Is There a Dothraki Alphabet? Writing Dothraki in Canon vs Fan Scripts
Quick Answer: No, there is no canon Dothraki alphabet. The Dothraki of Game of Thrones are an oral culture, and David J. Peterson, who built the language for HBO, did not create a script for it. Dothraki is written in Latin letters using Peterson's official romanization: four vowels (a, e, i, o) and consonants that include ch, kh, sh, th, zh and q. Every "Dothraki alphabet" online is a fan-made script. That's fine for art, but it isn't canon.
People search for "Dothraki alphabet" for good reasons. Some want a tattoo that looks more exotic than Latin letters. Some are building a Dothraki-inspired world for a tabletop game. Others have seen Tolkien's Tengwar and Klingon's pIqaD and assume every famous fictional language has its own script. Dothraki doesn't, and the reason says a lot about the people who speak it.
This guide explains why there is no Dothraki script, then covers what you actually need to write the language correctly: the official spelling system, how each letter sounds, where the stress falls, and how to handle fan-made scripts honestly.
Why the Dothraki Never Wrote
In George R.R. Martin's novels, the Dothraki are nomadic horse lords of the Dothraki Sea, the vast grassland east of the Free Cities. Their wealth moves with them. Their law is custom. Their history and prophecy live in speech. The one fixed place in their world, Vaes Dothrak, is a sacred city filled with statues and gods taken from other peoples. It is not a city of libraries.
Nothing in the books or the show suggests the Dothraki read or write. When writing matters in the story, as in letters, contracts and maps, it belongs to other cultures: the Free Cities, Westeros, the Maesters.
Peterson designed the language to fit that culture. The vocabulary shows its priorities. There are many words for horses and riding (hrazef "horse", vezh "stallion", the verb dothrak "rides"), and the everyday greeting Hash yer dothrae chek? literally asks "are you riding well?" A culture that measures a good day by the ride gives you a language full of horse words, and no alphabet.
So when you look for a Dothraki script and find nothing official, the language is working as designed.
What "Canon" Means for Dothraki Writing
"M'athchomaroon" — want to actually speak Dothraki?
Try It Free →| Source | Status | What it gives you |
|---|---|---|
| George R.R. Martin's novels | Canon (in-world) | A few dozen Dothraki words and names; no script |
| HBO's Game of Thrones dialogue | Canon (Peterson) | Spoken lines, spelled in the scripts with Peterson's romanization |
| Living Language Dothraki (Peterson) | Canon (Peterson) | Official course book: spelling, pronunciation, grammar |
| dothraki.com / Peterson's own writing | Canon (Peterson) | Notes, vocabulary and commentary from the creator |
| dothraki.org community dictionary | Community, curated with Peterson's material | Word lists in the official spelling |
| "Dothraki alphabet" images, fonts, tattoo sheets | Fan-made | New scripts invented by fans; not canon |
The key point is that the canonical written form of Dothraki is the romanization itself. Peterson isn't using Latin letters as a stand-in for some hidden "real" script. Latin letters are how the language is written, because no other writing exists. For more on how Peterson built the language, see David J. Peterson and Dothraki.
The Official Romanization: Every Letter
Peterson's spelling is phonemic: each letter or letter pair stands for one sound, and it is always the same sound. Once you learn the chart below you can pronounce any Dothraki word you see written down. English spelling can't claim that.
Vowels
Dothraki has four vowels. There is no u. A u in a supposedly Dothraki word is a warning sign that someone made it up.
| Letter | Sound | Like English… |
|---|---|---|
| a | open "ah" | father |
| e | "eh" | bet |
| i | "ee" | machine |
| o | "oh" | open (without the glide) |
Vowels next to each other are pronounced separately. In dothrae ("rides", as in Hash yer dothrae chek?), the a and e are two syllables: DOTH-ra-e, not one diphthong.
Consonants
| Letter | Sound | Like English… | Example word |
|---|---|---|---|
| ch | always "ch" | church | chek "good, well" |
| d | d | dog | dothrak "rides" |
| f | f | fish | fansa "small" |
| g | always hard | go | gach "strong" |
| h | h | horse | hrazef "horse" |
| j | j | jump | jalan "moon" |
| k | k | kite | arakh "curved sword" (final kh) |
| kh | rough, throaty | Scottish loch | khal, khaleesi |
| l | l | light | jalan |
| m | m | moon | M'athchomaroon |
| n | n | night | anha "I" |
| q | k made further back, at the uvula | no English equivalent | qoy "blood" |
| r | tapped or trilled | Spanish r | rhaesh "land" |
| s | always "s", never "z" | sun | asshekh "today" |
| sh | sh | ship | shekh "sun" |
| t | t | top | |
| th | always as in "thin" | thin, never "this" | athchomar "respect" |
| v | v | very | vezh "stallion" |
| w | w | wind | |
| y | y (a consonant) | yes | yer "you" |
| z | z | zoo | hrazef |
| zh | the "s" of measure | measure | vezh "stallion" |
A few spelling habits to remember:
- Digraphs are single sounds. Kh, sh, th, zh and ch each count as one consonant. Khal is two sounds plus a vowel, not k-h-a-l.
