The World of Westeros > HBO: Game of Thrones

Accents in Dothraki

(1/2) > >>

jojo:
I was rewatching the series lately, and something occurred to me.  It seems like the "Native speakers" of Dothraki pronounce things a bit differently than the Westrosi who are speaking it.  I was hoping that some of you that have linguistics training can put some of my vague statements below into more specific terms?

As Dany learns Dothraki, it seems like her pronounciation starts off sounding very English/"Common" then becomes slowly more native-like as she is learning...

OTOH, Jorah's pronounciation seems to sound much more like the Dothrakis' than Dany's, which would match with the fact that he's been fluent for years, but is still a foreigner.

Dothraki speakers - my main question with them is whether the various Dothraki are all pronouncing things more similarly to one another than to the Westrosi? 
Drogo
Rakharo
Irri
Others (Qotho, Mago, Jhiqui, etc)

Also I am wondering if the conlang creator was by consulted the actors/directors on specific pronounciation for native/non-native speakers for particular lines?  I'm also interested in what the language makers and all you learners would say are some of the common mispronounciations/mistakes for English ("Common Tongue") speakers that are trying to learn Dothraki?  Which sounds are the most difficult and which words are likely to trip new learners up?

Thanks!

ingsve:
There were no intended differences between native and non-native speakers on the show. Any difference in pronounciation is completely due to the actors. One thing that might explain the difference is that actors like Emilia Clarke that has a lot of dialogue in English and overall more to do probably had less time tp focus hard on learning the pronounciation than some of the actors that mostly had Dothraki lines and could probably focus a lot more on getting things right.

The main influence that the language creator David Peterson had on the pronounciations is that he recoreded all dialogue as MP3s that the actors could listen to and mimic. They also had a dialect coach on set that could help them with the basics.

One thing that David noted is that Jason Momoa while getting some things wrong he was very consistent with what he got wrong so it can easily be seen as a dialect rather than errors. Other actors very more varied in their errors so that they come off more as errors rather than dialects.

The most common mistakes are pronouncing /kh/ as if it was a /k/ when it's suppose to be like the /ch/ in Bach, loch or l'chaim. Other mistakes include devoicing sounds so that /zh/ turns into /sh/ or /z/ turns into /s/ etc. Another thing that I imagine people would get wrong a lot is to pronounce things like /-oon/ with a long o [o:] rather than as two separate o's.

jojo:

--- Quote from: ingsve on July 15, 2011, 11:15:49 am ---There were no intended differences between native and non-native speakers on the show. Any difference in pronunciation is completely due to the actors.

--- End quote ---

Very interesting!  Well then I guess it was just a lucky coincidence.  :)

ingsve:

--- Quote from: jojo on July 15, 2011, 01:51:54 pm ---
--- Quote from: ingsve on July 15, 2011, 11:15:49 am ---There were no intended differences between native and non-native speakers on the show. Any difference in pronunciation is completely due to the actors.

--- End quote ---

Very interesting!  Well then I guess it was just a lucky coincidence.  :)

--- End quote ---

One thing that was intended though is that when Dany is learning the language she starts out speaking ungrammatically and over the first couple of episodes her Dothraki becomes more and more correct in terms of grammar.

Qvaak:
Your household doubting tom here.


--- Quote ---There were no intended differences between native and non-native speakers on the show. Any difference in pronounciation is completely due to the actors.
--- End quote ---

Is this really a hard fact? There are half dozen people - director, language coach, writers...- that could have told the actors to let the pronunciation improve over the course of the series (in case of Emilia) or not improve at all (in case of Iain). They would not even have to instruct Emilia to mispronounce, just to take extra care on the later episodes. Or, in Iain's case just to take it easy. Even if that was an actor's choice, it still might be intentional and even might have gotten an approving nod or two.

Letting the pronunciation show the foreign roots is such a natural decision - the only right choice, I'd say - that even if someone has said that there is no intentional difference, I'd still hold it likely that the guy has just been misinformed or not informed at all.


--- Quote ---One thing that might explain the difference is that actors like Emilia Clarke that has a lot of dialogue in English and overall more to do probably had less time tp focus hard on learning the pronounciation than some of the actors that mostly had Dothraki lines and could probably focus a lot more on getting things right.
--- End quote ---

Well, this is true, too. Overall, if I remember correctly, the episodes were for most part shot in right order. So if you just kept learning, kept listening the other people rehearse and act their lines, you should be better at the last episodes.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page