User:Aegon/High Valyrian Tutorial/1-1

Lesson 1| Nominative

The Nominative Case

The Nominative case refers to the subject of a sentence. For example:

The girl is pretty

"The girl" is the subject of this sentence. In its simplest form a sentence will have a subject stated as a noun and will give some further information about the subject. The second part of this sentence tells the reader that the girl is pretty. This is called predicating the noun. This sentence consists of a subject and a predicate. As you know from English, an adjective is a word that denotes some quality, which in this sentence is attractiveness. The noun and adjective are joined together by the word "is", which is called the copula. Note that the copula simply connects the words and gives almost no information about the subject.

The sentence in High Valyrian has the same grammatical elementsː

riña litse issa

The noun is followed by the predicate. The only difference is the absence of an article which has to be supplied by the translator. Riña can be translated as "girl", "the girl", or "a girl". Can you tell which word is the copula?

Translate the followingː

• Valyria kara issa
• Valyria kostōba issa
• Valyria dārion issa

What are some features of the Valyrian Freehold's land?

Translate the following (hint: Valyriā, in the locative case, that will be addressed later, means 'in Valyria')ː

• Rios Valyriā ilza
• Blēnon Valyriā ilza
• Qelbar Valyriā ilza

Notice that this second exercise used the copula ilza, this is called the locative or existential copula. It functions similarly to issa and is used when describing location.

Note the conjunction given in the Vocabulary, and translate the followingː

• Valyria kara kostōbā issa
• Valyria kostōba issa se Ghīs kara issa
• Valyria se Ghīs vȳhot issi

See the -ā that kostōbā ends in above? This is called vowel lengthening and is used to coordinate phrases in place of 'and;' it may be used for nouns, adjectives, or verbs. For example, riña taobā means the boy and the girl. If no vowels near the end of the word are able to accept lengthening, use se to coordinate the phrase. To say 'both the boy and the girl,' use both strategies like the phrase se taoba riñā, where se occurs before the coordinated duo of words.

Vocabulary

Lesson Vocabulary
High Valyrian	English
kara (adj. I)	great, magnificent, excellent
kostōba (adj. I)	powerful, strong, mighty
rōva (adj. I)	big, large
litse (adj. II)	cute, pretty, fair, beautiful
sȳz (adj. II)	good, well-made
sylvie (adj. III)	wise
riña (1lun.)	girl
dārion (3ter.)	kingdom
rios (3sol.)	canyon, valley
blēnon (3ter.)	mountain
qelbar (1aq.)	river
taoba (1lun.)	boy
rijīblion (1lun.)	temple, church
āeksio (3lun.)	master, lord
vȳs (3sol.)	the world, the planet
Valyria (1lun.)	Valyria
Ghīs (3sol.)	Ghis
iksan iksā issa iksi iksāt issi	I am you are he/she/it is we are you are they are
ilan ilā ilza ili ilāt ilzi	I am you are he/she/it is we are you are they are
botsa, botsi	(he/she/it is) working, (they are) working
jorrāelza, jorrāelzi	(he/she/it) loves, (they) love
se (conj.)	and
Some type II adjectives, whose stems end in r, have an unexpected ending in z in the nominative and accusative cases; otherwise, they function like regular type II adjectives.

Key to Vocabulary:

• 1lun. = first lunar
• 3lun. = third lunar
• 1aq. = first aquatic
• 3ter. = third terrestrial
• 3sol. = third solar
• conj. = conjunction

• High Valyrian nouns have one of four genders (lunar, solar, terrestrial, and aquatic) and are formed into five groups of declension with a sixth declination group for borrowed words and paucal and collective nouns. Lunar nouns ending in "-a" or "-ia" in the Nominative Singular are of the 1st declension. Most High Valyrian names for countries and cities are 6th declension borrowed nouns, so they end with "-i" in the Nominative Singular.

Overview of Adjectives

An adjective is any word that qualifies a noun. For example:

English	High Valyrian
The good master	sȳz āeksio
The boy is good	taoba sȳz issa

Adjectives in High Valyrian

Adjectives must agree with the nouns they describe in gender, number, and case.

• Class I Adjectives are made to agree with a noun with -a, -ys, -on, -or (lunar, solar, terrestrial, and aquatic) suffixes.

• Class II and class III adjectives merge the lunar and solar, and the terrestrial and aquatic forms together.

