VALYRIAN
VALYRIAN
VALYRIAN
Iksan
I Iksan I am
You iks You are
He/She/it issa He/she is
We Iksi We are
You all
They Issi They are
I
You
He/She/it Nages He/she is sweating
We
You all
They Nagesi They sweat
I
You
He/She/it lris He/she is smiling
We
You all
They lrisi They are smiling
I
You
He/She/it
We
You all
They rijis They are praising
VOCABULARIO
Rytsas Hello
Arl Again
Jirna Welcome
Kirimvose Gracias
Se and
Daor No
Kostilus Please
LECCIN 3
You may recognize the word for "yes" from the previous lesson. In fact, it's identical to
the word for "is". In High Valyrian, what we translate as "yes" is more accurately
translated as "it is".
Negation is a bit more complex in High Valyrian than other languages, so you'll be
learning about it later.
Hello, Jon!
Rytsas, Inos!
Welcome!
Jirna!
LECCIN 1
Welcome to High Valyrian for English speakers! High Valyrian is the language of the
old Valyrian Freehold, a thriving civilization destroyed by a mysterious cataclysm
centuries before the action of Game of Thrones begins. It was a language of dragon
tamers and warriors, but is now a language of refinement and educationa memory of
a bygone era. It's the language of the Mad King Aerys, of Aegon the Conqueror, and of
Daenerys Targaryen, Mother of Dragons.
High Valyrian is an inflectional language, where the form of a noun changes to indicate
the role it plays in a sentence, or verbs inflect for their tense, aspect, and voice.
Generally, adjectives come before the nouns they modify, and verbs come at the end of
the sentence.
As you begin your study of Valyrian, you may want to know how the Roman letters
used to spell the language are pronounced. In Old Valyria, the language was written
with a glyphic writing system, but in our world, we use a variant of the Roman alphabet
for simplicity's sake. Here's a description of the system:
CONSONANTS
VOWELS
A is pronounced as in "father".
o IPA: [a]
E is pronounced as in "get", and is never silent.
o IPA: [] or [e] (no distinction)
I is pronounced as in "machine".
o IPA: [i]
O is pronounced as in "note".
o IPA: [] or [o] (no distinction)
U is pronounced as in "rude".
o IPA: [u]
Y is pronounced like the "i" in "machine", but with the lips fully rounded
as if one is pronouncing U.
o IPA: [y]
, , , , , are pronounced exactly as their macron-less counterparts
but are held for a longer duration.
o IPA: [a], []~[e], [i], []~[o], [u], [y]
Note: As a shortcut, you can type a double version of the vowel to stand in for a vowel
with a macron. Thus, if you type yy it will be understood as by Duolingo.
In this lesson you'll be learning the singular and plural pairs for some common words.
In High Valyrian there are a number of pluralization strategies, so pay close attention to
the ending of each word you learn.
High Valyrian is a language whose nouns inflect for gender, number, and case.
Adjectives will agree with all three of these elements. In this lesson, you'll only be
focusing on plural agreement; other types of agreement will come later.
ADJECTIVE PLACEMENT
Adjectives most commonly precede the nouns they modify, but they may follow the
nouns they modify either for stylistic reasons, or to prevent overcrowding. Thus, if you
have sz which means "good", then "good man" can be translated as sz vala or vala
sz.
SIMPLE COORDINATION
High Valyrian doesn't use a word like "and" when coordinating two nouns or two
adjectives. Instead, the last word in a pair trio of nouns, adjectives, or even verbs is
modified in some way to indicate that it is participating in a coordinative structure. One
common strategy is to lengthen the final vowel of the last word in a list and shift the
word's stress to the end. Watch out for word-final long vowels in sentences with
coordination!
PRO-DROP
You'll be learning some High Valyrian pronouns later. For now, if you see a verb, the
subject will either be listed first, or will be a pronoun not present. Take, for example,
the sentence Vala issa. Translated simply, it could mean "The man is", but that's not a
very useful sentence. A better translation would be "He is a man", where "he" is simply
not necessary.
We are women
br iksi.
He is sweating
Nages