Valyrian languages

Valyrian
Created by	David J. Peterson, George R. R. Martin
Date	From 2012
Setting and usage	A Song of Ice and Fire novels (1996– ) Game of Thrones TV series (2011– )
Users	Fictional language, no speakers.
Purpose	Constructed languages Artistic languages Fictional languages Valyrian
Sources	A priori language
Language codes
ISO 639-3	None (mis)

The Valyrian languages are a fictional language family in the A Song of Ice and Fire series of fantasy novels by George R. R. Martin, and in their television adaptation Game of Thrones.

In the novels, High Valyrian and its descendant languages are often mentioned, but not developed beyond a few words. For the TV series, linguist David J. Peterson created the High Valyrian language, based on the fragments given in the novels, as well as the derivative language Astapori Valyrian.

High Valyrian

Nyke Daenerys Jelmāzmo hen Targārio Lentrot, hen Valyrio Uēpo ānogār iksan. Valyrio muño ēngos ñuhys issa.

“I am Daenerys Stormborn of the House Targaryen, of the blood of Old Valyria. Valyrian is my mother tongue.”

— Game of Thrones, season 3, episode 4

In the world of A Song of Ice and Fire, High Valyrian occupies a cultural niche similar to that of Latin in medieval Europe. The novels describe it as no longer being used as a language of everyday communication, but rather as a language of learning and education among the nobility of Essos and Westeros, with much literature and song composed in Valyrian.

Creation

To create the Dothraki and Valyrian languages to be spoken in Game of Thrones, HBO selected the linguist David J. Peterson through a competition among conlangers. The producers gave Peterson a largely free hand in developing the languages, as according to Peterson, George R. R. Martin himself wasn't very interested in the linguistic aspect of his works. The already published novels include only a few words of High Valyrian, including valar morghulis ("all men must die"), valar dohaeris ("all men must serve") and dracarys ("dragonfire"). For the forthcoming novel The Winds of Winter, Peterson has supplied Martin with additional Valyrian translations.

Peterson commented that he considered unfortunate Martin's choice of dracarys because of its (presumably intended) similarity to the Latin word for dragon, draco. Because the Latin language does not exist in the world of A Song of Ice and Fire, Peterson chose to treat the similarity as coincidental and made dracarys its own root; his High Valyrian term for dragon is zaldrīzes. The phrases valar morghulis and valar dohaeris, on the other hand, became the basis of the language's conjugation system. Another word, trēsy, meaning "son", was coined in honour of Peterson's 3000th Twitter follower.

Peterson did not yet create a High Valyrian writing system, but he commented that he "was thinking something more like Egyptian's system of hieroglyphs—not in style, necessarily, but in their functionality. Egyptian had an alphabet, of sorts, a couple of phonetically-based systems, and a logography all layered on top of one another." In the third season's episode "The Bear and the Maiden Fair", Talisa is seen writing a Valyrian letter in the Latin alphabet, because according to Peterson, "it didn't seem worthwhile to create an entire writing system for what ultimately is kind of a throwaway shot".

There are currently 667 High Valyrian words, with more being added almost daily.

Phonology

Consonants

	Labial	Coronal	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Stops	p [‌p], b [‌b]	t [‌t], d [‌d]	j [‌dʒ, j, ʒ],a lj [‌ʎ]	k [‌k], g [‌ɡ]	q [‌q]
Fricatives	v [‌v, w]a	s [‌s], z [‌z] (th [‌θ])b		gh [‌ɣ, ʁ̝]c (kh [‌x, ɣ, h])b		h [‌h]
Approximants		r [‌r], rh [‌ɹ], l [‌l]
Nasals	m [‌m]	n [‌n, ŋ, ɴ]d	ñ [‌ɲ]	n [‌n, ŋ, ɴ]d

Notes:

1. ⟨v⟩ and ⟨j⟩ vary between approximants and fricatives depending on the speaker and the environment.
2. ⟨th⟩ and ⟨kh⟩ are not native to High Valyrian but are present in some loanwords, such as the Dothraki arakh.
3. ⟨gh⟩ may be strongly velar for some speakers, or strongly uvular for others; the distinction is not phonemic.
4. ⟨n⟩ will naturally assimilate in place to a following velar or uvular consonant, but there is no separate velar or uvular nasal.

