How Actors Learned to Speak Dothraki and Valyrian on Set
In Season 3 of Game of Thrones, Emilia Clarke delivers a long, furious speech in High Valyrian while dragons burn Astapor. It's one of the show's most iconic scenes — and she was performing in a language that didn't exist a few years earlier.
So how do actors learn invented languages well enough to make audiences believe them? Here's the process behind the performances.
The Counterintuitive Truth: Actors Don't Need to Be Fluent — They Need to Be Convincing
Most actors who speak Dothraki or Valyrian on screen aren't fluent. They learn their lines, not the language.
That's not cheating — it's acting. Audiences judge fluency by rhythm, confidence, and emotion. We call this performed fluency: the ability to deliver a language so convincingly that viewers assume mastery. It's a different skill from actually speaking the language.
Step 1: The Linguist Translates the Script
For each episode, the producers sent dialogue to David J. Peterson, who translated it into Dothraki or Valyrian. He paid attention to:
- Meaning and tone
- Sentence length compared to English
- How lines would sound when spoken with emotion
Try translating a line of your own in the Dothraki Translator or Valyrian Translator.
Step 2: Recording Reference Audio
Peterson recorded himself speaking each line — often slowly, then at natural speed. Actors received:
- The line in the fictional language
- A pronunciation guide
- An English translation
- Audio recordings
This audio-first approach is how many actors learn foreign-language lines, real or invented.
Step 3: Learning Phonetically (and Then Some)
Actors typically memorised lines by sound, supported by translations so they knew what each part meant. Knowing the meaning is crucial: it lets actors stress the right words and match emotion to content.
Jason Momoa (Khal Drogo) became famous for his commanding Dothraki. His physical presence and confident delivery made the language sound native. Many viewers remembered Drogo's big Season 1 speech, where he vows to take the Iron Throne, more than any English line he spoke.
Step 4: Working With Dialect and Language Coaches
Productions often use dialect coaches to help actors maintain accents and pronunciation consistently across scenes and seasons. In Game of Thrones, where many actors used British and Irish accents in English, keeping fictional-language pronunciation consistent was another layer of coaching.
What Made It Hard
Unusual Sounds
Dothraki uses sounds like kh and q that English speakers find tricky. Valyrian has long vowels and a breathy rh.
Emotional Scenes
It's hard to shout, cry, or whisper convincingly in a language you don't speak. Clarke's Astapor speech required rage and precision.
Last-Minute Changes
When scripts changed, new translations were needed quickly — sometimes shortly before filming.
Consistency Across Years
The show ran for eight seasons (2011–2019). Recurring characters had to keep pronunciation consistent over nearly a decade.
The Emilia Clarke Speeches
Emilia Clarke delivered several major High Valyrian and Dothraki speeches as Daenerys, including:
- Astapor (Season 3): She reveals she understands Valyrian and commands the Unsullied.
- Vaes Dothrak (Season 6): She burns the khals and addresses the Dothraki.
Clarke has spoken in interviews about the challenge of memorising these speeches and delivering them with conviction. The results are some of the most shared clips from the series.
Read about the character side of this in Why Daenerys Speaks Valyrian So Fluently.
Tricks That Make Invented Languages Look Real
- Learn the meaning of every word. Stress follows meaning.
- Practise with audio, not just text. Spelling can mislead.
- Commit to confidence. Hesitation reads as "fake."
- Keep the actor's natural rhythm. Overly careful pronunciation sounds robotic.
- Mark emotion in the script. Anger, grief, and humour change delivery.
These are the same principles any actor uses for foreign-language roles. We call it emotion anchoring: tying each line's sound to a clear feeling, so the words carry performance rather than just phonetics.
What Peterson Says
Peterson has written and spoken about working with actors, noting that the best performances come when actors understand their lines rather than just parroting them. He has also praised performers who bring their own energy to the language, making it feel alive.
How This Compares to Klingon
In the 1980s, Star Trek actors learned Klingon from Marc Okrand in a similar way. Okrand was on set for Star Trek III and adjusted words when actors mispronounced them — sometimes writing the "mistakes" into the language as official dialect variation.
That's mistake canonisation: turning on-set errors into official features. It's a fun reminder that fictional languages grow through performance, not just planning. Try Klingon for yourself in the Klingon Translator.
Where On-Set Language Coaching Is Heading
Productions are adding more fictional-language dialogue than ever. We predict AI voice tools will increasingly generate reference audio for actors early in production, but human conlangers will remain on set — because the hardest part isn't pronunciation, it's making a performance feel like a real person speaking their native tongue.