QUNLAT BREAKDOWN.

[saam]

NOTE / PREFACE:

This is more of a rambly essay (i'm being very loose with that term) concerning my thesis (and even looser with that one) on Qunlat sentence structure and word organization.

If this isn't what you're looking for, you can return to the glossary.

Hey, there. I've been meaning to make this post for literal years. Anyway!

There is more than enough Qunlat released and translated in Dragon Age to make some general suppositions wrt their sentence structure. (This is more than can be said for Elven, which seems to have absolutely no syntax.) Qunlat, on the other hand, has verb conjugations and a few other things.

When I was playing Trespasser, the following codexes (linked) stuck out in my mind, because I had to do similar practice when attempting to learn Latin. I can't speak to other romance languages, but Latin folds the person (who) of the sentence and the tense (when) of the sentence into the verb.

For example, in English, you'd say I am strong. Three words.

In Latin, to say the same thing, you'd say duro, which is the first person (I) present tense (am, happening now) form of the verb 'to be strong'.

Clear as mud? Cool. Here are the three definitive Qunlat verb conjugation tables we got:


Torn Notebook in the Deep Roads, Section 3.

To Fall

1st Person Plural

2nd Person Plural

3rd Person Plural

Qunlat

Itwasaam

Itwa-ost

Itwa-adim

English

You all fall

We all fall

They all fall

Torn Notebook in the Deep Roads, Section 2.

To Protect

1st Person Plural

2nd Person Plural

3rd Person Plural

Qunlat

Rethsaam

Rethost

Rethadim

English

You all protect

We all
protect

They all protect

Torn Notebook in the Deep Roads, Section 1.

To Be

1st Person Plural

2nd Person Plural

3rd Person Plural

Qunlat

Ebasaam

Ebost

Ebadim

English

You all are

We all are

They all are

Obviously, these are all present tense. Another notable thing: they have consistent conjugations.

-Saam tends to be person plural.
-Ost seems to be second person plural.
-Adim seems to be third person plural.

Hyphens seem to be added when the verb root ends in a vowel.

Interestingly, these examples don't include any singular verb forms. They're all plural. (The plural of I is we.) However, there's one canonical instance of a first person sentence, and it's infamous. We're going to translate it.

Taarsidath-an halsaam.
I will bring myself sexual pleasure later, while thinking about this with great respect.

At first I assumed this sentence was a joke, but when I got to Tresspasser and read those codices, I realized that it was actually consistent with Qunlat as we understand it. Also, while there's a lot of words in the English translation, that doesn't mean they can't be packed in easily if your language supports that.

For example, with great respect is easy. It's -An. -An has been used before to denote respect, way back in DA:O. Remember what Sten calls you if you max out his approval? Basalit-an, a non-Qunari worthy of respect.

Remember -Saam? It's plural first person. "We all". So we can infer that halsaam means either 'we all think' or 'we all bring pleasure'. The mixing of plurality in the sentence could be a translation error either on Bull or Patrick Weekes' part, or just the fact that Qunlat works differently than our languages. It's been stated that it couches a lot in metaphor and implication. Honestly, my best (Watsonian) guess would be that Qunlat defaults to pluralized verbs due to how strongly collectivist their culture is.

What we do got is [I will (verb)]-[respectfully] [we will (verb)].

The more literal translation is either [I will pleasure myself]-[respectfully] [we will think] or [I will think]-[respectfully] [we will pleasure themselves].

Either way, we've got a first person singular (future tense) verb ending, either -Idath or -Dath. It doesn't show up anywhere else in the Qunlat we've been given translations of, but if we ever get more DA content (lookin @ u ea) it's something to keep an eye out for.

For other first person singulars, there's shanedan, which is translated as 'I will hear you'. Presumably the 'you' is implied, so it's safe to say -Edan or -Dan is the first person present tense verb ending.

