"Skorverdon valoti ēdrus?"
Translation:How many men are sleeping?
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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.
If it was "how many OF the men", then it would be the English equivalent of the genitive, so why would it not accept that?
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.
Not sure why the word vala is in the genitive plural instead of the nominative. It might be a quirk of "how many" noun phrases, but it's not made clear.
"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."
Aldin-SXR has answered you already, but for information, this is in the lesson notes; I recommend reading them for every lesson, because often there are unexpected quirks which they explain.
So under no circumstance is skorverdon followed by a plural noun, and the verb will always be singular? Just seeking syntactical clarity.
How many men are sleeping (asleep)? How many of the men are sleeping (asleep)? All four questions are accepted now.