How to Learn Dothraki: The Complete 2026 Guide for Beginners
How to Learn Dothraki: The Complete 2026 Guide for Beginners
When David J. Peterson took the HBO commission to build the Dothraki language in 2009, he had about thirty words to work with — the fragments George R. R. Martin had scattered through A Game of Thrones and A Storm of Swords. He turned them into a full grammar with around 3,000 words, a sound system designed to evoke horse-riding nomads, and enough structural depth that Game of Thrones could be filmed with actors actually speaking the language. The result is one of the most learnable constructed languages ever made, and one of the only ones whose primary creator wrote a textbook for it.
This guide is everything a beginner needs to start.
What Is Dothraki?
Dothraki is the language of the horse lords of the Great Grass Sea in George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire and HBO's Game of Thrones. In the books, Martin used Dothraki sparingly — names, a few phrases, atmospheric vocabulary — without a worked-out grammar. When HBO began adapting the series, the Language Creation Society held a competition for a linguist to build the language out into something filmable. David J. Peterson won.
Peterson's design rules were strict: every word Martin had already published had to be canon, even when it was inconsistent; the language had to sound nomadic and martial; and it had to be teachable to actors with no linguistics background. The result, published partly through Living Language and partly through the Dothraki Wiki, is around 3,000 words, a complete grammar, and a phonology that includes the rolled r, the back-of-the-throat kh, and the uvular q.
Dothraki is now more developed than most fan languages ever become, mostly because Peterson and the community keep adding to it. There are translations of poetry, original Dothraki songs, and active forums on which learners post their writing for correction.
Why Learn Dothraki?
Three reasons stand up to scrutiny.
The first is the obvious one: you watched Game of Thrones and you want more of the world. Learning Dothraki turns vezhven and m'athchomaroon from background noise into meaning. You catch Khal Drogo's speech to Daenerys word by word. You read the Iron Throne prequels with the Dothraki dialogue underlined.
The second is linguistic curiosity. Peterson designed Dothraki as a working example of a non-Indo-European-sounding language that is still teachable. Vowel harmony, animate/inanimate gender, suffixed cases, SVO word order — these are real features of real languages, and Dothraki is one of the friendliest places to encounter them.
The third is community. The Dothraki learner community is smaller than Klingon's but no less welcoming. The dothraki.org wiki is maintained by volunteers, Peterson himself occasionally answers questions on social media, and the Mithrandir AI tutor on Tengwar can roleplay as a Dothraki speaker for practice.
Grammar Essentials: SVO, Vowel Harmony, Animate vs Inanimate
Three structural features define Dothraki grammar.
SVO word order. Subject-Verb-Object, like English. I love you is Anha zhilak yera — I love you, in the same order. This makes Dothraki dramatically easier for English speakers than Klingon. You do not have to rewire your sense of how a sentence is built.
Vowel harmony. Dothraki vowels split into two groups, and certain suffixes change shape to match the vowels in the root word. This is a feature shared by Turkish, Finnish, and Hungarian. It feels foreign at first but is rule-bound and learnable.
Animate and inanimate gender. Dothraki nouns are not masculine or feminine; they are animate (things that move under their own power — people, horses, gods, certain weather) or inanimate (everything else). The gender governs the form of articles and adjectives. Horses are animate, of course. Mountains are inanimate. Fire is animate — it moves on its own. The animate-inanimate split is one of the most culturally telling features of the language.
Cases. Dothraki nouns inflect for nominative, accusative, genitive, allative, and ablative. The case endings are short and consistent; once you have the chart, you have the system. Verbs conjugate for person, number, and tense, again with consistent patterns.
There are no articles in the the / a sense. There is no copula in the present tense — you simply say I tired rather than I am tired. The combined effect is a language that drops a lot of the function-word baggage of English and lets the inflections do the work.
Pronunciation: The Rolled r, kh, and q
Dothraki has five vowels (a, e, i, o, efeminate) pronounced close to their Italian or Spanish equivalents. Consonants are mostly familiar, with three notable exceptions.
