Appendix:High Valyrian Duolingo Tips and Notes

Basics 1

JIŌRNA! Welcome to High Valyrian for English speakers! High Valyrian is the language of the old Valyrian Freehold, a thriving civilization destroyed by a mysterious cataclysm centuries before the action of Game of Thrones begins. It was a language of dragon tamers and warriors, but is now a language of refinement and education—a memory of a bygone era. It's the language of the Mad King Aerys, of Aegon the Conqueror, and of Daenerys Targaryen, Mother of Dragons.

High Valyrian is an inflectional language, where the form of a noun changes to indicate the role it plays in a sentence, or verbs inflect for their tense, aspect, and voice. Generally, adjectives come before the nouns they modify, and verbs come at the end of the sentence.

As you begin your study of Valyrian, you may want to know how the Roman letters used to spell the language are pronounced. In Old Valyria, the language was written with a glyphic writing system, but in our world, we use a variant of the Roman alphabet for simplicity's sake. Here's a description of the system:

CONSONANTS B, D, H, L, M, N, Z are pronounced roughly the same as they are in English. IPA: [b], [d], [h], [l], [m], [n], [z]. G is always pronounced hard, as in "get"; never as in "genre" or "gel". IPA: [ɡ] K, P, T are pronounced similar to English, but without aspiration (compare "pie" to "spy". The Valyrian P is pronounced as in "spy"). IPA: [p], [t], [k] S is always pronounced voiceless, as in "dose"; never as in "rose". IPA: [s] R is always trilled, as in Spanish "perro". IPA: [r] V is now pronounced as in "vet", but used to be pronounced as the "w" in "wet". IPA: [v] (Modern); [w] (Ancient) J is now pronounced as in "jam", but used to have a slightly more palatal pronunciation. IPA: [dʒ] (Modern); [ɟ] and [j] (Antiquated) Q is pronounced like a "k", but much further back in the mouth, with the back of the tongue touching the uvula. There is no English equivalent. IPA: [q] GH is a voiced guttural sound like a noisier version of the "g" in Spanish "lago". There is no English equivalent. IPA: [ɣ] or [ʁ] LJ is pronounced like the "lli" in "million". IPA: [ʎ] Ñ is pronounced as in Spanish "ñ" or the "ni" in "minion". IPA: [ɲ] RH is pronounced like Valyrian R, but with no voicing. IPA: [r̥] VOWELS A is pronounced as in "father". IPA: [a] E is pronounced as in "get", and is never silent. IPA: [ɛ] or [e] (no distinction) I is pronounced as in "machine". IPA: [i] O is pronounced as in "note". IPA: [ɔ] or [o] (no distinction) U is pronounced as in "rude". IPA: [u] Y is pronounced like the "i" in "machine", but with the lips fully rounded as if one is pronouncing U. IPA: [y] Ā, Ē, Ī, Ō, Ū, Ȳ are pronounced exactly as their macron-less counterparts but are held for a longer duration. IPA: [aː], [ɛː]~[eː], [iː], [ɔː]~[oː], [uː], [yː] Note: As a shortcut, you can type a double version of the vowel to stand in for a vowel with a macron. Thus, if you type yy it will be understood as ȳ by Duolingo.

SINGULAR AND PLURAL In this lesson you'll be learning the singular and plural pairs for some common words. In High Valyrian there are a number of pluralization strategies, so pay close attention to the ending of each word you learn.

High Valyrian is a language whose nouns inflect for gender, number, and case. Adjectives will agree with all three of these elements. In this lesson, you'll only be focusing on plural agreement; other types of agreement will come later.

ADJECTIVE PLACEMENT Adjectives most commonly precede the nouns they modify, but they may follow the nouns they modify either for stylistic reasons, or to prevent overcrowding. Thus, if you have sȳz which means "good", then "good man" can be translated as sȳz vala or vala sȳz.

