Language learning platform Duolingo has announced plans to develop "High Valyrian" - a fictional language in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire books series. The free to use website and app hosts around 21 languages to choose from and has an estimated 120 million users.
The A Song of Ice and Fire books that are adapted for Television as Game of Thrones - named after the first book in the chronology, has an immense fan following around the world and after popular demand, High Valyrian was added to its incubator. But it would be some time before fans of the books and the show could enjoy learning their favourite fictional language.
The estimated completion date issued by Duolingo reads June 1, 2017.
Development of High Valyrian
American linguist David J. Peterson is credited for the creation of High Valyrian. Peterson is also the creator of Dothraki - another language in the franchise. Author George R.R.Martin was initially not interested in investing too much time in the linguistic aspect of High Valyrian in his books as they contain only a few phrases in the language such as "Valar Morghulis", which means "all men must die" and "Valar Dohaeris" which translates to "all men must serve" among others.
But the show decided to incorporate more of the language in the scenes for which Peterson was hired. The 35-year-old has since then gone on to supply Martin with additional phrases and translations for the sixth book in the series titled "The Winds of Winter".
Peterson is now himself involved in the construction of High Valyrian for Duolingo. He has confirmed that although there is not a specific word count yet, rest assured, they will be working with approximately 2000 words.
Peterson was selected to develop the language for the HBO series after winning a competition among conlangers.
He has been developing fictional languages since 2000. Aside from his work with A Song of Ice and Fire series, Peterson is also credited for creating the Irathient, Castithan and Omec languages for science fiction television series Defiance and also the language spoken by the Dark Elves in the Marvel film Thor: The Dark World.
