Do you have WAY too much time to kill on your hands? Do you have no one to spend time with in your life? Don’t be afraid to admit it, I’m sure you’re not the only one considering that enough people were clamoring for a Living Language course in Dothraki that they actually made one available. Yep, a large enough portion of the population demanded a way to learn Dothraki that it’s become a reality. Shoot me now.
The concept of Dothraki was created by George R.R. Martin for the A Song of Ice and Fire novels, but unlike Tolkien and his love of inventing complex fictional languages, Martin doesn’t have such an obsessive passion for linguistics. As a result, most of the Dothraki and Valyrian you hear in theGame of Thrones TV series was reverse engineered by an expert hired by HBO.
Linguist David J. Peterson is responsible for most of the Dothraki we hear in Game of Thrones, and now he’s going to pass that information on through a Living Language course. Living Language usually provides conversational courses in real languages, but the demand for Dothraki is evidently enough to warrant an online course, CD, phrase book, and language app.
Now I’m a huge fan of Game of Thrones, so part of me is like “Rebecca stop knockin’ it, you’re being a huge hypocrite.” But really, am I? Because the people that are big enough fans of the show / books to actually take the time to learn how to speak Dothraki probably aren’t exactly the type of people the Dothraki would want in their khalasar (I’m moderately embarrassed for knowing all the terminology, but fuck it). For example, this is what the Dothraki look like:
They’re fuckin’ WARRIORS. Whereas the people who are taking the time to learn Dothraki probably look like this:
Yeah…not quite an exact replica right there. Excuse me while I roll my eyes.
[H/T Daily Dot]