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A community for the dragon language of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

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A community for the dragon language of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

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Question Board > Question about participle/substantives

Anonymous
September 10, 2019

Question about participle/substantives

Newbie here!  I had 2 questions about participles and substantives.

1. Can Dinok Lovaas be translated "Death Singing" or should it be Dinok Lovaastaas?  Here's a quote I was reading in relation:

"Sometimes the suffix -taas is not used and context is used to imply the participle; kron jun "a conquering king", or ag yol "a burning fire" "

 

2. Can a participle be used as a substantive (English: Running Person = Runner) and the same phrase "Dinok Lovaas/Lovaastaas' be rendered "Death Singer"?

Category: General

1

Zinrahzul
September 10, 2019 		1. Dinok Lovaas can definitely be translated like that since "song" implies singing is happening. In this case translation is simplifying the various forms from the source language into the much simpler Dovahzul.

Take a look at the "Kron" word entry and how it's used in-game. As a modifier to jun (king) it means "of or related to the act of conquering). Dovahzul, both in word walls and dragon speech, tends to use words in multiple forms of speech. Also, the official entries for the words don't actually list their intended parts of speech. We only see their usages in game or in unused dialog or the official Prima strategy guide.

2. There are some words in the dictionary that seem to imply the possibility for such participles. Wundun is travel, and wunduniik is traveler. However, there aren't consistent examples of this used. The sample size of the word endings are essentially nothing but single case uses. Sahsun means village and sahsunaar means villager, and that's different from the -iik suffix. I personally have just unraveled the meaning of "runner" as "one who runs" (gein/rok/rek wo ru).

Death Singer would just be Dinok Sonaan or Sonaan Do Dinok.

1

Liis
Administrator
September 10, 2019 		For your second question, I would say no. The reason is that suffixes denoting agent nouns ("-er" nouns) already exist in canon, so I would just use those instead. The possibility of a present participle denoting the object (such as "Dinok") of an agent is a different concept than a "running person", because "person" is not an object, it's a subject. I'm not entirely sure how it could work, be that it can work, so I will advise to just use the existing agent noun suffixes.

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