M’athchomaroon, Zhey Rhaesheser!

Athchomar chomakea! Welcome to the Dothraki language blog. Here I’ll discuss the Dothraki language, and things related to it. Posts here will likely be specific, and more or less direct responses to questions or comments posted by community members of Dothraki.org, or right here on the blog (or elsewhere [e.g. via e-mail (or in question form at various places I happen to be at)]). For a general introduction to the Dothraki language itself, I recommend heading over to the Dothraki Language Wiki hosted by Dothraki.org.

For new visitors, my name is David Peterson, and I created the Dothraki language for HBO’s Game of Thrones. For the time being, this will, more or less, be the place to get updates on the status of the language. Thanks for stopping by!

To get the ball rolling on the whole blog thing, I have a small announcement. Next week I’m going to be presenting one of the concurrent sessions at Concordia College‘s Faith, Reason & World Affairs Symposium. My session’s entitled “To Live a Wooden Life: The Art and Humanity of Language Creation” (for a short description, go here). I’ll be talking Dothraki and conlanging, so if you live in western Minnesota, or even eastern North Dakota, come on by! I’ll be glad to see you.

I’ll probably either be gearing up for the above symposium or at it for, like, a week, so in the interim, if you have topics you’d like me to address about Dothraki or something related to it, write a comment on this post, or head over to this subforum at the Dothraki forums and write it there. The only rule is that I will not be discussing anything specific about the upcoming season of Game of Thrones, or speculating about seasons beyond.

Oh, actually, one more thing. The show is a dramatization of a series of books which many people have read, but there are those who only know what’s happened in season 1 of the show (and many also who have read some but not all of the books). In the comments, I’d like to ask you to respect those who haven’t read ahead and don’t want future revelations spoiled. For those who know the series, there are a lot of big events which can be spoiled, but it’s always fun to come to them fresh, so let those revelations come in their due course for as many readers/watchers as possible.

That’s it for post #1! Thanks for reading.

3 comments

  1. Athchomar chomakea! Congratulations, David on your nifty new blogsite. I like the nice look of the site, and I hope you get lots of visitors!

    Here are a couple of simple questions to kick things off. How are doubled consonants pronounced differently than single consonants? How about situations where you have something like ssh vs sh?

  2. Hey David, congratulations on this new blog! Nice to see there’s so much interest in Dothraki you had to create this thing :) .

    I have two questions I thought I’d ask here. My first one is peripheral: Dothraki is, as you stated, an unwritten language (in-world that is). So what is that bit that looks suspiciously like written text under the title “Dothraki” in the header of this site? :)

    My second question is relatively meta, and I’m not sure how much you are allowed to say about it, but it’s been bothering me for a while so I really have to ask it: Paul Frommer wrote before that he had kept absolutely no right on Na’vi, to the point that he was unable to share material (originally written by him!) without permission from the film studio. You, on the other hand, seem to have no such trouble: you share freely with the community, write your own texts in Dothraki (and share them) without worry, add words in the language however you seem to wish. And yet the notice on the footer of this blog is that the Dothraki language is © HBO. So my question is: what kind of agreement do you have with HBO concerning the Dothraki language?

    1. Let me answer the second question quickly (perhaps I should have included it in the first post). This blog exists because I asked to put it up, and was given permission by both HBO and David Benioff and D. B. Weiss. (Thank you very much, guys!) Before the show aired (and while it aired), there was concern about releasing information about the language because they wanted the experience to be fresh with the first run. Now that the first season has come and gone, they’ve allowed me to release some information.

      Oh, and by the way, I asked about a blog specifically because (something you might not know) Paul Frommer has pretty much the same thing—see here. I think Paul’s problem, initially, was one of communication. That got settled, though, and so now he’s able to post to his blog, which is nice for the Na’vi community.

      To answer the thrust of your question: Everything is done with permission. And I’m quite grateful to all parties concerned that I’ve been given permission to get this blog up and running.

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