The Dothraki language and High Valyrian are real, working constructed languages built for HBO’s Game of Thrones by linguist David J. Peterson. He started from a handful of words in George R. R. Martin’s novels and grew them into full systems with their own grammar, sounds and thousands of words that actors could actually speak.
Below you will find how each language was made, how the grammar works, and two tables of phrases you can try tonight, from the Dothraki way of asking “How are you?” (it involves a horse) to the true meaning of valar morghulis. Explore our translation services for details.
Key Takeaways
- Both languages were created by David J. Peterson, who won a contest run through the Language Creation Society in 2009.
- Dothraki uses English-style subject-verb-object word order, five noun cases and a vocabulary soaked in horse culture.
- High Valyrian is far more intricate, with four genders, eight cases and four grammatical numbers.
- George R. R. Martin wrote only a few phrases himself, including valar morghulis, valar dohaeris and dracarys.
- You can study High Valyrian for free on Duolingo, in a course Peterson helped build.
Who Created the Game of Thrones Languages?
Martin’s novels sprinkle in Dothraki and Valyrian words, such as khal and khaleesi, but he never built full languages behind them. When HBO adapted the books, the producers wanted dialogue that sounded like real speech, not improvised gibberish.
In 2009, HBO turned to the Language Creation Society, a group of language inventors (known as conlangers). The society ran a contest, and after more than 30 conlangers were considered, David J. Peterson won. Peterson, a California native with a master’s degree in linguistics from UC San Diego, had helped found the society two years earlier.
He has been busy ever since. Peterson wrote the 2014 course book Living Language Dothraki and the 2015 guide The Art of Language Invention, and he has built languages for other productions, including The Witcher, The 100, Defiance and the recent Dune films.
How Does the Dothraki Language Work?
Dothraki is the tongue of the nomadic horse lords who roam the grasslands of Essos. Peterson delivered about 1,700 words before filming began, and by September 2011 the Dothraki vocabulary had reached 3,163 words. Explore our fictional language roots in Latin for details.
For English speakers, the grammar has one friendly feature and a few tricky ones:
- Word order: subject, verb, object, the same basic order as English.
- Noun classes: every noun is either animate or inanimate, and the two groups take different endings.
- Cases: nouns change form across five cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, allative and ablative) depending on their job in the sentence.
- Sounds: 23 consonants and just four vowels: a, e, i and o. There is no vowel u.
Peterson has described the sound as a mix of Arabic and Spanish, and he drew structural ideas from Estonian, Inuktitut, Turkish, Russian and Swahili. The result feels foreign without being a copy of any one language.
A language that rides everywhere
The best part of Dothraki is how the culture shapes the words. The people call themselves riders, so everyday expressions keep circling back to horses and hunting. To ask how someone is, you ask whether they ride well. To say goodbye, you tell them to hunt well.
Dothraki phrases to know
These phrases come from the Dothraki wiki’s list of idioms and phrases, a fan reference based on Peterson’s published material. Explore our how languages evolve over time for details.
| Dothraki | Meaning | Literal sense or note |
|---|---|---|
| M’athchomaroon! | Hello! | “With respect!” |
| M’ath! / M’ach! | Hi! | Short forms of the full greeting |
| Aena shekhikhi! | Good morning! | “Light of the morning!” |
| Hash yer dothrae chek? | How are you? | “Do you ride well?” |
| San athchomari yeraan! | Thank you! | “A lot of honor to you!” |
| Sek, k’athjilari. | Yes, definitely. | “Yes, by rightness.” |
| Me nem nesa. | It is known. | The handmaids’ favorite reply in the show |
| Shekh ma shieraki anni | My sun and stars | Daenerys’s pet name for Khal Drogo |
| Jalan atthirari anni | Moon of my life | Drogo’s pet name for Daenerys |
| Fonas chek! | Goodbye! | “Hunt well!” |
| Hajas! | Goodbye! | “Be strong!” |
| Dothras chek. | Be cool. | “Ride well.” |
What Is High Valyrian?
If Dothraki is the language of the open plains, High Valyrian is the language of old books and older bloodlines. In the story it was spoken in the Valyrian Freehold, a fallen empire, and it survives among scholars and nobles much as Latin did in medieval Europe.
Martin supplied the seeds: valar morghulis, valar dohaeris and dracarys. Peterson built the rest of the system around them, so that those two famous sayings fit neatly into the verb patterns he designed. According to the reference article on the Valyrian languages, High Valyrian had 667 words by June 2013, and it has kept growing.
Why High Valyrian grammar is harder
- Four genders: not masculine and feminine, but lunar, solar, terrestrial and aquatic.
- Eight cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, locative, instrumental, comitative and vocative.
- Four numbers: singular and plural, plus paucal (a few) and collective (all).
- Flexible word order: because the endings carry so much meaning, words can move around the sentence.
Those four numbers explain the most famous phrase in the series. Vala is “man,” valun is “some men,” vali is “men,” and valar is the collective: “all men.” So valar morghulis is not just a moody slogan. It is a grammar lesson.
