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 33 consonant phonemes in the Dothraki language. Here the romanized form is given on the left, and the IPA in brackets.
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Postalveolar | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | voiceless | p [p] | t [t̪] | k [k] | q [q] | x [ʔ] | ||
| voiced | b [b] | d [d̪] | g [ɡ] | ø [ɢ] | ||||
| Affricate | voiceless | ch [tʃ] | ||||||
| voiced | j [dʒ] | |||||||
| Fricative | voiceless | f [f] | th [θ] | s [s] | sh [ʃ] | kh [x] | h [h] | |
| voiced | v [v] | ð [ð] | z [z] | zh [ʒ] | ɣ [ɣ] | |||
| Nasal | m [m] | n [n̪] | ɲ [ɲ] | ŋ [ŋ] | ||||
| Trill | þ [ʙ] | r [r] | ||||||
| Tap | r [ɾ] | |||||||
| Approximant | central | y [j] | w [w] | |||||
| lateral | l [l̪] | c [ʟ] | ||||||
The letters c and x never appear in Dothraki, although c appears in the digraph ch.
b and p seem to appear only in names, as in Bharbo and Pono. These consonants were used in the past but have since developed into [f] and [v]. They can still be used as variants of [f] and [v].
Voiceless stops may be aspirated. This does not change word meaning.
The geminates of consonants marked with digraphs have a reduced orthography:
- kkh is pronounced /xː/ (not /kx/)
- tth is pronounced /θː/ (not /tθ/)
- ssh is pronounced /ʃː/ (not /sʃ/)
- zzh is pronounced /ʒː/ (not /zʒ/)
- cch is pronounced /t͡ʃː/ (not /tt͡ʃ/)
Vowels[]
Dothraki has a fifteen vowel system shown below:
| Front | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| unrounded | rounded | ||
| Close | i /i/ | o /u/ | |
| Close-mid | e, i /e/ | o /ɤ/ | o /o/ |
| Open-mid | e /ɛ/ | u /ə/ | o /ɔ/ |
| Open | a /a/ | a /ɑ/ | |
There are no diphthongs.
In the A Song of Ice and Fire books, u never occurs as a vowel, appearing only after q, and only in names, as in Jhiqui and Quaro.
In sequence of multiple vowels, each such vowel represents a separate syllable. Examples: shierak [ʃi.e.ˈɾak] - star, rhaesh [ɾha.ˈeʃ] - country, khaleesi [ˈxa.l̪e.e.si] - queen.
The vowels /i, e, o, a/ turn into [e, ɛ, ɔ, ɑ] after /q/. /o/ turns into [ɤ] after dental consonants. /o/ can be pronounced as [u] after [g], [k] and [x].