Monday, March 24

Kael'thas Sunstrider

Some time ago I posted that since he moved to the Magister's Terrace, he didn't know any words in Thalassian. Seems his memory has come back, as a new quote was posted at WoWWiki:

Casting Flamestrike:
  • Felo'men ashal!

The word ashal can be found in expression Selama ashal'anore, which means 'Justice for our people', and the word men can be found in the untranslated expression Tal anu'men no Sin'dorei! I'm not sure what the meaning of these words are yet.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's a shame research is at a standstill due to lack of material. Hopefully as more patches and the new expansion pack are released, we'll get some new words and phrases.

doqunbop said...

Yeah, I hope on that as well. Would be really nice if Blizzard would make some more content in both - Thalassian and English/Common, like the Lament of Highborne text, which is written in the two languages. That would make things easier :D

If you check WoWWiki (www.wowwiki.com/Thalassian), you can see that there are quite many phrases that haven't been translated yet due to lack of information.

Anonymous said...

http://www.wowwiki.com/Lament_of_the_Highborne

I'm pretty sure the translation given there is the official one, considering what little people outside of Blizzard currently have to work with. Plus, one of the lines that says "Sin'dorei" is translated as "O' children of the blood", and I don't think someone doing an unofficial translation would tack that on there. (There's also 'Shindu fallah nah', which also has two given translations.)

I noticed something about the pronunciation of "Sin'dorei": I heard it in the game as "sin-door-rye" while in the Lament of the Highborne it's "sin-door-ray". Maybe the pronunciation changed over time? Or possibly varies between male and female pronunciation (I only really remember hearing it from a male Blood Elf NPC).


I actually looked a bit into possible meanings for 'ashal', because I was playing Warcraft3 and Maiev Shadowsong often shouts 'Ashal thera'das!' when using the attack command, and I wanted to know what she was saying. The only references I found were, like you said, 'ashal' in 'Selama ashal'anore = Justice for our people' and 'thera' in 'Tor ilisar'thera'nal! = Let our enemies beware!' Based off of these, I figured a probable translation for 'Ashal thera'das!' would be 'Justice to/against our enemies!' with 'ashal' meaning 'justice' (and 'thera' meaning 'enemies'). It makes sense, especially considering all the other things Maiev shouts about justice.

Shortly after, I found the WoWwiki Darnassian speculation page, which lists 'thera' as possibly meaning 'revenge/war'. If you go by this translation, the only translation for 'ashal' that makes sense is 'people', in which 'ashal thera'das' would have to mean something along the lines of 'revenge of/for our people'. Personally, I still think 'ashal' means 'justice'.

doqunbop said...

As stated in the link, it's a loose translation. O' (or first half of Oh) is and addition added with translation, I guess. I think because it sounds better so when translated.

I've noticed different pronunciations too. Mostly that some pronounce a mostly as [ae] like in bat and some pronounce it mostly as [a] like in mark (I hope I've chosen good enough examples, as English is not my primary language - it's Thalassian! Jk :P But it's neither English nor Thalassian)
I guess people/elves from different regions speak differently. Don't forget that Thalassian is not only Blood Elf language, but was the language of High Elves (Quel'dorei) as well, which might mean that they didn't have same pronunciation for same words.

As for the word 'anore', I'd say it has something to do with some person, some people. If you'd look at the list of the known words, such as 'dore' and 'malanore', you'd see that they both end with ore and are representing some person.
If you checked the Maiev Shadowsong's page on WoWWiki, you'd see that she's actually a Night Elf, therefore she's speaking Darnassian. Thalassian is a kind of a dialect derived from Darnassian.
There is one expression including enemies in Thalassian and there's the one you posted in Darnassian:
Shindu fallah nah - They are breaking through
[Darnassian]Tor ilisar'thera'nal! - Let our enemies beware!
The only similarity I see is Thalassian nah and Darnassian nal, which, most likely means 'enemies'. Probably, by removing the last letter you'd get a singular, though I'm not so sure about that.

Katarina said...

Selama ashal'anore... i suppose that selama means justice in this case, and that ashal' (according to your post should be an adjective...) so ashal' is (according to my notes) = OUR and then, anore should be an noun.... i think it means people... you must agree that it makes sence... but if you realy want to understand Thalassian, you must forget everything you know about english grammar... :)

doqunbop said...

I remember reading quite a few comments throughout the internet that selama probably means 'justice', but it can't be shown as long as a phrase with the word isn't fully translated, not based only on assumptions. While some things might make sense, you have to check the translations against other phrase to see if they match good enough ;)
You are probably right about anore meaning 'people', as it ends with '-ore'. But I don't feel sure enough about the first two words; note that the word 'for' might be either merged with 'our' or it might come in the order of the words. I'm not sure myself, that's why I haven't announced any translations for that.

P.S. English is not my mothertongue. It's Latvian. I can 2 more languages besides Thalassian (Swedish and moderate Russian) and am interested in Chinese a bit too ^^ As I stated in one of my other posts, I'm working on a few other projects, which take up all of my time, so, sadly, I have to delay both Chinese and Thalassian studies for a later time.

Anonymous said...

Let me give this a shot. I took three years of Latin, heavy on the translation and grammatical structures side of things (can't speak it to save my life), and was heavily involved with the Grey Company in Ultima Online. They had their own elven dictionary - a strange mish-mash of Quenya and Sindarin (both I've taken short little "courses" in)....

"ashal" doesn't seem to be one standard word on its own. I don't believe it means justice, given the other contexts of the word. It would appear more to be a word that means "to put upon, inflict". As in... "Justice for our people." It is what modifies justice to be "done" to people. Difficult for me to put into words.

Of course, I'm also fairly certain that when these phrases were put together for Warcraft, they didn't have a linguist on board.

As to "Sin'dorei" and the two pronunciations, it may be a simple matter of the pronunciation making it singular or plural.

IE, my character is a Sin'dorei (sin-door-rye). She is a member of the Sin'dorei (sin-door-ray).

-anore may function as a verb-to-noun ending. (IE, in Quenya... lind- is "to sing", "lindir" is "singer".)

Just some alternative ideas, for others who may happen by. It's difficult to reverse engineer a language like this when we have so very few examples to work with.

Silverr said...

According to http://wowpedia.org/Felo%27melorn, Felo'men means flamestrike, so RoleCraft's comment above that ashal is "to put upon, inflict" makes some sense ion this context. ~ Kael would then literally be saying something like "[My] Flamestrike be inflicted upon you!"