Duolingo, a free language learning site, now teaches High Valyrian, which is sometimes spoken on the series, but considered by characters as a dead language, akin to Latin in our real world.
The site offers interactive games that teach High Valyrian by letting
users earn points and unlock levels by correctly typing the right
translations after getting hints.
While the brand’s app currently
doesn’t offer High Valyrian, the website does.
The course starts you off with simple words like “mom” (muna), “boy”
(taoba) and “happy” (kirine) before advancing to more complicated
phrases.
High Valyrian was designed by David J. Peterson — a linguist and
language creator who designs artificial languages for TV and movies —
who expanded on the words that novelist George R. R. Martin used in the
books that inspired the series. Peterson worked with Duolingo to get the
language nuances just right.
The most popular phrase in the language, used often in the show’s
promotional material, is “valar morghulis,” which translates to, “All
men must die.” Other words familiar to fans of the series include,
“valar dohaeris” (“All men must serve”) and “dracarys,” which means
“dragonfire” and is the command Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) uses to make
her dragons kill.
Peterson also created the Dothraki language spoken by Daenerys and the
people led by her late husband Khal Drogo (Jason Momoa), plus languages
for two Syfy series (“Defiance” and “Dominion”), “Thor: The Dark World,”
and an advanced form of English for the CW’s “The 100.”
High Valyrian is the first fictional language users can learn on
Duolingo, but the service plans to launch Klingon next month for “Star
Trek” fans. Other languages include classic — and real-life — choices
like Spanish, French, German, and more rare fare like Esperanto and
Welsh. Swahili, Japanese, and Korean are in varying stages of beta
development.
Duolingo isn’t the only place you can learn a “Game of Thrones”
language — there are unofficial dictionaries and guides to Valyrian and
HBO released a language course for Dothraki in 2014.
“Game of Thrones” returns for its seventh season this Sunday, so you’ll have just enough time to learn a few new phrases.
Duolingo
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