Valyrian languages

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 and later House of the Dragon. In the novels, High Valyrian and its descendant languages are often mentioned but not developed beyond a few words. For the TV series, language creator David J. Peterson created the High Valyrian language, as well as the derivative languages Astapori and Meereenese Valyrian, based on fragments from the novels. Valyrian and Dothraki have been described as "the most convincing fictional tongues since Elvish". To create the Dothraki and Valyrian languages to be spoken in Game of Thrones, HBO selected the language creator 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 was not 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 Martin's choice of dracarys unfortunate because of its (presumably intended) similarity to the Latin word for dragon, draco. Because the Latin language does not exist in the fictional world of A Song of Ice and Fire, Peterson chose to treat the similarity as coincidental and made dracarys an independent lexeme; his High Valyrian term for dragon is zaldrīzes. The phrases valar morghulis and valar dohaeris, on the other hand, became the foundation of the language's conjugation system. Another word, trēsy, meaning "son", was coined in honour of Peterson's 3000th Twitter follower. At the start of June 2013, there were 667 High Valyrian words. Peterson expanded the languages for the House of the Dragon.