Meet High Valyrian
High Valyrian 1
Course 1 · Chapter 1 · What High Valyrian Is
High Valyrian is the old, formal language of the fallen empire of Valyria in Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon. You met it briefly in Constructed Languages 5 as another language made for a screen. In this course you learn how it works, taking the same route as Dothraki 1: sounds, nouns, cases, pronouns, verbs, adjectives and then whole sentences. High Valyrian is the more heavily inflected of the two, so it rewards slow, careful reading. This first chapter explains where it comes from, how much of it is official and what you can already recognise.
Where High Valyrian Comes From
HBO chose Peterson for Game of Thrones through a competition among language creators and gave him a largely free hand. The novels contain only a few High Valyrian words: valar morghulis, valar dohaeris and dracarys, plus a few more such as valonqar. Peterson built the language from those fragments. He also supplied Valyrian translations for lines of Martin's unfinished book The Winds of Winter.
Peterson later helped to create a Duolingo course in High Valyrian. According to the encyclopedia article on the Valyrian languages, construction began on 31 October 2016 in the Duolingo Language Incubator, the beta was released on 12 July 2017, and the course was updated in April 2019, with audio recorded by Peterson.
High Valyrian and its descendants
In the story, High Valyrian is the old prestige language, and the spoken dialects of the Nine Free Cities are what grew out of it. These are called Bastard Valyrian. Examples are the Astapori and Meereenese Valyrian of Slaver's Bay. Peterson compared the relationship to the one between Classical Latin and the Romance languages. Bastard Valyrian simplifies the grammar: Astapori, for example, lost the case system and cut the four genders to two.
How big is it?
The only dated count found for this course is early: at the start of June 2013 there were 667 High Valyrian words. The vocabulary has grown since then, particularly through the Duolingo course and Peterson's other work, but no later count is given in the sources used.
What Counts as Official
As with Dothraki 1, a form can have a different standing, and this course says which kind it is showing wherever it can:
- From the novels: valar morghulis, valar dohaeris, dracarys and valonqar.
- Heard on the shows: lines Peterson wrote for the scripts.
- Published by Peterson: the Duolingo course and his own writing.
- Community-built: forms invented by learners to fill the gaps.
A Quick Look at the Grammar
You do not need to learn any of this yet. It is here so you know what the next nine chapters are building:
| Feature | High Valyrian | Compare Dothraki 1 |
|---|---|---|
| Noun classes | four genders (lunar, solar, terrestrial, aquatic), unrelated to sex | two (animate, inanimate) |
| Number | four: singular, plural, paucal ("a few"), collective | singular and plural (animate only) |
| Cases | eight | five |
| Verbs | seven tenses, two voices, three moods | present, past, future, and an imperative |
| Word order | strongly verb-final on one account; flexible on another | subject, verb, object in the examples |
| Subject pronouns | usually left out unless stressed (pro-drop) | usually present |
Your First Phrases
| High Valyrian | Meaning | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Valar morghulis | "all men must die" | first in A Clash of Kings; the meaning is explained in A Storm of Swords |
| Valar dohaeris | "all men must serve" | the traditional reply in Braavos; the meaning is explained in A Feast for Crows |
| Dracarys | "dragonfire" | Daenerys's command to her dragons |
| Valonqar | "little brother" | from the prophecy told to Cersei |
The Language Invention wiki lists valar as the nominative collective of vala ("man"), so valar means "men" taken together, but it also says there are several ways of parsing these two phrases. Chapter 4 returns to the collective number.
Two glossed sentences
The grammar page gives these example sentences. You cannot read them yet, but notice the long marks (macrons) over some vowels, which are part of the spelling:
How This Course Is Organised
The ten chapters move from the bottom up: sounds and spelling (Chapter 2), gender and nouns (3), number and cases (4), pronouns (5), verbs (6 and 7), adjectives, numbers and colours (8), sentences and greetings (9), and reading real passages (10). Every example is glossed. Words and forms are marked as sourced or as built by rule, and the end of each chapter lists the forms to check against the dictionary.
Hands-On Exercises
Match each phrase to its meaning: (a) Valar morghulis; (b) Valar dohaeris; (c) Dracarys; (d) Valonqar. The meanings are: dragonfire, all men must serve, little brother, all men must die.
📄 View solutionSay who made High Valyrian and from what. Then explain what Bastard Valyrian is and what Peterson compared the relationship to.
📄 View solutionCompare High Valyrian and Dothraki on four points from the grammar table (noun classes, number, cases, verbs) and say which is the more heavily inflected.
📄 View solutionChapter 1 Quick Reference
- High Valyrian: built by David J. Peterson for Game of Thrones, from fragments in the novels; 667 words by June 2013; Duolingo course in beta from July 2017
- In the story: the old prestige language; the spoken Bastard Valyrian dialects descend from it (Peterson's comparison: Classical Latin and the Romance languages)
- Grammar overview: four genders, four numbers, eight cases, seven tenses, two voices, three moods
- Phrases: Valar morghulis (all men must die), Valar dohaeris (all men must serve), Dracarys (dragonfire), Valonqar (little brother)