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close / High	ī, i [‌iː, i] ȳ, y [‌yː, y]		ū, u [‌uː, u]
Mid	ē, e [‌eː, e]		ō, o [‌oː, o]
Open / Low		ā, a [‌aː, a]

Vowels with a macron over them (ī, ȳ, ū, ē, ō and ā) are long, held for twice as long as short vowels. Some words are distinguished simply by their vowel length in High Valyrian. The rounded vowels ⟨ȳ⟩ and ⟨y⟩ may not be pronounced in modern High Valyrian, as a non-native or prestige language and did not survive into the descendant languages. As a result, while Daenerys Targaryen's first name may generally be pronounced [dǝ.ˈnɜ.rɪs] by characters in Game of Thrones, in High Valyrian is would have been closer to [ˈdae.ne.ɾys], with a diphthong in the first syllable and a rounded vowel in the last. The long vowels have also been lost in some derived languages; in season 3 of Game of Thrones, we hear Astapori Valyrian, from which all long vowels have been lost.

Syllable stress is penultimate unless the penultimate syllable is light and the antepenultimate syllable is heavy, in which case stress is on the antepenultimate. As a highly declined language, word order is flexible (a feature lost in derived languages), but sentences with relative clauses are head-final.

Grammar

Nouns

There are four grammatical numbers in High Valyrian — singular, plural, paucal and collective. For example, vala "man" (sing.); vali "men" (pl.); valun "some men" (pau.); valar "all men" (coll.). The collective can itself be modified by number as a new noun declension, for example azantys "knight, soldier" (sing.) > azantyr "army" (coll.); azantyr "army" (sing.) > azantyri "armies" (pl.).

Nouns have eight cases — nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, locative, instrumental, comitative and vocative, though the instrumental and comitative are not distinguished in all declensions, nor are the genitive, dative and locative always distinguished in the plural.

There are four grammatical genders, which do not align with biological sex. The Valyrian names for the genders are:

hūrenkor qogror — "lunar class"

vēzenkor qogror — "solar class"

tegōñor qogror — "terrestrial class"

embōñor qogror — "aquatic class"

Animate and individuatable nouns are generally in the lunar or solar classes, while other nouns are generally classified as terrestrial or aquatic. The names of the classes derive from the nouns themselves, which are prototypical members of each gender. Peterson describes Valyrian gender as being inherent but more predictable from phonology than gender in French, with some of the derivational properties of the noun classes of Bantu languages. As a result of the phonological predictability, many words for humans (which tend to end -a or -ys) are lunar or solar; many foods and plants (often ending -on) are terrestrial.

According to Peterson, "what defines declension classes in High Valyrian" can be divined by paying "close attention to the singular and plural numbers" and noting "where cases are conflated and where they aren't". In the following tables, adjacent case conflations are merged into the same table cell; other cases that share a form with another are underlined.

	First declension (Lunar: vala, "man")					Second declension (Solar: loktys, "sailor")
	Singular	Plural	Paucal	Collective		Singular	Plural	Paucal	Collective
Nominative	vala	vali	valun	valar		loktys	loktyssy	loktyn	loktyr	Nom.
Accusative	vale	valī	valuni	valari		lokti	loktī	loktyni	loktyri	Acc.
Genitive	valo	valoti	valuno	valaro		lokto	loktoti	loktyno	loktyro	Gen.
Dative	valot		valunta	valarta		loktot		loktynty	loktyrty	Dat.
Locative	valā		valunna	valarra		loktȳ	loktī	loktynny	loktyrry	Loc.
Instrumental	valosa	valossi	valussa	valarza		loktomy	loktommi	loktyssy	loktyrzy	Instr.
Comitative	valoma	valommi	valumma	valarma				loktymmy	loktyrmy	Com.
Vocative	valus	valis	valussa	valarza		loktys	loktyssys	loktyssy	loktyrzy	Voc.
	Singular	Plural	Paucal	Collective		Singular	Plural	Paucal	Collective
	First declension					Second declension

