Klingon vs. Dothraki: Which Language Is More Complex?
Klingons fight with bat'leths. Dothraki fight with arakhs. Both are warrior cultures, and both speak languages that sound tough enough to start a fight on their own.
But under the surface, Klingon and Dothraki are built very differently. So which is more complex? Let's compare.
Short Answer
Klingon is generally more complex for English speakers, mainly because of its unusual object–verb–subject word order, alien sound combinations, and heavy use of verb suffixes. Dothraki has a complex system of its own, but its subject–verb–object order and more familiar structure make it easier to start.
The Counterintuitive Truth: Dothraki Was Designed to Be Performed, Klingon to Be Strange
Both languages were created for actors. But their goals differed.
Marc Okrand designed Klingon to be as un-human as possible while still pronounceable. David J. Peterson designed Dothraki to feel like a natural human language that happened to be unfamiliar. We call this alien vs. foreign design: Klingon is built to feel like it came from another planet; Dothraki from another continent.
At a Glance
| Klingon | Dothraki | |
|---|---|---|
| Created | 1984 (expanded from 1979 lines) | 2009 (from G.R.R. Martin's words) |
| Creator | Marc Okrand | David J. Peterson |
| Word order | OVS | SVO |
| Sounds | Very unusual combinations | Unfamiliar but natural-feeling |
| Writing | pIqaD script (used by fans and on screen) | No native script (Dothraki don't write) |
| Dictionary | The Klingon Dictionary (1985) | Living Language Dothraki (2014) |
Round 1: Sounds
Klingon
Klingon includes sounds like tlh (a t followed by a breathy l), Q (a strong throaty k), H (like ch in Scottish loch), and many glottal stops. Okrand chose combinations that rarely appear together in human languages.
Dothraki
Dothraki has kh, q, zh, and th, drawing inspiration from languages including Arabic, Russian, Turkish, and Swahili. It sounds rugged but natural.
More complex: Klingon.
Round 2: Word Order
Klingon: Object–Verb–Subject
puq legh yaS — "The officer sees the child" (literally "child sees officer").
OVS is extremely rare among the world's languages.
Dothraki: Subject–Verb–Object
Anha zhilak yera — "I love you."
Same order as English.
More complex: Klingon, clearly.
Round 3: Verbs
Klingon
Klingon verbs are agglutinative: you stack prefixes and suffixes onto a root.
- Prefixes show who does what to whom.
- Suffixes show things like "want to", "able to", "finished", "continuing", and certainty.
A single Klingon verb can carry the meaning of an entire English sentence.
Dothraki
Dothraki verbs change for person, number, and tense, with infinitives ending in -lat (like dothralat, "to ride"). It has a solid conjugation system, but it's closer to many European languages.
More complex: Klingon.
Round 4: Nouns
Klingon
Noun suffixes mark plurals, possession, size, and location. Plurals depend on whether a noun is a body part, a being capable of language, or something else.
Dothraki
Nouns are animate or inanimate and change form by case. Adjectives follow nouns.
More complex: Roughly even — both have rich noun systems.
Round 5: Culture Built Into Language
Klingon
- No word for "hello" — nuqneH means "What do you want?"
- Rich vocabulary for honour, battle, and insults.
Dothraki
- No word for "thank you."
- The greeting Hash yer dothrae chek? means "Do you ride well?"
- Horse-related vocabulary everywhere.
More complex: Tie — both are excellent examples of culture-coded vocabulary.
Round 6: Community and History
- Klingon: Klingon Language Institute (1992), The Klingon Hamlet, Duolingo course (2018), opera, and decades of fluent speakers.
- Dothraki: A strong fanbase and official learning materials, but a smaller, younger community.
Bigger community: Klingon.
Final Scorecard
| Category | More Complex |
|---|---|
| Sounds | Klingon |
| Word order | Klingon |
| Verbs | Klingon |
| Nouns | Tie |
| Cultural encoding | Tie |
Overall winner for complexity: Klingon. But complexity isn't quality. Dothraki is a beautifully natural-feeling language that audiences instantly believed.
What the Creators Aimed For
Okrand, a linguist who studied Native American languages, used his knowledge of unusual grammatical features to make Klingon feel non-human. Peterson, a lifelong conlanger, used his knowledge of language history to make Dothraki feel lived-in.
Both approaches work because they're consistent — the true secret of any convincing conlang.
Where This Debate Is Heading
As more fans learn both, we predict Klingon will keep its reputation as the "hardcore" fictional language, while Dothraki becomes the popular "first conlang" for new learners — just as some students start with Spanish before tackling Russian.