What Is Dothraki? The Language of the Horse Lords, Explained

Quick Answer: Dothraki is the constructed language David J. Peterson built for HBO's Game of Thrones, expanding a handful of invented words in George R.R. Martin's novels into a full language with SVO word order, a noun case system, an animate/inanimate distinction, and over 3,000 published words. It's the native tongue of the horse-riding Dothraki people; Daenerys Targaryen learns it after marrying Khal Drogo. Unlike a prop language, it has real, learnable grammar.

If you searched "dothraki language" because you just heard Hash yer dothrae chek? on screen and wanted to know what you were actually hearing — or because you're weighing whether it's worth learning — this page is the overview. For the deep grammar dive or the vocabulary lists, we'll point you there too.

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Who Created Dothraki, and When

Dothraki was created by David J. Peterson, an American linguist who won the job through a competitive process run by the Language Creation Society in 2009. HBO needed a real language for the horse-lord culture of Game of Thrones — not just exotic-sounding syllables, but something an actor could actually be coached to speak consistently across seasons.

Peterson didn't start from a blank page. George R.R. Martin's novels contain a scattering of invented Dothraki words and names — khal, khaleesi, arakh, m'athchomaroon, fonas chek — dropped in for flavor, with no grammar behind them. Peterson's job was the same reverse-engineering challenge Tolkien fans will recognize from Elvish scholarship: build a complete, internally consistent language that could plausibly have produced the fragments Martin had already published, then keep expanding it. He delivered a full working language before Season 1 premiered in 2011, and has kept adding vocabulary ever since — see David J. Peterson: The Linguist Who Built Dothraki for the full story of how he won the commission and the design philosophy behind it.

Peterson also built High Valyrian for the same show, and deliberately made the two languages sound like opposites — Dothraki rough, direct, and percussive; High Valyrian formal, vowel-rich, and aristocratic. If you're weighing the two, High Valyrian vs Dothraki breaks down exactly how they differ and which suits your interest.

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Dothraki's Place in the World of Game of Thrones

Inside the story, Dothraki is the native language of the Dothraki people — nomadic horse-warriors who live on the vast grassland they call the Dothraki Sea, organized into khalasars (riding clans) led by a khal. It's not a dead prestige language the way High Valyrian is in Westeros — it's a living, spoken-daily tongue, tied inseparably to horseback culture, combat, and open land.

Khal Drogo is the character most associated with it in Season 1, and his dialogue — coached directly by Peterson — remains the reference standard for authentic pronunciation. Daenerys Targaryen learns Dothraki after her marriage to Drogo, and her growing fluency across the early seasons mirrors her growing power within the khalasar. The vocabulary reflects what the culture actually needs: an extraordinarily rich set of horse-related words (by color, gait, age, temperament), precise combat terminology, and blood-kinship language like qoy qoyi ("blood of my blood," the bloodrider's oath) — but comparatively thin vocabulary for things the culture never needed, like indoor furniture or seafaring. For the full breakdown of how that culture shapes the grammar, see Dothraki Language Basics: Grammar, Vocabulary & Culture.

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How Dothraki Actually Works, Linguistically

Dothraki isn't just atmospheric noise — it has a complete grammar system, which is part of why it's held up as one of the more seriously engineered TV conlangs.

• Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) word order — the same basic structure as English. "The rider crosses the river" follows the same arrangement in Dothraki as in English, which gives beginners a familiar starting point (unlike, say, Klingon's alien OVS order).
• A noun case system — Dothraki nouns change their endings to mark grammatical role: nominative (subject), accusative (object), genitive (possession), among others. Word order alone doesn't carry all the grammatical weight the way it does in English.
• The animate/inanimate distinction — living beings, especially horses, follow different grammatical rules than objects. This isn't decorative: it reflects a culture where a horse has a different moral and practical status than a thing.
• Verb conjugation for tense and aspect — Dothraki marks not just when an action happens (past/present/future) but whether it's completed or ongoing, a distinction familiar from Slavic languages.
• Accessible phonology — no clicks, no tones, no sounds wildly outside the English range. The trickiest sounds are the guttural kh (like Scottish "loch") and zh (like the "s" in "measure").

For worked examples and full case tables, see Dothraki Language Basics.

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How Big Is the Dothraki Vocabulary?

