Den of geek speak with David J. Peterson, the man behind Game of Thrones' many languages, about Season 8 and a new online Valyrian course. Try not to trust the standard Westerosi media's lies: there is a word for "thank you" in Dothraki. As indicated by David J. Peterson, the man who made Dothraki, High Valyrian, and an entire host of different dialects for HBO's Game of Thrones, saying "san athchomari" is the manner by which one may thank somebody in the tongue of the Horse Lords for their liberal endowment of three dragon eggs.

"[It was written] before the line about the language not having a word for 'thank you' was added to the pilot," David J. Peterson says. Peterson is a conlanger (maker of dialects) and the originator of the Language Creation Society. A while ago when HBO expected to make an anecdotal language for their obscure little swords and dragons appear, they contacted Peterson, and he has been Game of Thrones' go-to etymologist from that point onward. Peterson has created Dothraki, High Valyrian, and an entire host of different tongues for the show, even as some have gone unused, as Ashai'i, the baffling language of red minister and priestesses of the Far East.

"Each word likewise had a light and shadow structure," Peterson says. "It was somewhat fun, however I question I'd use it as a model on the off chance that I were to ever assemble a full Asshai'i language."

Presently ahead of time of Game of Thrones Season 8, Peterson is tweaking the High Valyrian course for language learning application Duolingo.

We talked with Peterson about the course (which flaunts in excess of 800,000 dynamic clients), his expectations for who takes the Iron Throne, and what is resembled to watch Daenerys Targaryen express "dracarys." The accompanying meeting was directed through email and is softly altered for lucidity and style.

DEN OF GEEK:
Where did you begin in creating High Valyrian and its derivatives? How important were phrases like "Valar Morghulis" and "Valar Dohaeris" as jumping off points?

DAVID J. PETERSON:
Those two phrases are actually all there in terms of source material for Valyrian, aside from a stray word or two. I used them to determine the grammatical structure of the verbs and the number system for the nouns, and then I created the entire language around them. So they were absolutely critical to my work. That’s where it all started!

I started creating High Valyrian and its descendant Astapori Valyrian between seasons 2 and 3 of Game of Thrones. I had several months to work on both of them before I was required to translate any dialogue for the scripts, but even so, I continued to work on the languages and build on them thereafter. I’m still working on them to this day, and will continue to do so until I can’t anymore.

How many words are in High Valyrian now approximately?

Just over 2,000.

Famously, there is no word for “thank you” in Dothraki. What phrase comes the closest?

Probably the old phrase that meant “thank you!” Dothraki originally had a phrase for “thank you”—san athchomari—before the line about the language not having a word for “thank you” was added to the pilot. Originally I thought it was a little unrealistic for Dothraki not to have a word for thank you, but a recent study showed that there are actually many languages that don’t have a word or phrase that corresponds to English “thank you.” Indeed, there are many different ways that human cultures express gratitude that go beyond saying something after someone does something nice.

How involved have you been in language and translation services for each season? Are you sent excerpts of scripts to translate? I read previously that you would translate text and send audio files over to Emilia Clarke. How has her High Valyrian progressed as seasons pass? Who is the best High Valyrian speaker on the cast?

The best Valyrian speaker (and best foreign language actor I have ever seen in general) is Jacob Anderson, the actor who plays Grey Worm. His accent and pronunciation are simply amazing--better than my own. He speaks Astapori Valyrian exclusively, though. For High Valyrian, Emilia Clarke is the best on the show, and she hit the ground running. For Dothraki, she took it a bit easy, because it was known (indeed, we planned it this way) that she was a non-native Dothraki speaker, and was never going to be quite perfect with it.

That took the pressure off a bit. She didn’t need to stress on pronunciation; she just needed to give it her best shot (well, except for the first few episodes, where she was supposed to sound like she was struggling). For High Valyrian, she knew she was supposed to be a native speaker, and that it was going to be a big deal when it was revealed, so she worked hard to get her High Valyrian accent just right. I’ve always been pleased with the results.



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