As Jason Momoa speaks a foreign language, albeit fake, in the television series Game of Thrones, many of his fans were left wondering if Momoa does know any other, real languages.
Momoa does not know Spanish or any other languages. Momoa grew up in the United States, where English is the most common language with 239 million speakers. So, Momoa never needed to learn another language.
Continue reading to find out more about Jason Momoa’s history with language learning.
Jason Momoa’s Background
Jason Momoa was born in Nānākuli, Honolulu, Hawaii in 1979 to his father, Joseph Momoa and his mother, Coni Lemke. His father is Samoan and Hawaiian and his mother is of German, Irish and Native American descent.
Despite being born in Hawaii, he grew up in America as he moved to Norwalk, Iowa with his mother when he was six months old. He eventually moved back to Hawaii to go to university at the University of Hawaii.
As he grew up in the United States, Momoa was mostly exposed to and learned English. His mother also only spoke English, so Momoa never needed to learn another language.
Even when he was back in Hawaii, the two prominent language is English. The official languages of Hawaii are English and Hawaiian. But, Hawaiian is an endangered language with only 0.1% of the native population speaking it.
This meant that even in Hawaii, Momoa was only really exposed to English. All of his films and television shows have also been in English, other than Game of Thrones, for English-speaking audiences. So, he has not had any exposure to other languages, even Spanish.
It is a little surprising that he does not speak Spanish though as it is the second most spoken language in the United States. There are 35 million people in the United States that speak Spanish.
Spanish is so prevalent in the United States that most people think it is actually an official language. There is, however, no official language in the United States (at the federal level).
Despite the prevalence of Spanish in the United States, Jason Momoa does not speak it.
The Dothraki Language
Jason Momoa does, however, speak the fictional language “Dothraki”. The language was created for the book series, A Song of Ice and Fire written by author George R.R Martin and later adapted for the television series, Game of Thrones.
Although it was originally a fictional language, the producers of the show wanted it to be authentic. So, they hired a language creator named David Peterson, to turn it into a real language.
The Dothraki language is spoken by the Dothraki people, a nomadic race. It is comprised of 3163 words currently that Peterson says was influenced by languages like, Estonian, Inuktitut, Turkish, Russian and Swahili.
Peterson also created another language for the show called Valyrian. Valyrian was used by nobility in the series.
The Dothraki language even has its own grammar system and is available online for the public to learn like Momoa.
Momoa has said that he still remembers it and could communicate with someone in Dothraki. This is quite an impressive feat as Momoa was only in ten episodes of the show before his character died.
His performance when using it was so believable, that people started to believe he did not know English as his character in the show only speaks Dothraki.
Momoa says this made him lose some auditions and English-speaking roles. He didn’t realize this was the case though until Portlandia actor, Fred Armisen, met Momoa and told him he was surprised he could speak English.
So, you don’t need to learn Spanish to talk to Jason Momoa, just the fictional language Dothraki.