Reading

High Valyrian 1

Course 1 · Chapter 10 · Reading High Valyrian

This last chapter has no new grammar. It gathers real sentences from the series and the wiki, shows what you can now read in them, collects the course vocabulary in a glossary and sends you on. Every sentence below appeared earlier in the course, with the glosses the sources gave.

The idea in a box

You can now read the shape of a High Valyrian sentence: nouns with case endings, pronouns and adjectives that agree, a verb at the end with a person and tense ending, and daor for "not".

Reading the Sentences

Famous phrases

Valar morghūlis.   "All men must die."
Valar dohaeris.   "All men must serve."

valar is the collective of vala "man" (Chapter 3): "all men".
dohaeris is the aorist third person of dohaeragon "to serve" (Chapter 7).

Sentences from the wiki

Dohaeriros māzigon!                    "May a slave come!"
Ābre ūndas lua vala raqiros issa.   "The man who saw the woman is a friend."
Zaldrīzes buzdari iksos daor.       "A dragon is not a slave."
Āeksio ondos                        "Hand of gold"
Kesȳ tubī jemot dāervī tepan.       "On this day I give you freedom."
Dovaogēdys! Naejot memēbātās!       "Unsullied! Forward march!"

Vocative. Dohaeriros and Dovaogēdys are vocative nouns (Chapter 4); with an infinitive the vocative makes a command.
Genitive. Āeksio "of gold" comes before the noun it describes, as Chapter 4 explained.
Locative of time. Kesȳ tubī "on this day" has the locative ending and the demonstrative kesa from Chapter 5. Jemot is the dative of the third-person plural pronoun in the Chapter 5 table ("to them"); the wiki's free translation says "you", since the speaker addresses the group. Tepan is the present first person (Chapter 6).
"Not". daor follows the verb iksos, which is the subjunctive of "to be".

Sentences from the grammar notes

Vala havon nektos.                "The man cuts the bread."
Ēlī vala taobe ūndas.              "First the man saw the boy."
Taoba valo ondoso ūndaks.          "The boy was seen by the man."
Taoba aderī havon iprattas.        "The boy ate the bread quickly."

Subject, object, verb. In each the verb is last (Chapter 9).
Case endings. vala becomes vale as an object and valo in the genitive; taoba becomes taobe as an object (Chapter 4).
Passive. ūndaks ends in -ks, the passive marker. The agent is valo ondoso: valo is the genitive "of the man" and ondoso the instrumental of ondos "hand", so the phrase reads literally "by the man's hand".

Course Glossary

High Valyrian	Meaning	Chapter
vala	man	3
muña	mother	3
embar	water	3
loktys	sailor	3
zaldrīzes	dragon	3, 8
taoba	boy	8
havon	bread	9
nyke, ao, ziry	I, you, he/she/it	5
ñuha, aōha, zȳha	my, your, his/her/its	5
bisa / kesa	this (animate / inanimate)	5
skoros, skoriot, skorkydoso	what, where, how	5, 9
dohaeragon	to serve	6
sagon (iksan, issa)	to be	6
tepagon (tepan)	to give	4, 6
daor	not	7, 9
sȳz	good	8
mēre, lanta, hāre … ampa	one, two, three … ten	8
timpa, zōbrie, qeldlie, mele, kasta	the five colour words	8
aderī	quickly (also "soon")	8
Rytsas	hello	9
Kirimvose	thank you	9

What You Have Learned

Chapter 1. Where High Valyrian comes from and the outline of its grammar.
Chapter 2. Six vowels, long vowels, the consonants and the stress rule.
Chapter 3. Four genders, four numbers and six declensions.
Chapter 4. The eight cases and the paradigm of vala.
Chapter 5. Pronouns, possessives, demonstratives and question words.
Chapter 6. The infinitive and the present tense.
Chapter 7. The seven tenses, the subjunctive, the imperative and daor.
Chapter 8. Adjectives, numbers, colours and adverbs.
Chapter 9. Word order, questions and greetings.

Watch out: what this course left out

The sources are partly draft or fan-made. The course taught one verb class, not the vowel-stem verbs, no full adjective tables, no rule for yes/no questions and almost nothing about the passive and the other moods. When a form matters, check it against the dictionary and Peterson's own materials.

Where to Go Next

The Duolingo course. Launched in beta in 2017; its Tips and Notes are the main teaching text.
Peterson's reference sheet and the Language Invention wiki for the complete verb tables, the case endings and the dictionary.
Other invented languages in this series, such as Dothraki 1 and the other constructed-language courses, to compare how each handles cases and verbs.

Hands-On Exercises

Exercise 1

Without looking back, say what each means: Valar dohaeris, Rytsas, Zaldrīzes buzdari iksos daor.

📄 View solution

Exercise 2

Take Taoba valo ondoso ūndaks and name the case of each noun, the verb, and the ending that makes the sentence passive.

📄 View solution

Exercise 3

Use Ēlī vala taobe ūndas as a model to write "The boy saw the man". Then say which words changed form and why.

📄 View solution

Course Complete

You can: read the shape of a sentence, decline vala in eight cases, conjugate dohaeragon in seven tenses, count to ninety-nine and greet someone.
Remember: the verb goes last, adjectives agree, daor follows the verb.
Next: the Duolingo course and Peterson's reference materials.