SIMPLE COORDINATION High Valyrian doesn't use a word like "and" when coordinating two non-modifying consecutive elements. Instead, the last word in a pair or trio of nouns, adjectives, or even verbs is modified in some way to indicate that it is participating in a coordinative structure. One common strategy is to lengthen the final vowel of the last word in a list and shift the word's stress to the end. Watch out for word-final long vowels in sentences with coordination!

PRO-DROP You'll be learning some High Valyrian pronouns later. For now, if you see a verb, the subject will either be listed first, or will be a pronoun not present. Take, for example, the sentence Vala issa. Translated simply, it could mean "The man is", but that's not a very useful sentence. A better translation would be "He is a man", where "he" is simply not necessary.

Phrases 1

NOUN CASE In High Valyrian, nouns change their form based on their grammatical role in the sentence. In this lesson, you'll be introduced to two cases. One you've been using since the beginning: the nominative case. The nominative case is used with the subject of the sentence. It's considered the basic form of the noun, and is the form you'll learn first when you learn a new noun.

The second case you're going to learn about in this lesson is called the accusative case. The accusative case is used with the object of the sentence. For example, in the English sentence "The man sees the woman", "the man" is the subject (the seer), and would take the nominative case in Valyrian. "The woman", on the other hand, is the object (the seeee), and would take the accusative case. In English, it's obvious who does what to whom, because a verb stands in between the two nouns. In High Valyrian, though, both of these are licit translations:

Vala ābre urnes. Ābre vala urnes. Rather than word order, the form of the noun is what tells you who does what to whom. In this case, ābra "woman" changes its ending from its usual -a to -e.

There are several different strategies for forming the accusative case, all of which you'll learn later. For this lesson, here are the important ones:

If the nominative is -a, the accusative is -e. If the nominative is -i, the accusative is -ī. If the nominative is -es, the accusative is -ī. If the nominative is -ys, the accusative is -i. If the nominative is -yssy, the accusative is -ī. These generalizations will suffice for this skill. Soon you'll learn more rules regarding the formation of the accusative and other cases.

VERB ENDINGS In this skill you'll notice a few different strategies for marking a verb. High Valyrian verbs agree with their subjects in number and person. For now, you'll see endings for the third person singular (he, she, it) and plural (they), as well as the first person singular (I). Pay special attention to when a verb ends with -sa vs. -za vs. -as in the third person singular, as not all verbs consistently take the same ending.

Some generalizations you may notice:

If the subject is "I", the verb ends in -n. If the subject is "he, she, it", the verb has an -s or -z in its ending. If the subject is "they", the verb has -zi, -si, or -is in its ending. Again, these generalizations will suffice for this skill. Soon you'll learn more rules regarding the formation of the all verbal conjugations.

Basics 2

NOUN CASE In High Valyrian, nouns change their form based on their grammatical role in the sentence. In this lesson, you'll be introduced to two cases. One you've been using since the beginning: the nominative case. The nominative case is used with the subject of the sentence. It's considered the basic form of the noun, and is the form you'll learn first when you learn a new noun.

The second case you're going to learn about in this lesson is called the accusative case. The accusative case is used with the object of the sentence. For example, in the English sentence "The man sees the woman", "the man" is the subject (the seer), and would take the nominative case in Valyrian. "The woman", on the other hand, is the object (the seeee), and would take the accusative case. In English, it's obvious who does what to whom, because a verb stands in between the two nouns. In High Valyrian, though, both of these are licit translations:

Vala ābre urnes. Ābre vala urnes. Rather than word order, the form of the noun is what tells you who does what to whom. In this case, ābra "woman" changes its ending from its usual -a to -e.

There are several different strategies for forming the accusative case, all of which you'll learn later. For this lesson, here are the important ones:

If the nominative is -a, the accusative is -e. If the nominative is -i, the accusative is -ī. If the nominative is -es, the accusative is -ī. If the nominative is -ys, the accusative is -i. If the nominative is -yssy, the accusative is -ī. These generalizations will suffice for this skill. Soon you'll learn more rules regarding the formation of the accusative and other cases.