- Rolled
r— a Spanish or Italian trilled r. Critical to Dothraki rhythm. If you cannot roll your r, practice the worddothrakiitself until you can. kh— the ch in Scottish loch. A voiceless velar fricative. Used in words likekhal(king),khaleesi(queen), andkhalasar(the king's people).q— a uvular stop, made further back in the throat than English k. The same sound Klingon uses. Found inqoy(blood),dosaan(foal), and many martial terms.
Stress is generally penultimate (second-to-last syllable), with predictable exceptions Peterson lays out in Living Language Dothraki.
The single most common mispronunciation among English-speaking learners is treating the rolled r as an English r. Dothraki without the trill sounds wrong in the same way Spanish without the trill sounds wrong; the language carries it.
The First 100 Words
A working core for the first month.
Greetings (8): M'athchomaroon (hello, with respect), Athchomar chomakaan (hello, reply), Hash yer dothrae chek? (how are you, literally do you ride well), Anha dothrak chek (I am well), Hajas (be strong, goodbye), Fonas chek (hunt well, farewell), San athchomari yeraan (much honor to you), Athdavrazar (excellent).
Pronouns (8): anha (I), yer (you, singular), me (he/she/it), kisha (we), yeri (you, plural), mori (they), che (someone), vosi (no one).
Verbs of doing (15): dothralat (to ride), vekhat (to be), nesalat (to know), tihat (to see), ezolat (to learn), astolat (to speak), zhilat (to love), addrivat (to kill), samvenelat (to break), dothrat (to mount), chiorilat (to be a woman), lajat (to fight), qoyitat (to bleed), affilat (to find), osolat (to live).
Nouns of the steppe (20): vezh (stallion), hrazef (horse, mare or generic), khal (king, warlord), khaleesi (queen), khalasar (the khal's people), dothrak (horse-rider, plural dothraki), lekh (tongue, language), nayat (girl), mahrazh (man), chiori (woman), ave (father), mai (mother), qoy (blood), arakh (curved sword), vorsa (fire), shekh (sun), qoyi (blood, plural), vaes (city), krazaaj (mountain), havzhi (sky).
Numbers 1–10: at, akat, sen, tor, mek, zhinda, fekh, ori, qazat, thi.
Adjectives (15): vezhven (great), dik (fast), haj (strong), mawiz (clever), chek (good, well), verven (wild), vroz (slow), tawak (high), nemo (low), zhavvorsa (sun-and-stars compound; lit. moon-of-life), lajasoon (warrior-like), qoyi (bloody), khado (broken), oziklak (proud), eshna (other).
Cultural specifics (20): vaes dothrak (city of the riders, the only Dothraki city), Jalan Atthirari Anni (the moon of my life), Shekh Ma Shieraki Anni (my sun and stars), arakh (the signature curved sword), khal vezhven (great king), khalakka (prince, heir), khaleesar (queen's entourage), dosh khaleen (council of dowager queens), koi (training-companion), lajak (warrior, singular), lajaki (warriors), vojjor (chief), vorsaqoyi (fire-and-blood, oath form), addrivat zheana (to kill beautifully — Dothraki idiom), awazak (screamer), andahli (the rosewater isles — culturally derogatory term for Lhazareen), hrakkar (white lion), zhey (vocative particle — used like O before a name), azzafrok (joining of bloodlines via marriage), vaesof (city-dweller — culturally negative).
Connectors (14): ma (and), vosma (but), che (or), vos (no, not), sek (yes), hash (interrogative particle), vekh (there is), vekho (there is not), kash (when, while), affin (when, at what time), ezo (for, in order to), irge (over, above), she (in, into), oma (without).
A hundred words in five domains — greetings, people, verbs, the steppe, and culture — covers most of what a beginner will need in the first three months.
