Daenerys Targaryen has spent this entire season of Game of Thrones hanging with the Dothraki (“Hanging With Mr. Moro, coming this fall to ABC”), which must be a real bummer for Emilia Clarke. Now she has to remember how to speak their language. For a bunch of absurd-sounding words, where you could say anything and no one (except linguistics scholar David Peterson) would know if it’s accurate, because it’s not real, Dothraki is super complex. You can even take a college course on it. Or maybe just read the 300-page manual:
Peterson got the job through a form of linguistic trial by combat — an exhaustive competition, held by the show producers prior to production, that pitted him against rival language creators. He spent a month tirelessly assembling his concept of Dothraki, incorporating phrases and words mentioned in the books into a deeper language system, supplemented by 300 pages of his own material. (Via)
At this point, Clarke is a pro at speaking Dothraki, unlike some of her newer co-stars. So to have some fun with them, she started singing Hanson’s 1997 classic “MMMbop” in the horse lord language. It’s an impressive feat, considering Clarke’s basically translating gibberish (“Mmmbop, ba duba dop/Ba du bop, ba duba dop”) to nonsense (“Mmmbop-eth, un-duin dot-eth”). To quote Seth Meyers, “I can’t stress enough how less catchy that is.”
Okay, but how do you say “more penises, please” in Dothraki?
