There is good news for
“Skorverdon zaldrīzoti Daenerys ēza?”
Translation: How many dragons does Daenerys have? It’s not a ridiculous question if you’re a fan of the HBO hit series “Game of Thrones,” which returns for its eighth and final season on Sunday. The language? It’s called High Valyrian, the tongue of the ruined Valyrian Freehold empire, and it’s one of four languages created by linguist David J. Peterson spoken on the show.
While only one character can speak native High Valyrian on “Game of Thrones,” viewers nationwide are picking up a few words and phrases from an unlikely source: Duolingo, the free language-learning app.
Duolingo first offered lessons in High Valyrian in 2017 and, since then, 1.2 million people have started the course. In the last two weeks leading up to the premier of the final season, Duolingo has seen a near 65% increase in people taking the course, said Sam Dalsimer, a spokesman for Duolingo.
High Valyrian isn’t the only fictional language Duolingo has to offer. Star Trek fans can find Klingon, a language constructed by Marc Okrand and centered around spacecraft, warfare and weaponry.
To offer languages on Duolingo, the company usually relies on hundreds of volunteers and employees to develop course material and monitor users’ experiences. That’s not the case when it comes to High Valyrian, where Peterson is a contributor and develops the courses for free.
“We teach over 30 languages and most have thousands of people who speak them and are capable of helping us teach them.” Dalsimer said. “There’s only one person on planet Earth who knows the language, and that’s David Peterson.”
The origins of High Valyrian come from the book that inspired the show, written by George R. Martin. Peterson won a contest to develop the more common language used on “Game of Thrones” called Dothraki but was asked to build High Valyrian later in the series. His goal was to create a classic language that could give birth to many others, similar to Romance languages, and Peterson noted it had to fit with the names Martin created for the book, such as Daenerys, Viserys and Rhaella.
There are now 824 words of High Valyrian that users can learn on Duolingo, and that number continues to grow.