Cultural Vocabulary: Horse, Blood, Honor
The three concepts you cannot avoid in Dothraki, because the language is built around them.
Horse (vezh, hrazef, lame). Dothraki distinguishes stallions, mares, foals, and many gradations of horse beyond English. Riding well is the highest civilian virtue, encoded in the greeting Hash yer dothrae chek? — do you ride well? The word dothraki itself means those who ride.
Blood (qoy). Blood is sacred and cursed in roughly equal measure. The Dothraki say vorsaqoyi (fire and blood, but actually blood-of-fire) at oaths. The dosh khaleen drink stallion blood at the moon-pool ceremony. Bloodriders (dothraki qoyi) are the khal's chosen guard, sworn to die with him.
Honor (athchomar). Athchomar chomakaan — honor to one who is honored — is the polite greeting. San athchomari yeraan — much honor to you — is the gracious reply. Honor is given outward; a Dothraki rarely speaks of their own. The grammar reinforces it: honor verbs are almost always directed at the listener.
The Dothraki Learning Roadmap: Four Phases
Phase 1 — Sounds (weeks 1–2)
Goal: pronounce the five vowels, roll the r, and produce kh and q correctly. Drill dothraki, khal, khaleesi, arakh, vorsaqoyi. Record yourself and compare to the audio in Peterson's Living Language Dothraki.
Phase 2 — Basics (weeks 3–10)
Goal: 100 words, SVO word order, animate vs inanimate gender, present tense verbs, nominative and accusative cases, numbers 1–20. By the end of this phase you can introduce yourself, ask how someone is, and describe your horse. Tengwar's Dothraki course and the Dothraki language basics overview both cover this arc.
Phase 3 — Conversation (months 3–9)
Goal: full case system, past and future tenses, dependent clauses, vocabulary of 600–800 words. Start reading Peterson's example dialogues aloud. Begin keeping a Dothraki sentence-a-day journal. Read our guide to Dothraki greetings for honorifics and register.
Phase 4 — Mastery (year 2)
Goal: the full 3,000-word lexicon, all moods including the irrealis, and the ability to read Peterson's translations of poetry. Few learners reach this phase, but those who do report it taking 18–24 months of regular study.
Resources That Actually Work
Tengwar (learningelvish.com) — Structured Dothraki course with the Mithrandir AI tutor for grammar questions. Five free lessons, $9.99/month for the full course and the Klingon and Elvish curricula. The only multi-language conlang platform with active Dothraki support. See our best app to learn Dothraki comparison for the full case.
Living Language Dothraki by David J. Peterson — The canonical textbook, written by the language's creator. Includes audio. Around $25 in print. This is the primary source; every other resource derives from it.
dothraki.org (the Dothraki Wiki) — Free, community-maintained, comprehensive. The largest open dictionary and grammar reference for Dothraki. Best for lookup, not for structured learning.
Peterson's blog and Twitter archives — Peterson has answered hundreds of specific grammar and vocabulary questions over the years. The archive is searchable through the wiki.
Game of Thrones with Dothraki subtitles — Watching the show with both English and Dothraki subtitles enabled is unexpectedly effective. The corpus of on-screen Dothraki dialogue is large enough to function as comprehensible-input practice. See our guide to Dothraki in Game of Thrones for an episode-by-episode map.
For Peterson's full biography and design notes, see our profile of David J. Peterson.
Famous Phrases Every Learner Should Know
Anha zhilak yera — I love you. The straightforward verb-based phrase. See Dothraki love phrases for more.
Yer zhavvorsa anni — You are my sun and stars. Khal Drogo to Daenerys. Literally you, sun-and-stars, mine — Dothraki drops the copula.
Jalan atthirari anni — Moon of my life. Daenerys to Drogo. The complementary endearment.
M'athchomaroon — Hello, with respect. The standard polite greeting.
Fonas chek — Hunt well. A common farewell, with hunting standing in for any departure.
Hash yer dothrae chek? — How are you, literally do you ride well? The greeting that tells you everything about Dothraki culture.