VERB ENDINGS In this skill you'll notice a few different strategies for marking a verb. High Valyrian verbs agree with their subjects in number and person. For now, you'll see endings for the third person singular (he, she, it) and plural (they), as well as the first person singular (I). Pay special attention to when a verb ends with -sa vs. -za vs. -as in the third person singular, as not all verbs consistently take the same ending.

Some generalizations you may notice:

If the subject is "I", the verb ends in -n. If the subject is "he, she, it", the verb has an -s or -z in its ending. If the subject is "they", the verb has -zi, -si, or -is in its ending. Again, these generalizations will suffice for this skill. Soon you'll learn more rules regarding the formation of the all verbal conjugations.

Demonstratives 1

DEMONSTRATIVE PRONOUNS In this lesson you're going to learn some demonstrative pronouns. Though adjectives agree with nouns in case, number, and gender, it's important to remember that demonstrative pronouns do not. Pronouns take their own plurality, depending on their referent, and make a simple distinction between animate (B-class) and inanimate (K-class). In addition, there are two sets of pronouns depending on distance. Thus:

kesy "this (inanimate)" bisy "this (animate)" kony "that (inanimate)" bony "that (animate)" Note: It's up to the individual speaker to decide whether animals are animate enough to earn a B-class demonstrative pronoun.

Lunar Class

INTRODUCTION TO GENDER High Valyrian is a language with genders, much like Spanish, German, or Arabic. Unlike those languages, though, the genders of High Valyrian have nothing to do with biological sex. Instead, the genders are named based on key nouns within each gender that serve as the prototype for the rest of the paradigm. The genders are:

Lunar Class (Hūrenkon Qogror) from the word hūra "moon" Solar Class (Vēzenkon Qogror) from the word vēzos "sun" Aquatic Class (Embōñor Qogror) from the word embar "sea" Terrestrial Class (Tegōñor Qogror) from the word tegon "earth" Every noun of High Valyrian belongs to one of these four genders and requires its adjectives to agree with that gender. Gender in nouns can most often be recognized by a set of characteristic endings associated with each gender. In the four gender skills you will learn to recognize and manipulate those characteristic endings.

THE LUNAR CLASS The lunar class is the most robust High Valyrian noun class. Lunar nouns can take a, e, i, o, or y as theme vowels. Most lunar nouns take some sort of -i suffix in the plural and accusative (though the latter will often coalesce with a final -a producing an -e suffix). Note that while the accusative plural for lunar nouns is always -ī, the accusative singular of some types of lunar nouns (for example those ending in -e) also take -ī in the accusative singular, rendering their singular and plural forms identical in the accusative.

Many important nouns referring to humans are lunar, so it pays to get a solid handle on lunar endings moving forward.

Solar Class

INTRODUCTION TO GENDER High Valyrian is a language with genders, much like Spanish, German, or Arabic. Unlike those languages, though, the genders of High Valyrian have nothing to do with biological sex. Instead, the genders are named based on key nouns within each gender that serve as the prototype for the rest of the paradigm. The genders are:

Lunar Class (Hūrenkon Qogror) from the word hūra "moon" Solar Class (Vēzenkon Qogror) from the word vēzos "sun" Aquatic Class (Embōñor Qogror) from the word embar "sea" Terrestrial Class (Tegōñor Qogror) from the word tegon "earth" Every noun of High Valyrian belongs to one of these four genders and requires its adjectives to agree with that gender. Gender in nouns can most often be recognized by a set of characteristic endings associated with each gender. In the four gender skills you will learn to recognize and manipulate those characteristic endings.

