-the-ice-and-fire-2-24978540
Unfortunately these artists were never invited to do more art for FFG and their “Art of” book (i think).
Boy will i be glad if i see their artwork in upcoming vol. 2 !
AzekeQuote Reply
If I’m on the Dothraki Sea, surely I will be riding a jeep and have a shotgun in the backseat for hunting white lions on my safari. So A) I shoot he bastards, B) I drive the heck away.
KnurkQuote Reply
Fire and Blood: Thank you for making me laugh out loud in a cold and wet saturday morning!
Sandra GomesQuote Reply
After hearing about conversations in Klingon for years, I guess the fixation on the Dothraki language is understandable, especially since the folks at HBO are making such a big deal about it.
But seriously, what’s so interesting about a tongue from a culture whose primary concerns are the attributes of one’s horse, one’s weapon, one’s army, or one’s attributes? Or where conversations are all about one’s ability to rape, burn, destroy or disembowl?
This is like looking at a history of Rome and wanting to get into the grunts of the Huns.
Am I the only one who wants more depth?
Come on folks. How about a culture with a real history of depth, intrigue, philosophy and nuance!
Why isn’t someone clamoring for more in… VALYRIAN??!!
Now there’s a language I’d like to hear more of and about!
Valar morgulis
ChrisQuote Reply
After consulting my Dothraki Language Dictionary( up date 3January2011),only two words from your initial sentence appear in it. anni=my and zhey=hello, where do all those other words come from? Do you have a more recently updated Dothraki dictionary?
OldGranQuote Reply
I have updated the vocabulary on http://wiki.dothraki.org/dothraki/Vocabulary with pretty much all the words that are released that has an english translation.
As far as the phrases in the text above the translation is also given straight from the author.
Ingemar SvenssonQuote Reply
Azeke,
Wow, those are really good. Except for Dany still having her hair in the MoD scene :P The Sansa one is amazing.
What, all of them?
BOOM
click-click
BOOM
click-
THUNK arrow through neck.
GaRQuote Reply
Damn, check out the cover of the Spanish version of aGoT: http://www.fantasytienda.com/productos/1604-1.jpg
GaRQuote Reply
Wowser. And all we get is a dragon on an orange background………I feel robbed. lol. Seriously, that is one epic cover.
Samantha HirstQuote Reply
Samantha Hirst,
I would have liked it a bunch if Daenerys did not look like an alien.
sjweningsQuote Reply
GaR,
That’s the cover for A Clash of Kings.
MorlunQuote Reply
sjwenings,
Still a damn sight more eyecatching than our dragon. Not that the UK covers are bad, as they’re not, they’re just not very interesting compared to other covers, be it foreign covers of ASoIaF or other series’ completely.
Samantha HirstQuote Reply
sjwenings,
Whoa, that’s what aliens look like? O_O
Morlun,
The have a scene from aGoT of the cover of CoK?
GaRQuote Reply
OT – I’m in the UK, and just saw a trailer for Sky Atlantic that’s trailering Blue Bloods, Boardwalk Empire etc. as well as GoT.
There’s only 3 or 4 brief shots from Thrones, one of which is familiar, the others maybe not so – one being a shot looking up a misty hillside as a scattered group of warriors come towards the camera
Anyone else seen this, or is it something already seen or noted somewhere else?
Lord WillumQuote Reply
Caught part of the advert earlier today, didn’t see any scenes that have not been seen elsewhere though.
There’s an ad on the Sky Atlantic website that has a couple of Ned clips
http://tv.sky.com/skyatlantic
MormegilQuote Reply
Ingemar Svensson,
Thanks for the Dothraki update.
OldGranQuote Reply
HBO……….come on we need a new trailer/teaser soon…. We need the wall, we need the Eyrie……. Thanks for what youv’e given us, but we need more!
Austin CleganeQuote Reply
Austin Clegane,
Just a theory, but i suspect HBO might hold off The Wall and other impressive shots for the last trailer before the premier date. So we probably won’t see that stuff for a while yet.
sjweningsQuote Reply
Austin Clegane,
haha… I know what you mean. Maybe we should start a councelling group!!!
Hi, my name is marzman and I am a GoT addict.
marzmanQuote Reply
SILVERJAMIE!!! Sorry guys off topic. Silverjamie just wanted to let you and any other locals (N.I.) interested, ExtrasNI registration days are coming up in Feb.So if you want a chance to be in series (season) two of Thrones, go to EXTRASNI.com and click on green room to book your slot and register online. Perhaps you good folks would pass this on to Silverjamie next time you see her on line in case see dosn`t read this before this thread is old. Thanks.
Two FeathersQuote Reply
He doesn’t like you.
Sorry.
I don’t like you either.
Port NacelleQuote Reply
Hi, my name is Nicole and I am ASOIAF addict!
NicoleQuote Reply
It has been 2 weeks since my last fix. Being sober is no fun.
NicoleQuote Reply
I might have made it 24 hours this weekend, amid cleaning. But even as I toiled through the laundry, thinking of my quiet hero Weasel who cleans and stays offthe bad peoples radar, I thought there might perhaps be 4-5 essentials comments I have to make on the Brienne casting thread, and god forbid someone had posted the Stannis one yet!!
Saturday night I opened my hardback copy of a Clash Of Kings I had just ordered from someone on the Internet, only to find to my horror, as I started to read, was that they had sent me a Game of Thrones disguised in ACOK dust jacket! Was this some evil trick? Some Alchemist magic? Some harried book reseller at Amazon that never bothers to check the dustjacket/internal book matching? I leave it to you, dear blog post reader, to decide. Somewhere a Tiger Mother is beating her child roundly and calling her garbage for handing in a very bad book report on A Game of Thrones.
purplejillyQuote Reply
Fab if you asked for the phone number and my lovely-eyedViserys was still available, instead of killing you, they’d put you on the cart with him,and let him rant,whine and complain to you for the next several hours, his hair and eyes getting wilder and wilder, until you took your own life. No need to dirty an arakh with your blood!
purplejillyQuote Reply