- Doubled letters mean a longer consonant. The ss in asshekh ("today") is held longer than a single s.
- The apostrophe marks a dropped vowel. In M'athchomaroon ("hello", literally "with respect"), the apostrophe shows where the vowel of me ("with") was dropped before athchomar ("respect"). It is part of the spelling, not decoration.
- Capital letters follow English habit for names and the start of sentences. Dothraki has no capitalisation rules of its own, because it has no writing of its own.
For names and how English names adapt to these sounds, see How to Say Your Name in Dothraki.
Where the Stress Falls
Spelling tells you the sounds. Stress tells you the rhythm. Peterson's rule of thumb, as taught in Living Language Dothraki, is:
- If a word ends in a consonant, stress the last syllable.
- If a word ends in a vowel, stress the second-to-last syllable.
Real speech has some exceptions, but this rule gets you close on almost every word you'll meet as a learner:
| Word | Meaning | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| khalasar | a Dothraki horde / riding clan | kha-la-SAR |
| hrazef | horse | hra-ZEF |
| arakh | curved sword | a-RAKH |
| M'athchomaroon | hello (formal) | math-cho-ma-ROON |
| khaleesi | queen, wife of a khal | kha-LEE-si |
| anha | I | AN-ha |
| jalan | moon | ja-LAN |
Many English speakers put the stress on the first syllable of khaleesi and khalasar. Following Peterson's rule is one of the quickest ways to sound like the show's actors.
Writing Real Dothraki Sentences
Because the romanization is the writing system, "writing Dothraki" really means spelling attested words correctly and putting them in grammatical order. Some well-known lines, spelled exactly as in the canon sources:
| Dothraki | English | Source |
|---|---|---|
| M'athchomaroon. | Hello (lit. "with respect") | Show / Peterson |
| Hash yer dothrae chek? | How are you? (lit. "are you riding well?") | Show / Peterson |
| Athchomar chomakea. | Formal reply: respect to the respectful | Show / Peterson |
| Qoy qoyi. | Blood of my blood | Show |
| Shekh ma shieraki anni. | My sun and stars | Show (Daenerys to Drogo) |
| Rhaesh anni. | My land | Peterson corpus |
Notice that possession comes after the noun (rhaesh anni, literally "land my"). That word order is grammar, not spelling, and no script would change it. For the grammar behind these lines, and for more greetings, see our Dothraki greetings guide.
Fan-Made Dothraki Scripts: How to Treat Them
Search for "Dothraki alphabet" and you will find images, downloadable fonts and tattoo sheets full of angular, runic or horse-themed letters. Some are skilful and some are clearly a lot of work. None of them are canon. Peterson did not create them, HBO did not use them, and they don't appear in the books.
That doesn't make them worthless. Fans have always built on fictional worlds, and a well-designed fan script can be a lovely piece of art. The problem is labelling. A fan script shown without a label gets passed around, and a few shares later it's being called "the Dothraki alphabet from Game of Thrones." If you use one, say so.
How to use a fan script responsibly:
- Call it fan-made in every caption, post or product description.
- Start from correct Dothraki. A beautiful script cannot rescue a made-up word. Write the phrase in official romanization first and check every word against an attested source, then transliterate letter by letter.
- Check the mapping covers the digraphs. A good fan script has single symbols for kh, sh, th, zh and ch, because they are single sounds. A script that spells khal as k + h + a + l is copying English spelling, not Dothraki sounds.
- Watch for a letter u. Dothraki has no u vowel, so a script that includes one was probably built by mapping the English alphabet rather than Dothraki's sound system.
We aren't naming or reproducing specific fan scripts here. They belong to their creators, and pointing to one as "the" Dothraki alphabet would suggest a status none of them have.
Tattoo Advice: The Honest Version
Dothraki tattoos are popular, and qoy qoyi and shekh ma shieraki anni are among the phrases people choose most. Our advice:
- The most canon-faithful Dothraki tattoo is in Latin letters. It's exactly how the words appear in Peterson's material and the show's scripts.