THE SOLAR CLASS The solar class is the probably the most common class found in High Valyrian. Solar nouns all have either an s or a z in their nominative endings. While the accusative endings of solar and lunar nouns are similar, solar nouns typically take a double ss plus their theme vowel in the nominative plural.

Adjectives agreeing with solar nouns take different endings from those agreeing with lunar, terrestrial or aquatic nouns, as can be expected, but a few endings also display variant behavior depending on whether the adjective precedes or follows the noun it modifies. If one wanted to say "my leaders", for example, one would take the plural of "leader", jentyssy, and put the solar plural form of "my" in front to get ñuhyz jentyssy. Upon reversing the order, though, a vowel that is ordinarily dropped reappears, resulting in jentyssy ñuhyzy.

There is an additional stipulation if a solar plural adjective precedes a k, p, s, or t. While one would say ñuhyz jentyssy with a z ending, if one wished to say "my days", one would say ñuhys tubissa, with the z becoming an s on account of the following t. The z would, of course, reappear were the order reversed, giving us tubissa ñuhyzy.

Aquatic Class

INTRODUCTION TO GENDER High Valyrian is a language with genders, much like Spanish, German, or Arabic. Unlike those languages, though, the genders of High Valyrian have nothing to do with biological sex. Instead, the genders are named based on key nouns within each gender that serve as the prototype for the rest of the paradigm. The genders are:

Lunar Class (Hūrenkon Qogror) from the word hūra "moon" Solar Class (Vēzenkon Qogror) from the word vēzos "sun" Aquatic Class (Embōñor Qogror) from the word embar "sea" Terrestrial Class (Tegōñor Qogror) from the word tegon "earth" Every noun of High Valyrian belongs to one of these four genders and requires its adjectives to agree with that gender. Gender in nouns can most often be recognized by a set of characteristic endings associated with each gender. In the four gender skills you will learn to recognize and manipulate those characteristic endings.

THE AQUATIC CLASS The aquatic class is the smallest High Valyrian noun class. Aquatic nouns all have an r associated with their endings and have a limited number of theme vowels (only a, e, i and o). Unlike other classes, the r rarely disappears in different case and number combinations, making this a challenging class of nouns to decline. Aquatic nouns, like terrestrial nouns, typically take an -a in the plural.

Take note of a special spelling change that occurs when an r follows an h due to a variety of case and number combinations. In the singular, for example, the word for "my" is ñuhor in the aquatic. In the plural, the o drops out and an -a is suffixed. This should produce ñuhra, but hr is not a licit sequence of High Valyrian. Instead, the word is respelled ñurha and pronounced accordingly.

Terrestrial Class

INTRODUCTION TO GENDER High Valyrian is a language with genders, much like Spanish, German, or Arabic. Unlike those languages, though, the genders of High Valyrian have nothing to do with biological sex. Instead, the genders are named based on key nouns within each gender that serve as the prototype for the rest of the paradigm. The genders are:

Lunar Class (Hūrenkon Qogror) from the word hūra "moon" Solar Class (Vēzenkon Qogror) from the word vēzos "sun" Aquatic Class (Embōñor Qogror) from the word embar "sea" Terrestrial Class (Tegōñor Qogror) from the word tegon "earth" Every noun of High Valyrian belongs to one of these four genders and requires its adjectives to agree with that gender. Gender in nouns can most often be recognized by a set of characteristic endings associated with each gender. In the four gender skills you will learn to recognize and manipulate those characteristic endings.

THE TERRESTRIAL CLASS The terrestrial class is the simplest noun class in High Valyrian. Terrestrial nouns all have an n associated with their endings and typically have a theme vowel in o. Terrestrial nouns take a plural in -a and never make a distinction between the nominative and accusative.

Most terrestrial nouns refer to places, inanimate objects, or abstract ideas or actions. It's an important class, but probably the simplest one to learn and remember.

