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  5. "Kirini vandissa kepe jorrāel…

"Kirini vandissa kepe jorrāelzi."

Translation:The happy bulls love the father.

July 19, 2017



Sigh. I wish Duolingo would stop with these nonsensical sentences and teach us some useful High Valyrian with practical applications.


Considering the Father is one of the gods of the Seven......... nah, I got no way to make this a useful sentence.


It's practical in the sense it helps teach you case endings, as long as you pay attention. For example in this sentence you have the accusative case, and the plural case so it theoretically is a useful sentence to put in here.


They do. It isn't a phrasebook though, it is here to actually teach about the language and using "strange" sentences is just far more effective at doing so.


The only thing I'm struggling with here is the case endings. For example, I'm guessing that kirini has an -i ending because it's in the plural case with bulls? And that's also why vandis becomes vandissa. Then jorrāelzi is jorrāelzi instead of jorrāelza because of the plural case, and then kepa becomes kepe because it's in the accusative case? Hope that makes sense and please let me know if I'm correct :)


Yes, yes and yes :) You can see full tables at the High Valyrian wiki (search for the words in the vocabulary page, then click in the link for the class of word, like adj. II or 5sol, to see the tables).


Also, is there a reason why "The happy bulls love father" isn't accepted? It says it needs to be "A/the father" but just "Dad" is fine. Would just "Father" be a different word?


There's a slight difference in English between these three:

  1. The happy bulls love a father → can be any father.
  2. The happy bulls love the father → is one specific father, known from context.
  3. The happy bulls love Father → implied my/our father.

High Valyrian has no articles. We know for sure that the HV sentence can mean either 1 or 2, without distinction. I'm not sure whether it can be used like 3, too; but I think it can (given the "Dad" answer, and some answers in other exercises).

If this is right, then the fact that it didn't accept "The happy bulls love Father" is just an oversight, because the course is still in beta.


Thanks for the answer. I also tried "The happy bulls love Dad" but that wasn't accepted either. I'm guessing the hints are wrong.
