What Is High Valyrian? A Complete Guide to the Language

High Valyrian is the language of the dragonlords of Old Valyria and the ancestral tongue of House Targaryen in Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon. It was created for television by professional linguist David J. Peterson, who expanded the handful of Valyrian words in George R.R. Martin’s novels into a complete, learnable language. Unlike the gibberish often passed off as fantasy speech, High Valyrian has a real grammar, a documented vocabulary of thousands of words, and an active community of learners.

If you’ve ever asked “what is High Valyrian?” while wondering what Daenerys is actually saying when she addresses her dragons, or how a few scattered book phrases became a language people study on Duolingo, this guide covers the full story: where High Valyrian came from, how its grammar works, the phrases every fan should know, and how you can start learning and translating it yourself.

From Book Scraps to a Full Language

George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels contain only a small number of Valyrian words and phrases — famous lines such as valar morghulis (“all men must die”), valar dohaeris (“all men must serve”), and the dragon command dracarys (“dragonfire”). When HBO began adapting the books, the producers wanted these fragments to sound like a genuine language rather than random syllables, so they hired a professional language creator.

That creator was David J. Peterson, a linguist specializing in constructed languages who had already created Dothraki for the same series. He won the commission through a competition run by the Language Creation Society, submitting sample translations and a grammatical sketch. Once hired, he treated Martin’s scattered words as the seed of a much larger system, designing phonology, morphology, and syntax that felt ancient, formal, and internally consistent — the way a real classical language behaves.

The result is a language with a documented grammar and a vocabulary that has grown to thousands of entries on the public High Valyrian wiki. To answer “what is High Valyrian” precisely: it is a “real” language in the same sense that Esperanto or Klingon are real: nobody speaks it natively, but it follows consistent rules and can express anything its vocabulary covers.

Where You Hear High Valyrian

In Game of Thrones, High Valyrian appears whenever the story touches the old Valyrian world. Daenerys Targaryen uses it to command her dragons and address the people of Essos; the ritual phrases valar morghulis and valar dohaeris echo through Braavos; and characters such as the Red Priestess Melisandre speak it in moments of ritual and ceremony. Much of the Valyrian heard in Slaver’s Bay, however, is not High Valyrian at all but its rougher descendants — a subject covered in our guide to the High Valyrian dialects.

House of the Dragon gives the language an even larger role. Set among the Targaryens at the height of their power, the show uses High Valyrian as the family’s private tongue: Daemon and Rhaenyra Targaryen hold intimate conversations in it, and it functions as the language of ritual, secrecy, and dragonlord identity. Hearing it spoken at length is the clearest proof of how complete Peterson’s creation is — whole scenes play out in a language that did not exist before 2010.

Within the story itself, the answer to what is High Valyrian is simple: it is the surviving prestige language of a fallen empire. After the Doom of Valyria destroyed the Freehold, the language lived on as a classical tongue — much as Latin survived the fall of Rome — while everyday speech in the former colonies diverged into regional dialects.

The Grammar in Brief

For the grammatical answer to what is High Valyrian, start here: it is a highly inflected language, which means words change their shape to show their role in a sentence. English mostly relies on word order (“the dog bit the man” is not “the man bit the dog”); High Valyrian relies on endings.

Eight noun cases

Nouns decline through eight cases — the grammatical “jobs” a noun can do in a sentence:

Four noun classes

Instead of masculine and feminine genders, High Valyrian sorts every noun into one of four classes: lunar, solar, terrestrial, and aquatic. These labels describe word forms rather than meaning — lunar nouns such as vala (“man”) typically end in a vowel, while solar nouns such as azantys (“knight”) typically end in -s. The class of a noun determines how it declines and how adjectives agree with it.

Subject–object–verb word order

The default sentence order is SOV: subject, then object, then verb — the reverse of English’s subject-verb-object. Where English says “I see the dragon,” the High Valyrian pattern is closer to “I the dragon see.”

Sounds and spelling

High Valyrian distinguishes long and short vowels, and long vowels are written with macrons: ā ē ī ō ū ȳ. Length matters — it can change a word’s meaning — so accurate spelling and pronunciation both depend on those little bars. The language also features sounds unfamiliar to English speakers, such as the high front rounded vowel y (like German ü).

Essential Phrases Every Fan Should Know

These documented phrases appear in the shows and are listed on the public wiki; they are the most recognizable answer to what is High Valyrian for casual viewers. For a larger collection, browse our High Valyrian phrases page.

Learning and Translating High Valyrian

Because the language is fully documented, learning it is a realistic hobby. To move beyond asking what High Valyrian is and start using it, begin with the High Valyrian dictionary to look up individual words, then practice assembling sentences with correct cases and SOV order. A Valyrian to English translator can help you decode lines from the show, while translating the other direction is a good test of whether you have grasped the grammar.

Be aware that translation into High Valyrian sometimes requires reconstruction: the documented vocabulary, while large, does not cover every modern concept, so translators combine attested words with documented grammar rules and clearly label anything uncertain. Our guide to how High Valyrian translation works explains the process — and its honest limits — in detail.

Related Valyrian Tools

• Valyrian to English translator — decode High Valyrian text into English
• English to Valyrian translator — render English phrases in High Valyrian
• High Valyrian dictionary — look up documented words and meanings
• High Valyrian phrases — common phrases with English translations

Frequently Asked Questions

Is High Valyrian a real language?

The short answer to “what is High Valyrian, really?” is that it is a real constructed language: it has consistent grammar, documented vocabulary, and published learning resources, and people genuinely learn and speak it. It has no native speakers, since it was created for television, but linguistically it functions like any natural language within the limits of its vocabulary.

Who created High Valyrian?

Linguist David J. Peterson created High Valyrian for HBO’s Game of Thrones after winning a competition organized by the Language Creation Society. He also created Dothraki for the series. Read the full story in our article on who created High Valyrian.

Can you actually learn High Valyrian?

Yes — and now that you know what High Valyrian is, you can actually learn it. The grammar and vocabulary are publicly documented on the High Valyrian wiki, there is a Duolingo course, and dictionaries and phrase guides exist online. Learning the eight cases and SOV word order is the main challenge for English speakers.

What does “valar morghulis” mean?

It means “all men must die.” Its traditional reply, valar dohaeris, means “all men must serve.” Both are among the most famous lines in the series.

How is High Valyrian different from Dothraki?

Both were created by David J. Peterson for Game of Thrones, but they are unrelated languages with different sounds, grammars, and vocabularies. High Valyrian is the formal, inflected tongue of the Valyrian dragonlords; Dothraki is the harsher language of the Dothraki horselords.

Is High Valyrian the same as the Valyrian spoken in Slaver’s Bay?

No. The speech of Astapor and Meereen consists of descendant dialects — Astapori Valyrian and Meereenese Valyrian — which diverged from High Valyrian over centuries. See our dialects guide for the differences.

So what is High Valyrian, in the end? It began as a few evocative words in a fantasy novel and became one of the most complete constructed languages ever made for television. Whether you want to understand Daenerys’s commands, explore its unusual grammar, or start learning it yourself, the language is fully documented and waiting — beginning with the dictionary and translators linked above.