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Valyrian Phrase Confusion


LordStoneheart

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So I am a huge fan of the Astapor scene when Daenerys reveals she can speak Valyrian. She says:

Nyke Daenerys Jelmazmo hen Targario Lentrot, hen Valyrio Uepo anogar iksan. Valyrio muno engos nuhys issa.

“I am Daenerys Stormborn of the House Targaryen, of the blood of Old Valyria. Valyrian is my mother tongue.

And in the finale, we hear the correct pronunciation of Mhysa. (I always though Mye-suh, not Mee-suh)

Missandei has to tell Dany what it means, for its an old Ghiscari word for "Mother." But that confused me. If you take the M off of Mhysa, its pronounced the same way as the word issa in the phrase Dany says above. I assumed issa was high valyrian for mother, and mhysa was bastardized yunkai valyrian. But mhysa is ghiscari, not valyria, otherwise Dany should've know it, I think.

So what does issa mean in that context? David Peterson has released the translated version of Talisa's letter. The heading is "Dearest Mother," which in Valyrian is:

Munus jorraeliarzus

And the first line is "So much news I have to give you from over the seas."

Olvie hen embraro tolmiot nykelot avy ivestragon issa.

Munos is Mother in Valyrian, but what is Issa? I know this is kind of a lot for just one word, but I'm really interested in the language, and just language in general.

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Another example from the letter (I found it here):

Dārys issa vestris, se prūmio ñuho konir drējior issa.

translation:

They say he is a king and of my heart that is true.

[i do not know why some charaters are shown correctly in the preview, but here they're not]

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Issa as a version of is/to be makes sense. I thought it might be a version of I/My, but Nuhys looks like it makes more sense there since Nyke means "I" also.

Is there a Valyrian lexicon? On David Peterson's blog he translates some of the phrases, but also challenges people to decode the language itself and I'm not quite that skilled.

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Issa as a version of is/to be makes sense. I thought it might be a version of I/My, but Nuhys looks like it makes more sense there since Nyke means "I" also.

Is there a Valyrian lexicon? On David Peterson's blog he translates some of the phrases, but also challenges people to decode the language itself and I'm not quite that skilled.

There's not a lexicon as of yet, though there's one on the works! What I can tell you is that, aside from the dothraki.com site, the best site for information about the Valyrian language/s is this: http://jdm314.livejournal.com/

There you will find all the available information compiled so far, bear in mind that those entries are progressive, so the first does not take into account the updates and so on, you'll probably want to check them one by one starting from the first and with patience.

There you'll find from noun declension tables to verb conjugation charts and paradigms and a lot more information! The best site to learn the language!

This is the last post: http://jdm314.livejo...com/198964.html (note: this is before Talisa's letter and translation was posted)

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Is there a Valyrian lexicon? On David Peterson's blog he translates some of the phrases, but also challenges people to decode the language itself and I'm not quite that skilled.

Well, there's something like that now. I have been working a Valyrian vocabulary list at the Valyrian wiki:

http://wiki.dothraki.org/dothraki/Valyrian/High_Valyrian_Vocabulary

I hope you enjoy it. There's a lot more to come, and we only add the words we know the citation form (nominative) of. We'll keep adding to it as time goes by.

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Also--and this is unrelated--the y in Mhysa and most words in the show, at least per Peterson's phonetic transcriptions should be pronounced as they pronounce the letter u in French or the letter y in Danish or Icelandic, a high front rounded vowel. But, seeing as this sound is absent in all varieties of English except for the Scottish accent most people realize it as the same sound as i or u.

But, I just kind of assumed that it was maybe pronounced meesah in Ghiscari.

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