Athdavrazar — Excellent. The single word Daenerys uses most often once she learns the language.
Vorsaqoyi — Fire and blood. House Targaryen's words, in the Dothraki form Daenerys uses.
Khalakka dothrae — A prince rides. The prophecy proclamation from the dosh khaleen.
Anha vazhak yeraan thirat — I will let you live. Drogo's threat-as-mercy line.
For more from the Great Khal himself, see our 50 best Khal Drogo quotes.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does it take to learn Dothraki? Basic phrases in 4–6 weeks. Conversational in around six months. Most of the 3,000-word lexicon in 18–24 months.
Is Dothraki a real language? It is a constructed language with a complete grammar, a published textbook by its creator, and an active learner community. Real enough to film a TV series in.
Who created Dothraki? David J. Peterson, on commission from HBO in 2009.
Is Dothraki harder than Klingon? Slightly easier for English speakers — SVO word order, fewer alien sounds, simpler morphology.
What is the best way to learn Dothraki? Tengwar's structured course paired with Peterson's Living Language Dothraki textbook.
Does Duolingo teach Dothraki? No. Only High Valyrian among the Game of Thrones languages is on Duolingo.
What does Anha zhilak yera mean? I love you — straightforward verb-based declaration.
Your First Step
Start with the sounds. Two weeks of pronunciation drilling will save six months of being misunderstood. Then move into structured lessons.
Tengwar's free Dothraki tier gives you the first five lessons and access to the Mithrandir AI tutor — no credit card required. Pair it with Peterson's textbook for the canonical source. That combination has produced more conversational Dothraki learners than any other.
Athdavrazar. Fonas chek.
Related Reading
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
How long does it take to learn Dothraki?
Basic phrases and greetings take 4–6 weeks of daily practice. Conversational ability — handling small talk about family, horses, and travel — typically takes around six months. Dothraki is smaller than a natural language (about 3,000 words), so reaching the upper limits of the lexicon is realistic within one to two years of regular study.
Is Dothraki a real language?
Yes. Dothraki was built by linguist David J. Peterson for HBO's Game of Thrones starting in 2009, based on the fragments George R. R. Martin wrote into the novels. It has a documented grammar, a lexicon of more than 3,000 words, a published Living Language course by Peterson himself, and an active learner community.
Who created the Dothraki language?
David J. Peterson, a linguist and member of the Language Creation Society, won an HBO commission to build Dothraki in 2009. He later went on to create High Valyrian for the same series, Trigedasleng for The 100, Shiväisith for Thor: The Dark World, and several other languages. Living Language Dothraki, his published course, remains the canonical learning text.
Is Dothraki harder than Klingon?
For an English speaker, Dothraki is somewhat easier. It uses SVO word order (like English), has only two grammatical genders (animate and inanimate), and a sound system that, while it includes a rolled r and pharyngeal consonants, is closer to natural languages than Klingon's qhx-set. Dothraki has fewer published resources, however, so finding a structured course is the bigger practical hurdle.
What is the best way to learn Dothraki?
Tengwar offers the most accessible structured Dothraki course with an AI tutor on hand for grammar questions. David J. Peterson's Living Language Dothraki book and audio set is the canonical primary source. The dothraki.org wiki, maintained by the Dothraki community, is the best free reference.
Does Duolingo teach Dothraki?
No. Duolingo has never offered a Dothraki course. High Valyrian is the only Game of Thrones language on the platform. Tengwar is currently the only major learning app with a structured Dothraki curriculum.
What does 'Anha zhilak yera' mean?
Anha zhilak yera means I love you in Dothraki. Literally it parses as I love you, with anha (I), zhilak (love, first-person singular present), and yera (you, accusative). The phrase Yer zhavvorsa anni — you are my sun and stars — from Khal Drogo to Daenerys is the more famous romantic line, though it is technically an endearment, not a verb-based love declaration.
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