High Valyrian phrases to know
| High Valyrian | Meaning | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Valar morghulis | All men must die | Martin’s phrase; Peterson marks the long vowel as morghūlis |
| Valar dohaeris | All men must serve | The traditional reply to valar morghulis |
| Dracarys | Dragonfire | Daenerys’s command for her dragons to breathe fire |
| Zaldrīzes | Dragon | Peterson’s own word, unrelated to dracarys |
| Kirimvose | Thank you | A polite everyday word |
| Daor | No, not | Also used to make a sentence negative |
| Vala | Man | The singular behind valar, “all men” |
| Trēsy | Son | Coined in honor of Peterson’s 3,000th Twitter follower |
| Valyrio muño ēngos ñuhys issa. | Valyrian is my mother tongue. | Spoken by Daenerys; the verb issa (“is”) comes last |
| Skorī dēmalȳti tymptir tymis, ērinis iā morghūlis. | When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. | Cersei’s famous line, rendered in High Valyrian |
One fun wrinkle: Peterson has pointed out that dracarys looks suspiciously like the Latin draco, “dragon.” Latin does not exist in Martin’s world, so he treated the resemblance as a coincidence and gave dragons their own unrelated word, zaldrīzes. Explore our grammar and dialect differences for details.
What Is the Difference Between Dothraki and High Valyrian?
| Feature | Dothraki | High Valyrian |
|---|---|---|
| Speakers in the story | Nomadic horse lords of Essos | Scholars, nobles and the Targaryens |
| Word order | Subject-verb-object | Flexible |
| Noun classes | 2 (animate, inanimate) | 4 genders (lunar, solar, terrestrial, aquatic) |
| Cases | 5 | 8 |
| Real-world feel | Rough and rhythmic, a blend of Arabic and Spanish sounds | Formal and classical, playing the role Latin played in Europe |
| Duolingo course | No | Yes, free |
High Valyrian also comes with a lovely piece of world-building. Just as Latin broke apart into Spanish, French and Italian, High Valyrian has “daughter” languages in the cities of Slaver’s Bay. Astapori Valyrian drops the long vowels and trims the four genders down to two. Meereenese Valyrian drifted so far that Peterson designed it so a High Valyrian speaker could not follow it.
Can You Learn High Valyrian on Duolingo?
Yes. A High Valyrian course for English speakers launched in beta on Duolingo on July 12, 2017, and it was updated with audio in April 2019, ahead of the final season of Game of Thrones. By the time the last episode aired, the course had 822,000 active learners.
In 2022, Duolingo and HBO expanded it again for the prequel House of the Dragon. Peterson worked with Duolingo to add 150 new vocabulary words and 700 new sentences before the premiere on August 21, 2022.
Dothraki has no Duolingo course, but learners can turn to Peterson’s Living Language book and the fan-run Dothraki wiki. If invented tongues are your thing, our look at the Minions language shows a very different, much sillier approach to movie-made speech. Explore our professional document translation services for details.
What Fictional Languages Teach Us About Real Translation
Dothraki and High Valyrian prove a point translators make every day: a language is never just a word list. “Do you ride well?” only means “How are you?” if you understand the people who say it. Swap the words one for one and the meaning falls off the horse.
Real languages work the same way. Greetings, idioms, grammatical gender and levels of formality all carry culture, and a translator has to carry it across too. That matters for a film subtitle, and it matters even more for a contract, a diploma or a medical record. It is why human translators who know both cultures are worth having on your side. If you have a real-world document that needs that kind of care, our translation services cover a wide range of languages and document types. For more on how screen stories cross borders, see our post on localization in film and TV.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Dothraki a real language?
Dothraki is a real constructed language, or conlang. It has consistent grammar, a defined sound system and more than 3,000 words, so you can form original sentences in it. What it lacks is a community of native speakers. It was created by linguist David J. Peterson for HBO’s Game of Thrones, starting from the few Dothraki words in George R. R. Martin’s novels.
What does valar morghulis mean?
Valar morghulis is High Valyrian for “all men must die.” In the story it is a common saying linked to the Faceless Men of Braavos, and the customary reply is valar dohaeris, “all men must serve.” The word valar is the collective form of vala, “man,” which is why the phrase covers all people rather than one group of men. Explore our book and literary translation services for details.
Who invented Dothraki and High Valyrian?
Both were developed by David J. Peterson, an American linguist and co-founder of the Language Creation Society. HBO approached the society in 2009, and Peterson won the resulting contest to build Dothraki. He later created High Valyrian and its Low Valyrian offshoots for the series. George R. R. Martin wrote only a small number of words and phrases in the original books.
Is High Valyrian harder to learn than Dothraki?
For most English speakers, yes. Dothraki follows the familiar subject-verb-object order and has two noun classes and five cases. High Valyrian has four genders, eight cases, four grammatical numbers and a flexible word order, so there are many more endings to memorize. On the other hand, High Valyrian has a free Duolingo course, which makes steady practice much easier to keep up.
Can you really become fluent in a Game of Thrones language?
You can learn to read, write and hold simple conversations, and dedicated fans do. Full fluency is harder to reach, because constructed languages like these do not have a complete vocabulary. When a word does not exist yet, only the creator can officially add it. Peterson has kept expanding both languages over the years, including new High Valyrian words for House of the Dragon.
Need a Translation for a Real-World Language?
We cannot certify your Dothraki wedding vows, but our human translators can help with documents in the languages people speak every day. Chat with our team to tell us what you need, or call 1-800-230-7918. Fonas chek!
