David Peterson has said, "You know, most people probably don't really know what
Arabic actually sounds like, so to an untrained ear, it might sound like Arabic. To someone who knows Arabic, it doesn't. I tend to think of the sound as a mix between Arabic (minus the distinctive pharyngeals) and
Spanish, due to the dental consonants." Regarding the orthography, the Dothraki themselves do not have a writing system—nor do many of the surrounding peoples (e.g., the
Lhazareen). If there were to be any written examples of Dothraki in the
A Song of Ice and Fire universe, it would be in a writing system developed in the
Free Cities and adapted to Dothraki, or in some place like
Ghis or
Qarth, which do have writing systems.
Consonants There are 23
consonant phonemes in the Dothraki language. In the following
IPA chart, each sound in Dothraki is given with the romanization in brackets. The letters and do not appear in Dothraki, although appears in the
digraph . and seem to appear only in names, as in
Pono and
Bharbo. These consonants were used in the past but have since
lenited into and . They can still be used as variants of and . Voiceless stops may be
aspirated. This does not change word meaning. The geminates of consonants marked with digraphs have a reduced orthography: • represents (not ) • represents (not ) • represents (not ) • represents (not )
Vowels Dothraki has a four vowel system shown below: There are no diphthongs. In the
A Song of Ice and Fire books, never occurs as a vowel, appearing only after , and only in names, as in
Jhiqui and
Quaro. In sequence of multiple vowels, each such vowel represents a separate syllable. Examples:
shierak ('star'),
rhaesh ('country'),
khaleesi ('queen'). The vowels are realized as after . turns into after dental consonants. can be pronounced as after . ==Grammar==