Game Of Thrones Linguist Defends Emilia Clarke’s Dothraki Skills

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Emilia Clarke recently addressed comments made by David J. Peterson, the linguist who created the Dothraki language for Game of Thrones. Clarke said she was upset and angry after Peterson reportedly said she was bad at learning the language. She brought up the issue while appearing on Late Night with Seth Meyers to promote her new show, Ponies, and Peterson is now responding to clarify his position.

Entertainment Weekly contacted David Peterson for his perspective. He explained that Jason Clarke was “taken out of context” because he hadn’t ever commented on Clarke’s pronunciation of Dothraki. “I wouldn’t have,” Peterson added.

Dothraki wasn’t Daenerys Targaryen’s native language, so she wasn’t meant to be perfectly fluent. However, other actors on Game of Thrones, like Jason Momoa (Khal Drogo), had to become very skilled in the language because their characters grew up speaking it. Here’s what the language creator, Peterson, has to say:

It seems Emilia might have gotten the wrong idea about my comments. I’ve never actually criticized her pronunciation of Dothraki. It wouldn’t make sense – her character wasn’t meant to be fluent, so a perfect accent wasn’t required.

Peterson drew a comparison between the inaccuracies in the Dothraki language used in the show and Colin Firth’s stutter in The King’s Speech. He argued that criticizing these imperfections would miss the entire purpose, as Daenerys’s character was learning the language, and the mistakes were intentionally included in her dialogue.

To prepare Emilia Clarke for her role in Game of Thrones, David Peterson intentionally included flawed pronunciations in the Dothraki audio files he sent her, as a practice exercise.

Pointing out mistakes in her Dothraki would be similar to criticizing Colin Firth’s stutter in The King’s Speech – it would miss the entire intention. Actually, her Dothraki lines intentionally included grammatical and punctuation errors, and I even built those errors into the audio recordings I made for her.

Ultimately, Peterson believes Clarke did a good job learning Dothraki, considering the limited time she and her character had to prepare.

You know, I thought Emilia Clarke was actually really good with the Dothraki language in Game of Thrones. It made sense her character, Daenerys, wouldn’t be perfect at it! She was thrown into this situation where she had to learn a completely foreign language under incredibly difficult circumstances, and she became pretty fluent, but in a way that still sounded like she hadn’t grown up with it – and she picked it up surprisingly quickly, too.

Learning Dothraki wasn’t Emilia Clarke’s only linguistic challenge on Game of Thrones. Apparently, High Valyrian was supposed to be the language her character, Daenerys, grew up speaking! David Peterson, the language creator, was seriously impressed with her pronunciation and how naturally she delivered the lines – he actually said it’s one of his favorite memories from working on the show. It’s amazing how much effort she put into making the languages sound authentic!

The character was meant to be a native speaker of High Valyrian, and I especially loved how the actor delivered the lines and her accent when speaking the language – it’s a standout memory from the show for me.

It’s not clear what article Clarke mentioned on Seth Meyers, but it likely refers to an older interview with Rolling Stone. In that interview, Peterson said Clarke didn’t sound perfectly fluent speaking Dothraki, but that felt right for her character – and that was his main point.

For all eight seasons of HBO’s Game of Thrones, David Peterson was the language creator, developing dialogue and even entire languages like Dothraki, High Valyrian, and several others including Mag Nuk, Skroth, Asshai, Lhazareen, and Gerna Mohr. He continued his work in this world for the first Game of Thrones spin-off, House of the Dragon.

David Peterson, a linguist with a master’s degree, began his career as a language creator with the TV show Game of Thrones. Since then, he’s contributed to many popular productions, including Star-Crossed, The 100, Penny Dreadful, The Witcher, Halo, Thor: The Dark World, Doctor Strange, Raya and the Last Dragon, Dune, and the upcoming Superman film in 2025.

Since Game of Thrones concluded, Emilia Clarke has appeared in films such as Last Christmas, The Pod Generation, and The Twits. She also joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe with the series Secret Invasion. Her most recent role is in the new Peacock thriller Ponies, which will debut on January 15th.

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2026-01-15 03:20