The Dothraki word that Game of Thrones took from The Office
By Dan Selcke
Conlanger David J. Peterson painstakingly put together the Dothraki language as seen on Game of Thrones, and once got inspiration from an unexpected source.
Game of Thrones gave a lot to pop culture, including two entirely invented languages fans are fond of breaking out at conventions and on the internet: Dothraki and High Valyrian. The man behind these constructed languages, or conlangs, is David J. Peterson, who built their vocabulary and grammar brick by brick, word by word.
Peterson drew on a lot of inspirations when crafting Dothraki, including a few unexpected ones, like The Office. You see, there’s an episode in the ninth and final season where Dwight — a big Game of Thrones fan — is teaching receptionist Erin how to conjugate the Dothraki verb for “throat rip”…for whatever reason:
Peterson saw that scene and decided to actually incorporate some of the grammar into the official Dothraki language, as he explained to Vanity Fair in a 2019 video:
“This construction was not something that I had ever imagined for Dothraki,” Peterson said. “Whoever was the writer of this episode really kind of studied the grammar. And so they created something pretty interesting. I was like, ‘Alright, I’m go with that noun incorporation. You did it right so let’s do it.’ And so I made that part of the Dothraki language after that, I call it the Schrutian compound.”
Unfortunately, Peterson doesn’t think he got to actually use this in an episode of the show, since by the time it happened there wasn’t a lot of Dothraki dialog on the series anymore. But it’s good to know if you want to practice your own Dothraki; you never know when you might need it.
And hey, there are always chances to have more on the upcoming Game of Thrones spinoff shows:
Next. George R.R. Martin was initially against the new Game of Thrones spinoffs. dark
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