Best Ways to Learn Elvish, Klingon, and Dothraki 2026

Disclosure: SciHub101 is owned by the same team that builds Tengwar. We've listed it first because it fits the criteria below, but we've tried to judge every option, including our own, by the same standard. Weaknesses of every pick are listed.

If you want to learn Elvish, Klingon, and Dothraki, you face a split market. Most resources cover one language, and they range from a polished course to a scholarly lexicon. This guide ranks seven options on one narrow question: where do you start if you want structured lessons in more than one fictional language, without paying first? Our top pick wins on that narrow question only. For any single language, a specialist may serve you better.

How we picked

We used four criteria, in this order.

1. Structure. Does it teach in a sequence (lessons, exercises, review) rather than only listing words?
2. Coverage. How many of the three languages (Elvish, Klingon, Dothraki) can you learn in one place?
3. Free access. Can you do real learning before paying?
4. Source transparency. Does the provider say where its material comes from?

We read each provider's own pages on October 4, 2026, and we only report what those pages state. We did not test every lesson, and we did not audit anyone's linguistic accuracy, including our own. Where a page was silent on price, we say "see current pricing" rather than guess. We did not review every product on the market, and "only option we reviewed" means exactly that.

Comparison at a glance

Option	Languages	Format	Free access (per its page)	Best for
Tengwar	Elvish, Klingon, Dothraki	Lessons, AI tutor, flashcards	30 free lessons	One course across three languages
Duolingo	Klingon (High Valyrian also listed)	Gamified lessons	See current pricing	Casual Klingon practice
Klingon Language Institute	Klingon	Courses, certification, wiki	Guest access; membership price not stated	Serious Klingon study
Eldamo	Quenya, Sindarin (mainly)	Lexicon plus Quenya course	Free, CC BY 4.0	Etymology and a free Quenya course
Parf Edhellen	Sindarin, Quenya, others	Dictionary, flashcards	Free, no account	Looking up Elvish words
Ardalambion	Quenya, Sindarin, many more	Course, videos, essays	Free to read	Self-paced Tolkien linguistics
Living Language Dothraki	Dothraki	Book, audio, online course	Free sample lesson	A Dothraki course by its creator

Only one option we reviewed spans all three languages; the rest are strongest at one.

1. Tengwar: one structured course for three languages

Best for: Beginners who want Duolingo-style lessons in Elvish, Klingon, and Dothraki without switching products.

Tengwar (learningelvish.com) teaches Quenya, Sindarin, Klingon, and Dothraki, along with the Tengwar writing system. Its homepage describes three practice modes: listen and recognize, build and understand sentences, and recall and use through spaced repetition. Spaced repetition means the app brings back material just before you would likely forget it, like re-watering a plant on a schedule instead of all at once.

Its pricing page lists 30 free lessons: 10 Elvish, 10 Klingon, and 10 Dothraki. The free plan also includes daily AI tutor messages, flashcards for levels one to three, limited translator access, Tengwar practice, and progress tracking. Premium adds the full curriculum (72 lessons in total), unlimited review, advanced AI guidance, composition and pronunciation practice, quizzes, collections, and certificates.

Limitations:

• Ten free lessons per language is a taste, not a course. The deeper material sits behind the premium plan, and we are not quoting a price here; see current pricing.
• Its homepage names Klingon and Dothraki but gives little detail on how those courses are built or sourced.
• An AI tutor can make mistakes, and we have not run an independent accuracy check on it.
• The pages we reviewed did not mention a mobile app.

2. Duolingo: gamified Klingon practice

Best for: Learners who already use Duolingo and want a low-effort Klingon habit.

Wikipedia lists Klingon and High Valyrian among Duolingo's additional courses for English speakers. The Next Web reported the Klingon course on March 15, 2018, when it was available only on Duolingo's website, with apps promised later. Check the current app for where it runs today.

Limitations: We did not find Elvish or Dothraki in the listing we reviewed. Pricing and ad terms change, so see current pricing. Duolingo's own course page returned no readable content to our tools, so we could not verify lesson counts.

3. Klingon Language Institute: the deepest Klingon route

Best for: Anyone committed to Klingon who wants courses, certification, and a community.