These words will look like:

Class II: litse (lunar and solar), litsior (terrestrial and aquatic).

Class III: sylvie (lunar and solar), sylvior (terrestrial and aquatic).

Class III adjectives typically end in a consonant cluster.

Adjectives often come before the word they describe; this is called prepositive. However, the adjective may also appear after the described word; this postpositive style is more formal. The main distinction is that the prepositive form shortens and merges case endings while the postpositive form has more distinct markings. Recall that High Valyrian is a Subject-Object-Verb language and verbs are the final element of a sentence. That said, word order is not central to the meaning of a High Valyrian sentence and there exists flexibility in subject and object placement to change emphasis.

In the following examples the -ion is terrestrial (3ter.), and -a and -io are lunar (1lun. and 3lun.). So rōva appears in the terrestrial form, rōvon.

High Valyrian	English
riña sȳz issa	The girl is good
āeksio sȳz issa	The master is good
rijīblion rōvon issa	The temple is big

Basic Verbs

Verbs in High Valyrian work quite differently than those in English. Study the following table then view the examples below.

	English	High Valyrian
Number	In English we use pronouns to denote number when using verbs. Compare "I work" and "we work".	In High Valyrian the ending of the verb changes to denote number. Compare "botan" (I work) and "boti" (we work). The two personal endings are "-an" and "-i".
Tense	Tense refers to past, present and future. Consider these examples: I walked, I am walking, I will walk.	Ending changes and frequent stem changes denote the tense, though this will be covered in a future lesson. In this lesson, only the present tense is being taught.
Person	First person refers to the speaker. Second person refers to the person being spoken to. Third person refers to what is being said about someone or something. The vocabulary, starting with iksan for I am, clearly illustrates this concept. Note that the 1st person plural is "we".	High Valyrian verbs are conjugated to show person. The verb will undergo changes in the stem and it is these inflections that denote 1st, 2nd or 3rd person singular or plural.

Personal Endings

High Valyrian	English
bot-an	I work
bot-ā	you work (sg.)
bot-as	he, she, it works
bot-i	we work
bot-āt	y'all work (pl.)
bot-is	they work

Further Examples

Example 1

High Valyrian	English
rijīblion rōvon issa	The temple is big

Notes

• The adjective rōva -ys -on -or must agree with rijīblion in gender, number, and case, so the correct form is rōvon (terrestrial nominative singular).
• Note x rijīblion rōva issa is incorrect because rōv-a does not agree with rijībl-ion.

Example 2

High Valyrian	English
riña litse issa	the girl is pretty

Notes

• In the same way, the adjective litse -ior must agree with riña in gender, number, and case, so the correct form is litse (agreement with the lunar nominative singular noun of the first declension).

Example 3

High Valyrian	English
taoba riñe jorrāelza	the boy loves the girl
riña taobe jorrāelza	the girl loves the boy

Notes

• The ending "-e" is of the accusative case for the object of a verb and will be covered later. Think of it generally as what the action of the verb is targeting. In this case, the subject is doing the verb and targeting the accusative object with the action of the verb.

Example 4

High Valyrian	English
qelbri rōvra issi	the rivers are big

Notes

• The adjective rōva -ys -on -or in this case must agree with qelbri in gender, number, and case, so the correct form is rōvra (aquatic nominative plural).

Exercises

Translate the following High Valyrian into English.

kostōbon dārion [the, a] powerful kingdom

sylvie āeksio [the, a] wise lord

sȳrior qelbar [the, a] good river

Taoba kostōba issa. The boy is strong.

Rios rōvys issa. The valley is large.

Translate the following English into High Valyrian.

the powerful lord kostōba āeksio

the large mountain rōvon blēnon

the pretty river litsior qelbar

the canyon is great. rios karys issa.

the kingdom is good. dārion sȳrior issa.

Determine if the copula used should be issa or ilza.

āeksio rihot [?]. ilza; rihot is in the locative and the sentence reads 'the master is in the canyon'

rios sȳz [?]. issa; sȳz is describing a quality of the canyon and location is irrelevant to this sentence, which reads 'the canyon is good'

qelbar rihot [?]. ilza; this sentence reads 'the river is in the canyon' and conveys location

se qelbar āeksiō rihot [?]. ilzi; this sentence reads 'both the river and the master are in the canyon' and conveys location

āeksio taobā sȳri [?]. issi; this sentence reads 'the master and the boy are good' and conveys qualities of the subjects