There's two other sentences I want to use as an example, because both of them are both longer and simpler than Bull's. They make me believe that the Tresspasser codexes are accurate and there's some foundation to this language.

First one's from my bro Fenris:

Arishokost. Maraas shokra. Anaan esaam Qun.
Peace, Arishok. There's nothing to struggle against. Victory is in the Qun.

Let's break it down.

Arishokost is two words jammed together. Arishok, obviously, means fucking Arishok. Kost, however, means peace.

Maraas shokra. We know maraas means nothing. Shok means war or struggle. Contextually, we can assume -Ra is a negative ending. This means Qunlat is a language that doesn't require sentences to have verbs, or perhaps things like 'is' and 'to be' are implied.

Anaan esaam Qun. Well, for starters, Qun means Qun, so I'm glad we've got that sorted. Anaan means victory. Esaam is where it gets interesting. You remember those verbs? Remember -Saam? First person plural present. So, speaking to another person, it's literally we will find.

This seems overcomplicated because the translations add in a lot of words that are necessary in English, but clearly not in Qunlat. So let's do a more literal translation.

Arishokost. Maraas shokra. Anaan esaam Qun.
Peace, Arishok. [There is] No struggle. We find victory [in] Qun.

Here's another Qunari sentence, from way back in DA:O. It's longer, but just as simple.

Shok ebasit hissra. Meraad astaarit, meraad itwasit, aban aqun. Maraas shokra. Anaan esaam Qun.
Struggle is an illusion. The tide rises, the tide falls, but the sea is changeless. There is nothing to struggle against. Victory is in the Qun.

Shok ebasit hissra. Again, shok means war / struggle. From Bull, we know that hissra means illusion. Hey, what's that word ending in -sit? Kinda feels like a verb. Ebasit was translated by one of the DA writers to mean it is, meaning that -Asit is probably a verb ending for third person present, possibly singular.

Meraad astaarit. We know meraad means tide. Astaarit looks a lot like a verb, too. -Asit and -Arit are both third person endings, again possibly singular considering the fatal the (otherwise you'd translate it to tides rise). TL;DR, astaarit means it rises.

Meraad itwasit. That's meraad again, tide, which means itwasit is clearly it falls, the singular form of itwa-adim in the tables above.

Aban aqun. So we know aban means ocean. This is another sentence without verbs, because we know what qun means. Well. Sort of. Aqun means balance. Thus it can be assumed that Capital-Q Qun is a word that evolved from that. Etymology!

Maraas shokra.We've heard this before; it means there is nothing to struggle against.

Anaam esaam Qun. Remember this one? Victory is in the Qun.

So let's do that literal translation again:

Shok ebasit hissra. Meraad astaarit, meraad itwasit, aban aqun. Maraas shokra. Anaan esaam Qun.
Struggle is [an] illusion. [The] tide rises, [the] tide falls, ocean balance. [There is] No struggle. Victory is in Qun.

You know what this means? More fucking verbs.

Esaam 'to be [found] in', first person present plural.

Ebasit 'to be', third person present singular.

Astaarit 'to rise', third person present singular.

Katara 'to die', second person imperative, unknown whether plural or singular. Or Qunlat might not pluralize indicatives. Who knows!

Shanedan - 'to hear', first person singular present.

Asit - to be, third person singular present.

Ebasit - 'to be', third person singular present.

Esaam - 'to find', first person plural present.

Karasaam - 'to make superior', first person plural present. (see below.)

Ebsaam - 'to be', first person plural present. (Not 100% confirmed, but it's obvious from the one sentence it appears in.)

Ebatot - 'to be', first person plural past.

Where'd I get karasaam from? From translating another sentence and working backwards.

Nehraa sataa karasaam!

Nehraa means for.

Sataa means world

karasaam has the first person plural present verb ending -Saam. Kara consistently appears in words denoting superior officers. So, you could assume Karasaam then means we all make superior or maybe we all make greater, something like that...

