Here at Living Language, we spend a lot of time emphasizing how cultural understanding plays a big part in learning a language. Without cultural context, language has diminished function, and having an understanding of the background and history of a language can truly enrich your language learning experience beyond the words, the phrases, and the sounds.
This applies to any language, even to a constructed language (or “conlang”) such as Dothraki. Understanding where the language came from – its genesis, development, and the components that make it the language what it is, including its phonology, grammar, and vocabulary – will certainly make your adventures with learning a conlang like Dothraki or any other language a more robust experience. And understanding how language works in general – any language, from Mandarin to Tagalog to Hawaiian and, yes, Dothraki – helps you to understand how languages fit into the world, and how their differences can be more easily contextualized.
Good news on that front: David J. Peterson, language developer and author of our Living Language Dothraki course has written a book, The Art Of Language Invention, about the process of constructing languages. The book makes a fantastic companion to Living Language Dothraki, documenting not just how Peterson fleshed out the Dothraki language from George R. R. Martin’s core lexicon, but also how he fell in love with languages to begin with, and how his interest in languages and how they work informed his conlang work. Peterson’s book uses case studies from his experience creating languages to discuss how language works in a way that will interest anyone – conlangers and linguists alike.
To give you a taste, listen to an excerpt from the audiobook of The Art of Language Invention in which Peterson discusses how the “harsh” sound of the Dothraki language came about, and how we describe the sounds of a language in general:
You can find more information on The Art of Language Invention here, or visit Peterson’s own website for the book for information on the author’s tour schedule, videos, and much more. More information on Living Language Dothraki can be found here.
