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Valar morghūlis, yn ābrar daor?
2021-11-20 02:19 pmSometimes, several creators working on the same thing and having nifty ideas means that these ideas interact with each other in even more interesting ways. This is the case when it comes to “Valar morghūlis”, the one bit of High Valyrian every Game of Thrones fan knows. It is also one of the few bits of High Valyrian that were created by GRRM, and thus one of the bits that David Peterson based his conlang on. And in creating his conlang, he put “Valar morghūlis” in a different light.
Originally, all we knew about the sentence was that “Valar morghulis” (spelled without a macron in GRRM’s books) means “All men must die”. An easy enough sentence with an easy enough meaning. After all, everyone dies eventually. When David Peterson created the grammar behind this sentence, he created the word “vala” and the word “morghūljagon”. “Man” and “to die”. “Valar” is the word “man” but in a different grammatical number – collective, a number English doesn’t have (it is restricted to singular and plural). “All men”, to make it clearer in the translation, although “Man must die” would work in English just as well. “Morghūlis” is the third person singular aorist – a tense English doesn’t have. In essence, it is used here to make statements that are unquestionably true. “All men die” would be an adequate translation as well. The “must” is added for emphasis, in this case.
( Where it gets interesting... )
Originally, all we knew about the sentence was that “Valar morghulis” (spelled without a macron in GRRM’s books) means “All men must die”. An easy enough sentence with an easy enough meaning. After all, everyone dies eventually. When David Peterson created the grammar behind this sentence, he created the word “vala” and the word “morghūljagon”. “Man” and “to die”. “Valar” is the word “man” but in a different grammatical number – collective, a number English doesn’t have (it is restricted to singular and plural). “All men”, to make it clearer in the translation, although “Man must die” would work in English just as well. “Morghūlis” is the third person singular aorist – a tense English doesn’t have. In essence, it is used here to make statements that are unquestionably true. “All men die” would be an adequate translation as well. The “must” is added for emphasis, in this case.
( Where it gets interesting... )
