Mother of Dragons. Breaker of Chains. Daenerys Targaryen. The woman coming for the Westeros crown has made her home with the Dothraki people, adopted their language and indeed carries a position of the highest regard: Khaleesi.
You, like many others – including the Game of Thrones HBO show – have probably been pronouncing it phonetically: ‘Ka-lee-see.’ Well, according to the inventor of the Dothraki language, you’ve been saying it wrong.
By like, a lot.
David Peterson, the genius language expert who came up with the varied and complex languages spoken in the land of Game of Thrones, recently revealed our collective faux pas during a chat on the podcast Allusionist.
Talking about how to pronounce the word, he revealed: ‘There’s no way it should be pronounced “ka-lee-see’ based on the spelling.’
Noooo! The shame. The horror.
He continued: ‘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.’
Imagine all those times we, the public, mispronounced Khaleesi. Dave must have spent a lot of time cringing. Soz.
According to Peterson, it’s more like “Ha-lay-eh-see”, with the K being silent and a throaty, Arabic-like ‘ha’ in the beginning.
‘You have an “ee” and an “I” and they can’t be pronounced the same if I want to honour George RR Martin’s spellings,’ he explained.
‘There was no way I was going to win that fight with the producers,’ he went on to say about honouring the true pronunciation.
‘The instinct is so strong with English speakers when you see a double “e”, it’s pronounced “ee.”’
Interestingly, the affix – or the ‘eesi’ part of the word – comes from an ‘old word that means woman’ so Khaleesi is literally translated to female khal.
While you’re marinating in your shame, the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones is almost upon us.
Now’s the chance to re-watch past seasons, or if you haven’t yet seen the series (why?!) deep-dive into the world of Westeros.
Game Of Thrones returns 14 April on Sky Atlantic, NOW TV and HBO.