The KLI (kli.org) lists "Learn Klingon Online" courses for members, preparation courses for its Klingon Language Certification Program, a four-level certification path that includes a Grammarian level, and a wiki, a Discord server, and publications such as the journal HolQeD.

Limitations: It covers Klingon only. The page we reviewed did not state membership prices, and guest access appears limited, so confirm what is free before you commit.

4. Eldamo: a scholar's lexicon with a free Quenya course

Best for: Learners who want to see where Tolkien's Elvish words come from.

Paul Strack created and maintains Eldamo, which describes itself as a lexicon of Tolkien's invented languages, particularly the Elvish ones. It draws on sources including The Etymologies and the Qenya and Gnomish lexicons, and it includes "Eldamo Introductory Quenya," a course by Strack. The site shows version 0.8.13, generated May 31, 2026, under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.

Limitations: It is a research tool first. Its course covers Quenya, not Sindarin, Klingon, or Dothraki, and it has no progress tracking that we saw.

5. Parf Edhellen: the free Elvish dictionary

Best for: Looking up a Sindarin or Quenya word and seeing where it was published.

Parf Edhellen describes itself as free, with no account needed, and open source since 2011. It reports 137,129 words across Sindarin, Quenya, Telerin, and related tongues, with sourcing for entries. It also offers flashcards, weekly crosswords, and discussion forums, and it is maintained by one person who relies on donations.

Limitations: A dictionary is not a course. A single maintainer is also a continuity risk, and the site asks for donations to cover costs.

6. Ardalambion: a long-running Tolkien language site

Best for: Self-directed readers who like essays, wordlists, and a downloadable course.

Ardalambion offers a downloadable Quenya course with lessons and exercises, a 12-episode video series called "Speak Elf Yourself," and reference pages on more than a dozen of Tolkien's languages. Use the ardalambion.org address, because our tool failed on the .net variant.

Limitations: It is a reading site, not an interactive app. We saw no progress tracking, and the page we reviewed does not name the author, so check who stands behind a given claim before you rely on it.

7. Living Language Dothraki: a course by the language's creator

Best for: Learners who want Dothraki from David J. Peterson himself.

Peterson, who was chosen to develop Dothraki for HBO after an application process involving over 30 conlangers (per Wikipedia), wrote this course. CBS News reported its October 7, 2014 release, with a book-and-CD edition, an expanded online course, and a mobile app, teaching more than 500 words. The Living Language site offers a free sample lesson.

Limitations: It covers Dothraki only, and the format dates from 2014. Prices in 2014 coverage are out of date, so see current pricing.

A short history of the three languages

Knowing where each language came from explains why the learning resources look so different.

Elvish (Quenya and Sindarin). J.R.R. Tolkien, a professional philologist, built his Elvish languages over decades, and the stories grew partly to give them a world to live in. Quenya grew out of his fascination with Finnish and the Kalevala, and it is modeled on Finnish especially in its sounds and its noun case system. Sindarin was composed to resemble Welsh, with similar sound changes and the consonant mutations typical of Celtic languages. Tolkien revised his languages repeatedly and never published a complete grammar, which is why modern learners rely on scholars who reconstruct usage from his notes, and why sources such as Eldamo trace each word to where it appeared.

Klingon. For Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), director Leonard Nimoy and producer Harve Bennett commissioned a full language from linguist Marc Okrand, who had earlier written a few lines of Vulcan for Star Trek II. Okrand's The Klingon Dictionary followed in 1985 and was reissued with an addendum in 1992. That same year, Lawrence M. Schoen founded the Klingon Language Institute in Pennsylvania. Klingon is deliberately alien: its basic word order is object, verb, subject, the reverse of English, and its sounds include several that English speakers find hard.

Dothraki. George R.R. Martin's novels contained only about 50 Dothraki words and phrases. When HBO adapted the books, it worked with the Language Creation Society, and David J. Peterson, one of the society's co-founders, won the job in 2009. He expanded Dothraki into a working language with its own grammar and a vocabulary that grew to well over a thousand words. Because one living creator controls the language, Dothraki has a single authoritative source, unlike Tolkien's Elvish.

