| Dothraki | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pronunciation | ˈd̪o.θɾa.ki | |||
| Created by | George R. R. Martin, David J. Peterson | |||
| Date created | from 2009 | |||
| Setting and usage | A Song of Ice and Fire, 2011 series Game of Thrones | |||
| Users | Fictional language, zero speakers. (date missing) | |||
| Category (purpose) | ||||
| Category (sources) | constructed languages a priori languages |
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| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-2 | art | |||
| ISO 639-3 | – | |||
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The Dothraki language is the constructed language of the Dothraki, the indigenous inhabitants of the Dothraki Sea in the series A Song of Ice and Fire written by George R. R. Martin. It was created by David J. Peterson, a member of the Language Creation Society, for HBO's television series Game of Thrones. Dothraki was designed to fit George R. R. Martin's original conception of the language, based upon the few extant phrases and words in his original books.
As of 21 September 2011[update], there were 3,163 created words in the lexicon, [1] though far from all words are known to the public. However, there is a growing community of Dothraki language fans, with websites like "Learn Dothraki" [2] offering information on the state of the language.
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The Dothraki vocabulary was created by Peterson well in advance of the adaptation. HBO hired the Language Creation Society to create the language, and after an application process involving over thirty conlangers, David Peterson was chosen to develop the Dothraki language. He delivered over 1700 words to HBO before the initial shooting. Peterson drew inspiration from George R.R. Martin’s description of the language, as well as from such languages as Russian, Turkish, Estonian, Inuktitut and Swahili.[3]
The Dothraki language was developed under two significant constraints. First, the language had to match the uses already put down in the books. Secondly, it had to be easily pronounceable or learnable by the actors. These two constraints influenced the grammar and phonology of the language: for instance, voiceless stops can be aspirated or unaspirated, as in English.
David Peterson has said that "You know, most people probably don’t really know what Arabic actually sounds like, so to an untrained ear, it might sound like Arabic. To someone who knows Arabic, it doesn’t. I tend to think of the sound as a mix between Arabic (minus the distinctive pharyngeals) and Spanish, due to the dental consonants." [4]
Regarding the orthography, the Dothraki themselves don't have a writing system—nor do many of the surrounding peoples (e.g. the Lhazareen). If there were to be any written examples of Dothraki in the A Song of Ice and Fire universe, it would be in a writing system developed in the Free Cities and adapted to Dothraki, or in some place like Ghis or Qarth, which do have writing systems.[5]
There are twenty-three consonant phonemes in the Dothraki language. Here the romanized form is given on the left, and the IPA in brackets.
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Postalveolar | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | t [t̪] | k [k] | q [q] | ||||
| Voiced plosive | d [d̪] | g [ɡ] | |||||
| Affricate | ch [tʃ] | ||||||
| Voiced affricate | j [dʒ] | ||||||
| Voiceless fricative | f [f] | th [θ] | s [s] | sh [ʃ] | kh [x] | h [h] | |
| Voiced fricative | v [v] | z [z] | zh [ʒ] | ||||
| Nasal | m [m] | n [n̪] | |||||
| Lateral | l [l̪] | ||||||
| Trill | r [r] | ||||||
| Tap | r [ɾ] | ||||||
| Glide | w [w] | y [j] |
The digraphs kh, sh, th and zh are all fricatives, while ch and j are affricates.
The letters c and x never appear in Dothraki, although c appears in the digraph ch, pronounced like 'check'. b and p seem to appear only in names, as in Bharbo and Pono.
Voiceless stops may be aspirated. This does not change word meaning.
Dothraki has a four vowel system shown below:
| Vowels | Diphthongs |
|---|---|
| i [i] | iy [ij] |
| e [e] | ey [ej] |
| o [o] | oy [oj] |
| a [a] | ay [aj] |
In the A Song of Ice and Fire books, u never occurs as a vowel, appearing only after "q", and only in names, as in Jhiqui and Quaro.
In sequence of multiple vowels, each such vowel represents a separate syllable. Examples: shierak [ʃi.e.'ɾak] star, rhaesh [ɾha.'eʃ] country, khaleesi ['xa.l̪e.e.si] queen.
Basic word order is SVO: subject comes first, then verb and lastly object. In a noun phrase demonstratives come first, but adjectives, possessor and prepositional phrases all follow the noun. Though prepositions are also sometimes employed, the language is foremost inflectional. Prefixes, suffixes and circumfixes are all used. Verbs conjugate in infinite, past, present, future, two imperatives and (archaic) participle; they also agree with person, number and polarity. Nouns divide into two classes, inanimate and animate. They decline in five cases, nominative, accusative, genitive, allative and ablative. Animate nouns also decline according to number.[6][7]
In a basic sentence, the order of these elements (when all three are present) is as in English: First comes the Subject (S), then comes the Verb (V), then comes the Object (O). Here's an example:
When only a subject is a present, the subject precedes the verb, as it does in English:
In noun phrases there is a specific order as well. The order is as follows: demonstrative, noun, adverb, adjective, genitive noun, prepositional phrase. Prepositions always precede their noun complements.
Adverbs normally are sentence final, but they can also immediately follow the verb. Modal particles precede the verb.[6]
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