The sentence could be translated to we all make the world better.

(Yes, I know you should never make such wide-reaching suppositions in actual translation, but this is from a goddamn video game.)

Anyway, another observation: Qunlat is (from a Watsonian perspective) transliterated very inconsistently (or, from a Doylist perspective, they're fucking lazy about how shit's spelled) because of how inconsistently hyphens are used to smash word roots together.

And it's driving me insane.

...But it's fairly realistic to how poorly understood languages tend to get poorly transliterated. Consider Wade-Giles and Pinyin.

But wait! There's more! Some weird shit / linguistic quirks (whatever you wanna call it) while combing through this shit:

• Aqun-Athlok is the closest word Qunlat has to 'transgender'; Bull translates it as 'one who was born one gender but lives as another'. However, that's not the literal translation. Aqun means balance, sure. You know what athlok means? Laborer. This actually makes a lot of sense if you consider what's implied about the Qun and gender. Gender identity to them isn't tied to our conceptions of masculine and feminine, but tied to tasks and work. If someone born biologically a woman shows an aptitude for fighting, they are now a man. They balance the labor, or perhaps balance themselves for the labor they have aptitude for.
• Asala-taar is Qunlat for PTSD, literally 'soul sickness'. Since asala means soul, it'd be safe to assume the -taar ending means sick. However, it turns out to literally mean dead. Let's look at the other places it shows up:
• Beres-taar, which translates simply to shield. What the fuck? But.
• Beresaad means 'those who reach ahead'. It's basically Qunari scouts who go to foreign countries, Sten was one. Aad means a military unit, so it can be assumed that beres simply means ahead. Which means Beres-taar means ahead-death. It's a shield. It's ahead of your death.
• Defransdim is dick and balls in Qunlat, and almost certainly a joke by the devs to pun on vas deferens.
• Noms is almost certainly cake or sweets for the same reason; the devs wanna make dumb jokes.
• -Thari as a suffix almost certainly means 'a group of people', like how viddathari means a first generation convert to the Qun (vidda shows up in a lot of words meaning either 'convert' or 'healing'; it's safe to say those words are roughly synonymous), kabethari means those who haven't yet converted to the Qun but are expected to soon because they're captives or living on Qun-captured land. The suffix -ari shows up a few times as well, generally to mean a single person, but not always? It honestly might have to do with whether or not the ending modifies a root that ends in a vowel or a consonant. It's unclear, but this is Definitely A Thing.
• Kata is clearly the verb root for 'end' or 'death'. So it'd be safe to assume I could make a verb table out of it. I won't. But I could.
• -Lok is a suffix that only shows up in maraas-lok, a Qunari drink. Which is weird because maraas means nothing, remember? The only other place -lok shows up is eva-lok, which is untranslated. Eva means beginner / novice. Stranger still, it's a (non-hyphenated) ending to gaatlok, gunpowder, but is said to derive from the words death / earth / glory. Synonyms exist, but here's another weird thing. Remember how athlok means laborer? It can also specifically refer to the earth, as in working the earth, or even to the mind. So it can be assumed that once again, the linguists in this game are rather lazy single words can have multiple meanings based on context. This could actually point to aqun-athlok meaning balanced mind as well.

In short, Qunlat is a badly constructed language, but it's still constructed. There are enough rules to make guesses about the meanings of things.

Other observations include: There doesn't seem to be a difference between how double and single A's are pronounced. There doesn't seem to be any meaningful word order within sentences, and often verbs can be implied and left out entirely. Verbs pack person, number and tense. Suffixes are important, but we don't know a ton of them.

Also, I lied, I'm making a (hypothetical, unproven) verb table.

To Die

1st Person Plural

2nd Person Plural

3rd Person Plural

Qunlat

Katasaam

Kata-ost

Kata-adim

English

You all die

We all die

They all die

The end. (Katoh.)

Return to glossary.