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Why is this not translatable as 'The men are fathers'?
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As issa is a form of the copular verb sagon "to be", both vali and kepi is in the nominative - the hint here is that kepī has the lengthened vowel, therefore meaning "and fathers" :)
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Do you mean the lengthened i is indicative of a conjunction?
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Exactly - that was included in the hints for the first lesson:
"High Valyrian doesn't use a word like "and" when coordinating two nouns or two adjectives. Instead, the last word in a pair trio of nouns, adjectives, or even verbs is modified in some way to indicate that it is participating in a coordinative structure. One common strategy is to lengthen the final vowel of the last word in a list and shift the word's stress to the end. Watch out for word-final long vowels in sentences with coordination!"
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Thank you. I genuinely do not remember that paragraph. I wonder if it were added after I already started the beta version...
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Where can I find the hints for lesson, Im kind of newbie in duolingo. Thanks
Click on words that have ............. under them to show the meaning. The blue icon to the left is supposed to let you hear the phrase but hasnt worked for me in a single lesson so far, maybe because this course is still new
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I was wondering the same. My best guess is that "kepi" is in the conjunction form here, not the nominative case, which it would have been in "The men are fathers".
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Here is a similar case https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/23533022
The answer might be different stress in the different syllables. So ke'pī (and fathers, the second subject) while 'kepī (the fathers, the object of the verb)
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I also got confused here, because i think it is the first sentence of this kind i encountered. But it's true, two nouns and a lengthened vowel at the end of the second is used as a conjunction, thus "se" (and) is only used to merge sentences.
