Nouns

Dothraki 1

Course 1 · Chapter 3 · Nouns

Now that you can say Dothraki words, you can start to build with them. This chapter covers nouns: the split between animate and inanimate nouns, how plurals are made, and how adjectives follow the noun's number. Dothraki has no "he/she/it" gender like French or German; its division is between things that are alive (or treated as living) and things that are not.

The idea in a box

Every Dothraki noun belongs to one of two classes. Animate nouns have a separate plural. Inanimate nouns look the same in the singular and the plural. Which class a noun belongs to is something you learn with the noun.

Two Classes of Noun

Peterson's own site describes the two classes with names from the world of the Dothraki: "sky" nouns and "grass" nouns. Sky nouns are the animate ones and have a plural form. Grass nouns are the inanimate ones and do not distinguish singular from plural. He also says the class of a noun is a matter of memorising, not of guessing from meaning.

	Animate ("sky")	Inanimate ("grass")
Separate plural?	yes	no: one form for one or many
Case endings	full set, with different plural forms	the same endings in both numbers
How to know	learn the class with each noun

Watch out: this is not grammatical gender

English speakers sometimes call this "gender" because French and German have it, but Dothraki has no masculine and feminine. The split is animate versus inanimate, and it matters for plurals and for case.

Making the Plural

Animate nouns form the plural by adding an ending to the stem, and the ending depends on how the stem finishes:

After a consonant: add -i.
After a vowel: add -si.

Singular	Plural	Meaning	Rule
khalasar	khalasari	horde, group of riders	consonant stem + -i
khado	khadosi	body, bodies	vowel stem + -si
rakh	rakhi	boy, boys	consonant stem + -i

# the plural rule
stem ends in a consonant   stem + -i      khalasar -> khalasari
stem ends in a vowel       stem + -si     khado    -> khadosi

Inanimate nouns

An inanimate noun keeps one form for "one" and "many", so you tell the number from the context. This is common in languages that have such a split, and the class of each noun is listed in the dictionary entry.

Adjectives Agree in Number

An adjective follows its noun's number, so a plural noun takes a plural adjective. The example from the sources:

rakh haj      strong boy
rakhi haji    strong boys

In both phrases the noun rakh "boy" comes first and the adjective haj "strong" follows it. In the plural both words take -i: the noun rakhi and the adjective haji. Chapter 8 returns to adjectives in full.

Looking Ahead: Cases

Animate nouns also take case endings that mark their job in the sentence. One example: the accusative singular of an animate noun is formed with -es. The full case system is the subject of Chapter 4. You will meet the nominative, which has no ending, first.

Watch out: some of this chapter is still to be checked

This chapter covers the plural rule and the examples that are documented. The wider classification of noun stems (the different endings a noun can have in the singular) is not covered here and is best checked in the dictionary. When you look up a noun, check its class and its listed plural. The word khal from Chapter 1 is not given a plural here, because no plural of it is documented in this course's sources.

Hands-On Exercises

Exercise 1

Apply the plural rule to these invented practice stems (they are not real Dothraki words), saying which ending you used and why: tark, mero, dran, sila.

📄 View solution

Exercise 2

Write the plural of khalasar, khado and rakh. Then write "strong boys" in Dothraki and say how the adjective haj "strong" changes.

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Exercise 3

Explain the difference between animate and inanimate nouns in Dothraki. Why is "gender" a misleading word for it, and how do you find out which class a noun belongs to?

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Chapter 3 Quick Reference

Two classes: animate ("sky") nouns have a separate plural; inanimate ("grass") nouns do not
Plural of animate nouns: -i after a consonant, -si after a vowel
Examples: khalasar -> khalasari, khado -> khadosi, rakh -> rakhi
Adjectives follow the noun and agree: rakh haj "strong boy", rakhi haji "strong boys"
Learn the class with each noun; it cannot be guessed from the meaning

Coming next

Dothraki 1, Chapter 4 covers the cases: the endings that mark who does what to whom, with sentences you can read.