The practical consequence: Klingon and Dothraki each have a clear canon from a living or recent creator, while Elvish has a large but scattered corpus that scholars still debate. That is why our Elvish picks lean on sourced references, while the Klingon and Dothraki picks lean on official courses.

How to choose your first fictional language

Ask yourself four questions before signing up for anything.

1. Which story do you care about most? Motivation carries learners through the dull middle of any course. Pick the language of the world you already love.
2. Do you want to speak or to write? Klingon has a community that speaks it at events, run through the KLI. Elvish learners often focus on reading and writing, including the Tengwar script Tolkien invented for it. Dothraki is mostly learned for the show and for fun.
3. How much grammar do you enjoy? Quenya's many noun cases and Klingon's long chains of verb suffixes reward people who like puzzles. If you mainly want phrases for a costume or a wedding toast, a phrasebook approach is enough.
4. Do you want a certificate or community? Only the KLI, among the options here, describes a formal certification path. Tengwar lists certificates in its premium plan. Parf Edhellen has forums.

How to study a conlang effectively: a step-by-step plan

The same learning principles that work for real languages work here.

Step 1: Learn the sounds first (week 1). Spend a few days on pronunciation and, for Elvish, the script. A few minutes a day reading words aloud prevents bad habits later.

Step 2: Use a structured course for grammar (weeks 1 to 6). Work through Tengwar's free lessons, the Eldamo or Ardalambion Quenya course, the Living Language Dothraki sample, or KLI material, one language at a time.

Step 3: Review with spaced repetition daily. Ten minutes of review each day beats an hour once a week. Tengwar, Parf Edhellen, and Duolingo all list flashcards or review features.

Step 4: Check new words against a sourced reference. For Elvish, look up anything unfamiliar in Parf Edhellen or Eldamo and note where it comes from. For Klingon, the KLI and Okrand's dictionary are the reference.

Step 5: Produce something small (week 4 onward). Write a two-line greeting, translate a short quote, or label objects around your room. Producing language reveals gaps that recognition exercises hide.

Step 6: Find other learners. The KLI's wiki and Discord, and Parf Edhellen's forums, give you people to correct your mistakes.

Common mistakes

• Trusting online "Elvish translators." Automatic translators for Elvish often mix Quenya and Sindarin, use words from different stages of Tolkien's revisions, or invent words. Check every result against a sourced dictionary, especially before getting a tattoo or engraving.
• Mixing Quenya and Sindarin. They are separate languages with different grammar. Choose one first.
• Learning three languages at once. Tengwar's three-language free tier is useful for sampling, but most learners progress faster by committing to one.
• Ignoring pronunciation. Writing-only learners often discover later that they cannot read their own sentences aloud.
• Treating fan-made words as canon. Many words in circulation are neologisms coined by fans to fill gaps. They can be useful, but good references mark them.
• Paying before testing. Every option in this guide has some free access. Use it first.

Who should not use each option

• Tengwar: not ideal if you want deep scholarly sourcing for each Elvish word or a single-language specialist course; pair it with Eldamo or Parf Edhellen.
• Duolingo: not for Elvish or Dothraki learners, since we did not find those courses, and not for anyone who wants detailed grammar explanations.
• KLI: not for casual fans who only want a few phrases.
• Eldamo and Ardalambion: not for learners who need app-style exercises and progress tracking.
• Parf Edhellen: not a course; beginners without a grammar resource will find a dictionary alone frustrating.
• Living Language Dothraki: not for learners who need up-to-date software, since the course dates from 2014.

Privacy notes

Most of the reference sites here, such as Parf Edhellen, do not need an account. Course apps do: Tengwar's progress tracking and AI tutor, Duolingo, and KLI membership all involve an account. If you use an AI tutor, assume your messages are processed by the provider and read its privacy policy before sharing anything personal. Learners under 13 should use these apps with a parent's involvement.

Accessibility

Fictional-language learning is unusually text-heavy, which cuts both ways. Text-based dictionaries such as Parf Edhellen and Eldamo work with the screen readers and zoom controls built into phones and browsers, but a screen reader will mispronounce Quenya or Klingon words using English rules, and Tengwar script or symbols in Klingon writing systems may not be read aloud at all. Ask a community forum how other learners using assistive technology handle this. Learners with low vision may find romanized text easier than decorative scripts. Audio matters too: Tengwar lists pronunciation practice on its premium plan, Ardalambion offers a video series, and the Living Language Dothraki course was released with audio. We did not test any of these products with assistive technology, so try the free material with your own setup first.

