The Dothraki are a race of people in the world of Game of Thrones. They are vicious and strong horse lords that roam the land pillaging villages and taking their people as slaves. They value bravery and strength and skill in battle. The Dothraki are led by a small group of men and let the women be in charge of care taking and cooking food. These people resemble the Native Americans in that they are very primitive with their hunter gatherer lifestyle, and live very harsh lives. Trained for battle from an early age, male Dothraki become fierce warriors and a force to be reckoned with. This culture and savage lifestyle is portrayed very accurately on the Game of Thrones TV show. Living in huts, roaming grasslands, dressed in animal skins, riding horse, raiding villages, the show really immerses the viewer in the culture.
To add more immersion, the show even developed a Dothraki language! Created by David Peterson, the Dothraki language has 3400 words and its own grammar. Peterson gave a TED Talk in 2013 regarding the process of creating a language like Dothraki. It took him 4 years to develop the grammar and vocabulary. Words like “hlizifihk” “gezrikh” and “hrakkarikh show how the language matches the harsh lifestyle of the Dothraki with its hard to pronounce words and harsh syllables. When asked how he wrote the language. Peterson said he imagined what the Dothraki would have been like 1000 years in the past. He did this because to know the way of a language in the present day, you must first know how it evolved and what it originated from. Peterson tried to imitate the quirks of the language and how they would change over time and create a “protolanguage”. Since this is a fictional culture, Peterson compared the Dothraki to the Mongols of the Silk Era and the Native Americans and used their languages and culture as inspiration for the creation of his Dothraki language. The Game of thrones books also reveal some important background history on the Dothraki that Peterson used to create his language. Events in the plot of the story containing the Dothraki also served as inspiration.
I find this fascinating as Peterson is really digging into the roots of the Dothraki history to create an organic and realistic language that matches the culture and lifestyle of the people depicted in the Game of thrones novels and show. In the show, the Dothraki people seem like a real and fleshed out culture. The outfits, their lifestyle, and their developed and complex language help create a very lively and accurate picture of the Dothraki people in the Game of Thrones show.
Meet David Peterson, who developed Dothraki for Game of Thrones