GAME OF THRONES NOTE One of the key characters of Game of Thrones is Daenerys Targaryen. You've seen her first name already, but now you'll see her last name in High Valyrian: Targārien. As it is a family name, it will always be preceded by an article, and will not be used on its own the way a first name would. As an analogy, consider how Shakespeare refers to a Montague or a Capulet in Romeo and Juliet. In the examples that use Targārien as a noun, the English translations will do the same thing.

Genitive

THE GENITIVE CASE The genitive case is assigned to the possessor in a possessive phrase. In English, we mark possessor's in two ways:

the hill's top the top of the hill In learning the genitive case of High Valyrian, it will be most productive for you to liken it to the first strategy above.

The genitive is uniformly marked with an -o suffix (occasionally -ō, but never a different quality vowel), so the genitive case is easy to identify. To identify a possessor, as in the phrase "the man's horse", one puts the possessor in the genitive. The other noun is in whatever case it is given in the sentence. For example:

Valo anne sȳz issa. "The man's horse is good." Valo annī urnen. "I see the man's horse." As with adjectives, the order of possessor and possessee may be reversed in High Valyrian. Thus, both valo anne and anne valo mean "the man's horse". The order of possessor-possessee is strongly preferred, however, and should only be reversed in cases of overcrowding, or for honorific transposition. As an example of the latter, Daenerys is referred to as Daenerys Stormborn. In High Valyrian, that is translated as Daenerys Jelmāzmo, where jelmāzmo is the genitive of jelmāzma, the word for a violent storm.

REMINDER: ADJECTIVAL CONCORD In High Valyrian, an adjective agrees with the noun it modifies in gender, number, and case. If one were to translate a simple sentence like "The good boy's mother is sleeping", the Valyrian equivalent of good, sȳz, would need to agree with the gender, number, and case of the noun it modifies. In this sentence, "good" modifies "boy", not "mother". The mother may be good or may be evil; we don't know. All we know for certain is that the boy is good. Thus, the appropriate translation is as follows:

Sȳro taobo muña ēdrus. "The good boy's mother is sleeping." Above, muña is in the nominative singular because it's the subject of the sentence (it's the mother that's sleeping, not the boy). The adjective, though, modifies taoba. And what's taoba up to? Nothing: Taoba is simply the possessor of muña. It is, therefore, in the genitive case. Consequently, the adjective that modifies it, sȳz, must also be in the genitive case. Hence, sȳro taobo. Translating it as sȳz taobo would be incorrect.

WARNING: GENITIVE PLURAL ERRORS There is a known error on Duolingo with exercises that have card selection and genitive plurals. That is, for something like "Those are the masters' horses" (multiple masters have multiple horses), there will be no possible way to give the correct answer in English. This is not an error I'm able to fix: It's an error with Duolingo's system. I have reported the error, but there's really nothing more I can do aside from completely eliminating exercises featuring the genitive plural.

SMALL NOTE: DOVAOGĒDY In George R. R. Martin's universe, the Unsullied are an army, and the English word is invariant. The Unsullied can refer to one or many Unsullied. One can also say an Unsullied to refer to one. The word is never pluralized. Consequently, Unsullied's can be singular or plural.

Possessive Adjectives

AQUATIC DECLENSIONS As you move on to learn about possessive adjectives, note that you'll now be expected to decline any adjective in any number, class and case combination you've already seen. For aquatic nouns this can prove challenging. In particular, pay attention to three adjectives and their singular and plural pairs in the aquatic:

ñuhor "my" ~ ñurha "my" pōjor "their" ~ pōja "their" konor "that" ~ kōdra "these" The first pattern we've seen already in the former Aquatic skill. In the second, notice that the r disappears completely. In fact what happens is the jr sequence is illicit in High Valyrian, and so simplifies to j. A similar simplification happens with sr and zr, both of which become j.