David J. Peterson has published roughly 3,000-3,500 Dothraki words as of his most recent public releases — across the show's scripts, his book Living Language: Dothraki (2014), and his ongoing blog, where he still adds words on request. That's a real, usable vocabulary — enough to hold structured conversations, not just recite show lines — but it's meaningfully smaller than languages with decades more accumulated material, like Tolkien's Elvish or Marc Okrand's Klingon.

What Dothraki lacks in raw word count, it makes up for in internal consistency: entire vocabulary clusters (horses, combat, kinship) are unusually deep and precise, because Peterson built the language culture-first rather than word-list-first. For a full categorized reference, see 50 Common Dothraki Words for a quick-start list, or the Dothraki Dictionary by category for the thematic deep dive.

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Is Dothraki Hard to Learn? An Honest Answer

No — relatively speaking. Among the major screen conlangs, Dothraki sits toward the easier end for English speakers: its SVO word order matches English, its phonology avoids the sounds that make Klingon notoriously difficult, and its grammar, while real, is more regular than a natural language's. The case system and the animate/inanimate distinction are the main new concepts to learn, but neither is as heavy a lift as High Valyrian's eight-case, four-gender system.

The honest limitation, again, is the vocabulary ceiling — once you get past the first few hundred words, you'll bump into genuine canon gaps (there's no attested word for "ship," for instance, since a landlocked horse culture never needed one). That's not a flaw in the language; it's Peterson being disciplined about not inventing words the culture wouldn't have. The community fills some gaps with clearly-labeled fan extensions, but a serious learner should know the difference going in.

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Learn Dothraki Free on Tengwar

Unlike High Valyrian, Dothraki is one of the three languages taught with structured, gamified lessons on Tengwar — alongside Elvish and Klingon, with spaced repetition and an AI tutor grounded in Peterson's canon vocabulary.

Ready to actually start speaking Dothraki, not just read about it? Start free at /learn/200 → — 5 lessons free, no credit card required. Or ask the AI conlang tutor any Dothraki question, canon-checked against Peterson's published vocabulary.

If you're deciding between all three Tengwar languages, Elvish vs Klingon vs Dothraki walks through the tradeoffs directly.

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Where to Go Next

• Want the full grammar breakdown? Read Dothraki Language Basics: Grammar, Vocabulary & Culture.
• Want a structured study plan? See How to Learn Dothraki for the complete resource roadmap.
• Want vocabulary fast? Try 50 Common Dothraki Words or the Dothraki Dictionary by category.
• Curious who built it and why? Read David J. Peterson: The Linguist Who Built Dothraki.
• Want to know how it compares to Peterson's other Game of Thrones language? See High Valyrian vs Dothraki.

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People Also Ask

What is the Dothraki language? Dothraki is a constructed language created by linguist David J. Peterson for HBO's Game of Thrones. He expanded a handful of invented words and names from George R.R. Martin's novels — khal, khaleesi, arakh — into a complete language with its own grammar, sound system, and a published vocabulary of well over 3,000 words, starting with Season 1 in 2011.

Who speaks Dothraki in Game of Thrones? The Dothraki people themselves — the horse-riding warrior clans of the Dothraki Sea, led by khals such as Khal Drogo — are the language's native speakers in the show. Daenerys Targaryen learns and speaks it after marrying Khal Drogo, and it's also heard from her bloodriders and the dosh khaleen throughout the series.

Is Dothraki a real language? No — Dothraki is a constructed language ("conlang"), deliberately invented rather than evolving naturally among a community of speakers. But it's a genuine, fully engineered one: real grammar rules, a documented sound system, and over 3,000 attested words.

How many words are in the Dothraki language? Roughly 3,000-3,500 published words, across Peterson's show scripts, his book Living Language: Dothraki, and his ongoing blog. That number keeps growing as Peterson adds words on request from fans.

Related Reading

• Dothraki Language Basics: Grammar, Vocabulary & Culture
• How to Learn Dothraki: The Language of the Horse Lords
• 50 Common Dothraki Words
• Dothraki Dictionary: Common Words by Category
• David J. Peterson: The Linguist Who Built Dothraki
• High Valyrian vs Dothraki — Which Should You Learn?
• Elvish vs Klingon vs Dothraki — The Ultimate Comparison
• What Is High Valyrian? The Language of Dragons, Explained

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Ready to actually start learning Dothraki today? Tengwar offers structured lessons, spaced repetition, and an AI tutor for Dothraki, Elvish, and Klingon — start free at /learn/200 →.