"Skorverdon valoti ēdrus?"
Translation:How many men are sleeping?
9 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
2606
the genitive made me write: How many of the men are sleeping? It was marked wrong. But upon reflection, there's not a lot of difference between "how many men are sleeping" and "how many of the men are sleeping" — Both questions can be answered by "All of them" or "None of them" or "About half of them."
How many sleeping men are there? would be a totally different question.
I always try to "translate" it in my head like "What amount of men is sleeping?" This way, the genitive kinda makes sense, plus the fact that the verb is is using the singular and not the plural form also makes sense.
Probably not a nice English sentence, but I think this is how Valyrians would "think" this phrase.
"The word skorverdon "how many" is special. Skorverdon is always followed by a noun in the genitive plural. Thus "how many men" would be skorverdon valoti. Remember that skorverdon is the actual argument, though, so in the sentence "How many men are singing?" the verb should be third person singular, since the noun skorverdon is singular."