If I were to tell you I was from, say the House of Bard (Lord of the Rings person, he killed Smaug), meaning I'm a member of the noble family that descended from Bard the Bowman, would I say "Zu'u do tiidnavir Bard" or "Zu'u do bodein Bard"? Apparently one means lineage, and the other means house/home/abode. I assume tiidnavir would be correct? If so, perhaps this additional definition should be added to that word.

:)

Yes, "Tiidnavir" would be more correct! I can definitely add "House" to the definition.

I'm not so sure adding "house" to the definition may be a good idea. In this case the word "house" in English is used as a synonym for family or clan and can't be used as such without the appropriate context. Might lead to a bit of unecessary abiguity. Just my two cents.

Gotta agree. "Noble Family" or "Noble House" might be specific enough to avoid the ambiguity, though.

Yes, but nobility is something granted by someone in authority. So, the members of the Battle-Born family, for example, are not nobility, and yet may claim to be members of "House Battle-Born". Bryling, however, is a Thane of Solitude (or Hjaalmarch, depending on how you see it), and since that title is only granted by the Jarl, that means she's nobility.

House in this context doesn't only refer to nobility.

I'm not so sure adding "house" to the definition may be a good idea. In this case the word "house" in English is used as a synonym for family or clan and can't be used as such without the appropriate context.

Lol, if House is a synonym for family or clan (regardless of it being a homonym for a dwelling) then it makes perfect sense either for it to be added to the definition of an existing word meaning family or clan, or for a word to be made for it explicitly. Context is the responsibility of whomever uses the word, not the person who makes the language. As you said, this is just my two cents :)

Making it a synonym for clan would be enough. There doesn't need to be a direct translation for every word, especially when you're conflicting with an existing translation. Think about it this way: If this were a legitimate language, people who don't speak it would need to be able to translate it. I dare say the #1 way to do this would be machine translation. Machine translation cannot into context. Determining the way a language is used so that it maximizes clear communication is absolutely the job of the person making it. English fails in many regards primarily because it does not adhere to that.

English fails because illiteracy is all too common. Context is indeed important, and I doubt the translator program on thuum.org could tell the difference between the House Battle-Born and the House where Clan Battle-Born resides. 

However, this argument feels pointless to me. The word in English, House (referring to a family or clan) should be a synonym with tiidnavir. I fail to see any reason against this, except for pedantics; House is simply a synonym for family/clan, you can't change that fact. You needed to be there when it was first used that way, hundreds of years ago, to affect how that happened.

EDIT: Once again my fingers and the late hour of my writing has caused me to overlook the point of your post. I agree that not every word needs to translate directly; however I still believe that at least in the dictionary tiidnavir should have house, when used as a synonym for family line, as a part of its definition.

 I guess my real problem with it is that as far as I know (I'm certainly no expert on language), English is the only language where the same word that means "a place in which one resides" also means "family, ancestry, or lineage". In Russian, the word for house is "Dom" and it only refers to ones dwelling, while their word for family, household, kin, etc is "Sem'ya". You wouldn't hear a Russian say "Ya Doma Kalashnikova" (I'm of House Kalashnikov"). The disagreement is purely semantics of course, but I think keeping Dovahzul distinct from English is important to giving it a life its own. It may also be that I like stirring up discussion for its own sake :)

I think we're all agreeing here but don't realize it. "Tiidnavir" and "Bodein" are separate words. I've added "House" to "Tiidnavir" so that if anyone is looking up the English word "House" in the sense that websterhamster is looking for, they'll find "Tiidnavir".

I think we're all agreeing here but don't realize it.

This. I realized it in my third post, above... lol.

It's cool that we're interested in this enough to have a debate about it, though! :D