User:Aegon/High Valyrian Tutorial/1-1

Chapter 1-Nominative

Note: copy/paste from Latin wikibook to see what it looks like.

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

Where were military battles occurring?

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

Vocabulary

Lesson Vocabulary
High Valyrian	English
kara (adj. I)	great, magnificent, excellent
kostōba (adj. I)	powerful, strong, mighty
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
pater (m.)	father
māter (f.)	mother
domina (f.)	mistress
āeksio (3lun.)	master, lord
lūdus (m.)	school
Valyria (1lun.)	Valyria
Ghīs (3sol.)	Ghis
Britannia (f.)	Britain
trīclīnium (n.)	dining couch (room)
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
laborat, laborant	(he/she/it is) working, (they are) working
amat, amant	(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

• 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.

• sg. = singular
• pl. = plural

Overview of Adjectives

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

English	High Valyrian
The good master	āeksio sȳz

English	High Valyrian
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 the adjective antiquus (old, ancient):

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

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

Third declension adjectives typically look more like ferox, ferocis (wild, bold). This is because the third declension has no stem assigned to the nominative singular.

Adjectives often come after the word they describe. Since word order is not central to the meaning of a Latin sentence the adjective may appear anywhere in the sentence.

In the following examples the -us is masculine (m.), -a is feminine (f.) and -um is neuter (n.). So magnus is masculine, magna is feminine, and magnum is neuter.

Latin	English
puella bona est	The girl is good
dominus bonus est	The master is good
templum magnum est	The temple is big