#but they're applied inconsistently and there's some spelling and grammar mistakes that make things harder to understand

[cellarspider]

Okay wait, sorry, after prolonged staring at Qunlat I'm at it again: do you have any thoughts on how an imperative like "Stop!" might be constructed in Qunlat? From what I can see, the only clear example of an imperative we have in Qunlat seems to be constructed as verb + singular you ending, i.e. katara (Die!). That said, kata can be used to mean both death and an ending, so to me it seems like stop and die would be the same word when given as an imperative. Is there something I'm missing there?

As with previous ask feel 100% free to ignore with no hard feelings from a random internet stranger :P

I do indeed have some thoughts! Both on the verb in particular and imperatives in general.

As you note, canon has no strong way to indicate imperative statements: most are indistinguishable from the default or "declarative" mood: "Katara" could mean "Die!" or "You die." There are a lot of combat lines from DATV's Antaam that seem to follow this pattern. Fun fact: trying to record the combat dialog while also not dying means that I have a lot of screenshots saved that look like this:

my lad is out there having a stressful time while I do linguistics

This sort of imperative is probably another result of a lot of English grammar being applied to Qunlat in a simplified form. In this case, Qunlat has lost the markings that English uses for the imperative. We tend to drop the subject word from imperative sentences, (ex. "You eat the cake" becomes "Eat the cake"), or tack on some helper words like "Do not" or "let..." (ex. "Don't eat the cake, let me eat the cake.")

Just like in your example, Qunlat rarely uses standalone pronouns for the subject, instead marking them on the verb. This means that in most canon contexts, the English imperative construction doesn't really work. Tone becomes the only way to determine the intended meaning of the verb.

However, there's one imperative that I find very interesting: "Teth a!", which first appeared in DA2 and was translated in DATV as "Beware!". That "a" appears nowhere else in the language, but it might be serving as an imperative marker in this specific context, with "teth" being a verb with no person marking. It could also mark a similar but not always identical function: a "hortative", encourages or discourages an action (ex. "Let's eat!"). In fact, 啊 (pronounced "ā") can be used that way in a number of Chinese languages (ex. 吃啊/食啊, "eat (it)!"). So, "a" is a potential way to explicitly mark an action that should or must be done.

Regarding how to translate "stop", you're right, we have no good canon word for it that I'm aware of. "Katoh" has been defined as "ending", so as a verb it could be used to mean "stop". Given the fact that it's most prominently used for a safeword in DAI, that might give readers confusing associations, though.

For my own expanded version of Qunlat, I created a new verb to mean 'stop': "isskata". This requires a bit of explanation: "Iss" only shows up in canon as a standalone word in DA2's qunari equipment names, marking the gear as being for experienced users. These gear names are also where "katoh" shows up for the first time, denoting gear for master users.

When I was messing around with building more vocabulary, I decided that if "katoh" implied a process of mastery was complete, then it could mean "to finish". "Iss" therefore meant the process was still ongoing, or an action being done. Therefore, I added a definition for "iss": "to do". Thus, "isskata" became "to stop", through emphasizing it as an affirmative action undertaken by a person, as opposed to the more passive sense of "kata"--dying or ending can happen regardless of whether you make it happen or not.

For more canon vocabulary, I have a dictionary compiled that can be copied and referred to for personal use. I also have a whole expanded dictionary I've made full of words like isskata, which I haven't publicly shared yet--it was mostly compiled prior to DATV, so some words conflict with canon. It also heavily features grammar that's only lightly supported by canon.

Basically, I became dissatisfied with the heavily English-influenced style in the games, and decided to use the examples we have from DA2 and WoT vol. 2 to construct a more grammatically fleshed out language. Trespasser has a note where a viddathari says "Please excuse my Qunlat. Its subtleties elude me even with your patient teaching." Yet, the language we see in the games doesn't quite match that description. The changes I made are very much to my personal tastes as a constructed language enthusiast, so when I wrote my Qunlat guide, didn't include them or too many of my more speculative interpretations of canon grammar.

I do intend to release my version of expanded Qunlat at some point, though it may take a while--there's a lot to cover, and it gets quite complicated! I'd want to make it engaging, either in the same style as my canon guide, or write it in an in-universe style for viddathari Qunlat learners.

Anyway! That's what I've got on imperatives and "stop", plus some extra tangents that show I don't entirely know the meaning of the word. Hope this helps!