Verb conjugations

Whilst nouns have four grammatical numbers, verb declensions have only been described in the singular and the plural. There are two paradigms of verbs, those with a stem ending with a consonant and those with a stem ending with a vowel; the tables below show examples of the present tense, active voice. It is possible to tell which paradigm is in use from the first person plural indicative — consonant stems will always end in -i, whereas vowels stems will end in -ī. Verbs with stems ending in a vowel follow a pattern where that stem-terminal vowel might change — -a and -i do not change, -e becomes -i, but -o and -u both become -v. Verb stems may never end in a long vowel or a diphthong.

Consonantal verbs
(manaeragon, "to raise" or "to lift")

	Indicative mood		Subjunctive mood
	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
First person	manaeran	manaeri	manaeron	manaeroty
Second person	manaerā	manaerāt	manaerō	manaerōt
Third person	manaerza	manaerzi	manaeros	manaerosy
Imperative	manaerās	manaerātās
Infinitive	manaeragon
Participle	manaerare, manaerarior

Vowel verbs
(limagon, "to cry", and sōvegon, "to fly")

	Indicative mood		Subjunctive mood			Indicative mood		Subjunctive mood
	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural		Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
First person	liman	limī	limaon	limaoty		sōven	sōvī	sōvion	sōvioty	1st
Second person	limā	limāt	limaō	limaōt		sōvē	sōvēt	sōviō	sōviōt	2nd
Third person	limas	limasi	limaos	limaosy		sōves	sōvesi	sōvios	sōviosy	3rd
Imperative	limās	limātās				sōvēs	sōvētēs			Imp.
Infinitive	limagon					sōvegon				Inf.
Participle	limare, limarior					sōvere, sōverior				Part.

Derivative languages

In the world of the novel and TV series, the Nine Free Cities of Essos speak variants of High Valyrian, described by the character Tyrion in A Dance with Dragons as "not so much a dialect as nine dialects on the way to becoming separate tongues". The cities of Slaver's Bay speak related languages, created from a creolised version of High Valyrian with the substrate of the local Ghiscari languages.

Peterson described the relationship between High Valyrian and the Free Cities languages as being similar to that between classical Latin and the Romance languages, or more accurately between Classical Arabic and the modern varieties of Arabic, in that High Valyrian is intelligible, with some difficulty, to a speaker of a local Essoan language.

Astapori Valyrian

Si kizy vasko v’uvar ez zya gundja yn hilas.

“And this because I like the curve of her ass.”

— Astapori Valyrian, Game of Thrones, season 3, episode 3

The first derivative Valyrian language to be featured in the series was Astapori Valyrian, a variety from the city of Astapor in Slaver's Bay. It appeared in the third season premiere episode "Valar Dohaeris". Peterson created the Astapori dialogue by first writing the text in High Valyrian, then applying a series of regular grammar and sound changes to simulate the changes in natural languages over a long period of time.

For example, Astapori Valyrian has lost all long vowels (designated with a macron) and most diphthongs, such that an "Unsullied" is rendered as Dovaogēdy [do.vao.ˈɡeː.dy] in High Valyrian, but as Dovoghedhy [do.vo.ˈɣe.ði] in Astapori. Similarly, Astapori Valyrian has lost the case system of High Valyrian, so the word order is more reliably subject–verb–object (SVO) and the four genders of High Valyrian have been reduced to two, with two definite articles: ji and vi. Word stress is less predictable than in High Valyrian, but commands are stressed word-finally (for example: ivetrá).