- Copy the spelling exactly, including apostrophes and doubled letters. Athchomar has a th and a ch, and dropping either changes the word.
- Only use attested words and phrases. Online translators often produce Dothraki-looking words that don't exist, and nobody wants to find that out after the ink is dry. Our Dothraki tattoo phrases guide collects the attested options.
- If you want a script, choose it knowingly and follow the fan-script steps above.
You can test a phrase with the Dothraki translator. It works from attested vocabulary and flags where a phrase goes beyond the documented language.
Dothraki vs Tengwar vs pIqaD
The two other big fictional languages on this site both have real scripts, which is why people expect one for Dothraki:
| Language | Script | Created by | In-world status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Elvish (Quenya, Sindarin) | Tengwar | J.R.R. Tolkien | Used in-world by the Elves; appears on the One Ring and in the books |
| Klingon | pIqaD | Star Trek art department; later adopted by the Klingon community | Seen on screen; its official letter mapping came later |
| Dothraki | None | — | Oral culture; written in Latin romanization |
Tengwar is part of Tolkien's own creation. He designed the letters before much of his mythology existed. You can learn it in our Tengwar alphabet guide or write your name in it with the Tengwar name tool. pIqaD has a stranger history, covered in Klingon pIqaD Explained. Dothraki is the odd one out, and that fits a people of the open grass sea.
Is Dothraki Still a "Real" Language Without an Alphabet?
Yes. Most human languages were spoken for thousands of years before anyone wrote them down, and many are still mostly or only spoken today. A writing system is a technology added on top of a language. It isn't what makes something a language. Dothraki has a consistent sound system, productive grammar and thousands of documented words, which is what counts. We go into this in Is Dothraki a Real Language?
People Also Ask
Is there a Dothraki alphabet? No. The Dothraki are an oral culture, and Peterson made no canon script. The language is written in Latin letters using his official romanization.
How do you write Dothraki? In Latin letters: four vowels (a, e, i, o) and consonants including ch, kh, sh, th, zh and q, each always pronounced the same way.
Why don't the Dothraki have writing? They are nomadic horse lords whose law, history and prophecy live in speech and custom. The language was built to match that culture.
Can I get a Dothraki tattoo in a Dothraki script? Only in a fan-made script. For a canon-faithful tattoo, use Latin letters in Peterson's spelling and attested words only.
Related Reading
- How to Say Your Name in Dothraki
- Dothraki Tattoo Phrases
- David J. Peterson and Dothraki
- Klingon pIqaD Explained
- Tengwar Alphabet Guide
Learn Dothraki with Tengwar
The best way to "write" Dothraki is to know it. Our Dothraki course teaches the sounds, spelling and grammar behind the show's dialogue, starting with free lessons.
Sources: David J. Peterson, Living Language Dothraki; dothraki.com; HBO's Game of Thrones dialogue; George R.R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire. Vocabulary is checked against this site's curated Dothraki database.
People Also Ask
Is there a Dothraki alphabet?
No. In the world of Game of Thrones the Dothraki are an oral culture with no writing system, and David J. Peterson, who created the language for HBO, did not create a canon script for it. Dothraki is written in the Latin alphabet using Peterson's official romanization. Any 'Dothraki alphabet' you find online is a fan creation.
How do you write Dothraki?
You write it in ordinary Latin letters using Peterson's spelling system: four vowels (a, e, i, o) and consonants including the digraphs ch, kh, sh, th and zh, plus q for a sound made further back in the throat than k. This is the spelling used in the show's scripts, in Living Language Dothraki and on Peterson's dothraki.com.
Why don't the Dothraki have writing?
In George R.R. Martin's world the Dothraki are nomadic horse lords whose culture is oral: law, prophecy and history are carried in speech and custom. Peterson built the language to match that culture, so it has words shaped by horses, riding and the open grass sea, but no in-world script.
Can I get a Dothraki tattoo in a Dothraki script?
You can, but you should know it will be a fan-invented script, not something from the books or the show. For a canon-faithful tattoo, write the words in Latin letters in Peterson's official spelling and check every word against an attested source such as the show's dialogue or Living Language Dothraki.
How do you pronounce the Dothraki letters kh, q and zh?
Kh is the rough sound at the end of Scottish 'loch'; q is like k but made further back, at the uvula; zh is the sound in the middle of English 'measure'. Th is always the sound in 'thin', and ch is always the sound in 'church'.
