Prepare to throw your throne out the window — it turns out we’ve been pronouncing Khaleesi wrong from the past eight years. Anyone who’s addicted to HBO’s Game of Thrones will know that one of Daenerys Targaryen’s many (many) names is Khaleesi.
As well as Mother of Dragons, Breaker of Chains, and Unburned, we’ve heard plenty of people refer to Dany as Khaleesi. Well, we’ve apparently been using the Dothraki term of affection completely wrong.
Although most of us say “ka-lee-see”, David Peterson would disagree with this. If you’re asking “who is he?” *in the voice of Nikki Grahame*, Peterson has some pretty impressive credentials considering he’s the man who created all Game of Thrones languages — including Dothraki. Speaking to The Allusionist podcast (via Digital Spy) Peterson dropped a bombshell on us all.
He said, “I wanted to make sure if something was spelled differently, it was pronounced differently. That worked pretty well for everything except the word ‘Khaleesi’. Which is just a real thorn in my side.”
Giving us a lesson in Dothraki, Peterson revealed, “There’s no way it should be pronounced ‘ka-LEE-see’ based on the spelling. So I had to decide am I going to re-spell this thing because I know how people are going to pronounce this, or am I going to honour that spelling and pronounce it differently? I made the latter decision and I think it was the wrong decision.”
Peterson continued, “Changing the spelling to ‘Khalisi’ would have fixed all my problems. ‘EE’ and ‘I’ can’t be pronounced the same because they’re spelled differently. If I want to honour George RR Martin’s spellings, [that] gives us the pronunciation CHA-LAY-eh-see.”
So, everyone, it’s not “Ka-lee-see”, it’s “CHA-LAY-eh-see.” However, with the Game of Thrones Season 8 premiere just weeks away, it sounds like it’s too little, too late for Peterson and his perfect pronunciations. Hey David, do you not think you should’ve tried to fix this back in 2011?
This isn’t the only reason Khaleesi has become a bugbear of Thrones, Annoyingly, there are plenty of people out there who genuinely think Khaleesi is Daenerys’ name — seriously, who are these people? Oh well, at least we get to see CHA-LAY-eh-see in action and rain fire down on the White Walkers.
Now you know!
[Feautured Image: HBO]