The Grammar Behind High Valyrian
"Valar morghulis" was written by George R.R. Martin long before anyone built a grammar for it. When David J. Peterson expanded High Valyrian for HBO, he had to make that phrase grammatically correct — and build an entire classical language around it.
The result is one of the most elaborate grammars ever created for television. Here's how it works, in plain English.
The Counterintuitive Truth: Valyrian "Gender" Has Nothing to Do With Male or Female
When English speakers hear "grammatical gender", they think of French le and la, or German der, die, das. Those categories are loosely tied to male and female.
High Valyrian has four genders: lunar, solar, terrestrial, and aquatic. They're noun classes — groups of nouns that change in the same way. Real languages like Swahili have many such classes. We call this cosmic classification: a grammar that sorts the world by elements rather than sex. It instantly makes Valyrian feel like the language of an ancient, mystical empire.
1. The Four Genders
Every noun belongs to one gender, which affects its endings and the adjectives that describe it.
The names are labels, not strict meanings — just as grammatical "feminine" nouns in French aren't all female. A noun being "aquatic" doesn't mean it has anything to do with water. What matters to a learner is that each gender has its own pattern of endings, and adjectives must match it.
2. Noun Cases
High Valyrian nouns change their endings to show their role in a sentence. This is called case. High Valyrian has eight cases:
- Nominative — the subject
- Accusative — the direct object
- Genitive — possession ("of")
- Dative — the indirect object ("to/for")
- Locative — location ("in/at")
- Instrumental — the means ("with/by")
- Comitative — accompaniment ("together with")
- Vocative — direct address
For comparison, Latin has six or seven, German has four, and modern English has almost none (except pronouns like he/him/his).
Because endings mark roles, High Valyrian word order is flexible.
3. Number
High Valyrian has more than just singular and plural. It includes:
- Singular — one
- Plural — more than one
- Paucal — a few
- Collective — a group as a whole
So "dragons" can be marked differently depending on whether you mean a few dragons or dragons as a collective force. That's quantity nuance — a feature found in real languages like Arabic and some Austronesian languages.
4. Verbs
Valyrian verbs change to show:
- Person — I, you, he/she/it
- Number — singular or plural
- Tense and aspect — when and how an action happens
- Mood — statements, commands, wishes
"Valar morghulis" Broken Down
- Valar — "all men" (plural of a word for man/person)
- morghulis — "must die" (from morghon, death, with a verb form expressing necessity)
"Valar dohaeris"
- dohaeris — "must serve"
The matching endings (-ulis / -eris) show they're parallel verb forms, which is part of why the call-and-response feels so satisfying.
5. Word Order
High Valyrian's default word order is subject–object–verb (SOV), like Latin or Japanese.
English: The dragon eats the goat. Valyrian order: The dragon the goat eats.
Since cases mark roles, speakers can move words for emphasis — useful for poetry and dramatic speeches like Daenerys's.
6. Adjectives Agree
Adjectives change to match the gender, number, and case of their noun. That creates rhythmic repeated endings, which is part of Valyrian's elegant sound.
7. Sounds and Spelling
- Macrons (ā, ē, ī, ō, ū, ȳ) mark long vowels
- y can be a vowel, as in Daenerys
- rh is a breathy r, as in Rhaenyra
- Stress follows predictable rules based on vowel length
Try pronouncing some of these in the Valyrian Translator.
Why Peterson Built It This Way
Peterson has described High Valyrian as playing a role similar to Latin in Westeros and Essos: a prestigious classical language with descendant dialects. So he gave it features associated with classical languages — heavy inflection, many cases, flexible order.
He also simulated a history so that Low Valyrian dialects could evolve realistically. We call that reverse-engineered antiquity: building the old language with the future changes already in mind. Read more in High Valyrian vs Low Valyrian.
How Hard Is It to Learn?
For English speakers, High Valyrian grammar is comparable in difficulty to Latin or Russian — lots of endings to memorise. The good news: it's regular, the vocabulary is manageable, and there's structured learning material. The Duolingo course launched in 2017 attracted large numbers of learners. We compare it with real languages in Learning Valyrian: Is It Harder Than Spanish?
Where Valyrian Grammar Is Heading
House of the Dragon keeps giving characters longer Valyrian conversations, which means more grammar on screen. We predict High Valyrian will be the first TV-created language to have a published reference grammar comparable in scope to academic grammars of real classical languages, driven by both the show and its large learner community.
Try Them Yourself
- Valyrian Translator
- Dothraki Translator
- Quenya Translator — another "Latin-like" fictional language
- Old English Translator — a real language with cases
- Game of Thrones Translators