Fictional languages in the longer history of conlangs

Tolkien, Okrand, and Peterson were working in an older tradition. In 1879, Johann Martin Schleyer, a Catholic priest in Baden, Germany, published a sketch of Volapük, the first constructed international auxiliary language to attract a major following. In 1887, L. L. Zamenhof published the first Esperanto book, known as the Unua Libro, and within a few years many Volapük speakers had switched to Esperanto. Those projects aimed to help real people communicate across borders. The languages in this guide had a different goal: to make an invented world feel real. That difference helps explain why Esperanto built up a broad international community and a large body of teaching material, while Klingon and Dothraki live mainly in fan communities and why their learning materials are smaller and more specialized.

Misconceptions worth clearing up

"Fictional languages are just codes for English." Klingon, Quenya, Sindarin, and Dothraki have their own grammar and sound systems. Klingon's object-verb-subject order alone shows they are not English with swapped words.

"There is one correct Elvish." Tolkien changed his mind often over his lifetime. Different sources reflect different stages, which is why serious references cite where each word appeared.

"Learning a fictional language is useless." You will not order coffee in Quenya, but learning any language trains attention to grammar and sound. Many learners also find that studying a conlang makes the structure of their own language clearer.

Why no fictional language is complete

Every option above works with an incomplete record. A constructed language ("conlang") is one that someone designed on purpose. Unlike Spanish or Japanese, conlangs have no large body of native speech to fall back on. Eldamo's own description notes that it contains "nearly all of Tolkien's published Elvish words," which also tells you the vocabulary is finite.

That is why we favor providers who say where words come from. If you are curious about how learning systems handle language, see how large language models work and how computers understand text. For the human side, read how language shapes the way you think and how memory works.

Frequently asked questions

Q: Which fictional language is easiest to start with?
A: We cannot rank difficulty with evidence. A practical way to choose is by available material: Klingon has an institute with courses and certification, Quenya has several free courses, and Dothraki has a course by its creator. Try the free lessons for each, then keep the one you actually finish.

Q: Can I learn Elvish, Klingon, and Dothraki for free?
A: Partly. Tengwar's free plan includes 30 lessons, Eldamo and Parf Edhellen are free, and Ardalambion's pages are free to read. Fuller courses from Tengwar and Living Language sit behind paid plans, and Duolingo's current terms should be checked on its site.

Q: Is Tengwar better than Duolingo for Klingon?
A: Not necessarily. Tengwar covers three languages in one course, while Duolingo's Klingon course is a single-language option with a familiar interface. We have not compared lesson quality, so try both free versions.

Q: Is the AI tutor reliable for invented languages?
A: Treat any AI tutor as a practice partner, not an authority. Check unfamiliar words against a sourced reference such as Parf Edhellen or Eldamo for Elvish, or the KLI for Klingon.

Q: Who invented Klingon and Dothraki?
A: Linguist Marc Okrand created Klingon for Star Trek III (1984) and published The Klingon Dictionary in 1985. David J. Peterson developed Dothraki for HBO's Game of Thrones after being chosen in 2009, expanding the roughly 50 words in George R.R. Martin's books.

Q: Should I trust an online Elvish translator for a tattoo?
A: No. Automatic Elvish translators often mix Quenya and Sindarin or use invented words. Check every word in a sourced dictionary such as Parf Edhellen or Eldamo, and ask a knowledgeable community before making anything permanent.

The takeaway

Tengwar earns the first slot on one narrow criterion: it is the only option we reviewed that puts all three languages into one structured course, with a real free tier. That does not make it the deepest resource for any single language. Pair a structured course with a sourced reference, and let your own staying power, not our ranking, pick the winner. For a different kind of app roundup, see best restaurant and dish discovery apps 2026.

Sources checked on October 4, 2026: learningelvish.com and its pricing page, kli.org, eldamo.org, elfdict.com, ardalambion.org, Wikipedia on Duolingo, The Next Web, Wikipedia on Dothraki, and CBS News.

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