The last pattern is one that is widespread in High Valyrian and is important to commit to memory. When a nasal consonant (either n or m) is followed immediately by r, the nasal is deleted, and the previous vowel lengthens. In addition, a homorganic voiced nasal (d for n and b for m) appears in between the vowel and the r. Thus, what was originally konra became kondra and then kōdra.

REMINDER In the third person singular, there are two pronouns: ziry and ūja. When they occur as possessive pronouns, they still agree with the possessor—even if the possessor isn't stated. Thus both of the phrases below are correct:

jāhon lenton "his/her/its house" zȳhon lenton "his/her/its house" The first is used when the possessor of the house is a noun that is in the aquatic or terrestrial gender. The second is used when the possessor of the house is in the lunar or solar gender. Both take -on becomes lenton is terrestrial.

Because most humans are lunar or solar, zȳh- is more likely to be used when the possessor is animate, but both mean essentially the same thing. In a phrase with no other context (most of the phrases you'll see in Duolingo), you're likely to see either.

Family

KINSHIP TERMINOLOGY High Valyrian's kinship system is a bit more detailed than that of English. High Valyrian has what's known as an Iroquois Kinship system, meaning that certain common words cover more ground in High Valyrian than they do in English.

For example, the word muña "mother", which you've learned, is used with one's mother's sisters as well. Consequently, the word can mean "aunt", depending on the context. The same happens with the words for "brother" and "sister" and one's parallel cousins.

High Valyrian also distinguishes between siblings of different ages. Thus, valonqar, which means "younger brother", is a different word from lēkia, which means "older brother".

The vocabulary of each lesson is designed to go together, so that you learn the words for parallel cousins all at once, and cross cousins later. Look for patterns of interpredictability to help you memorize pairs of words. For example, the words for younger siblings/cousins (hāedar and valonqar) are both aquatic, whereas the words for older siblings/cousins (lēkia and mandia) are both lunar. Such subsystems are present throughout the larger kinship system.

Questions

Thus far you've learned how to ask yes/no questions (identical in form to statements, but with question intonation). In this skill you'll learn to ask WH-questions. WH-questions are questions which, in English, have a word with a "WH" in them (i.e. who, what, where, when, why, how).

In High Valyrian, WH-words begin with s (in fact, either sp, for animate, or sk, for inanimate), and appear uniformly at the beginning of the sentence.

The words sparos "who" and skoros "what" are pronouns that decline fully (including the genitive form sparo, which we'd translate into English as "whose"), and the adjectives spare "which (animate)" and skore "which (inanimate)" [NOTE: Not yet present in course. Coming soon!] are adjectives that agree with the nouns they modify in case, gender, and number.

The following WH-words should be learned as phrases, though you'll be able to figure out how they're formed later on:

Skorī "when" Skorkydoso "how" Skoriot "where" Skoro syt "why" The word skorverdon "how many" is special. Skorverdon is always followed by a noun in the genitive plural. Thus "how many men" would be skorverdon valoti. Remember that skorverdon is the actual argument, though, so in the sentence "How many men are singing?" the verb should be third person singular, since the noun skorverdon is singular.

Animals

In the Song of Ice and Fire universe, animals serve as the standard bearers for some of the most famous houses. For example, the wolf is associated with House Stark; the lion with House Lannister; the fish with House Tully; and the dragon with House Targaryen. Often the animal names will be used to stand in for a member or head of that house.

Pay special attention to certain of the words in this skill, as they instantiate some of the more unusual declension paradigms of High Valyrian.

Present Tense

Present Tense Active Indicative Verb Conjugation So far you've seen a number of verbs conjugated in their present tense forms. Now you'll learn the full system of present tense conjugation.

As you know, verbs in High Valyrian agree with their subjects in person and number. In determining what endings a verb will have, it's important to determine what type of segment ends the verb root: a consonant or a vowel. Those that end in consonants have endings which vary, while those that end in a vowel have fairly uniform endings.

Vowel-final stems display the following behavior:

Urnen "I see" root plus -n Urnē "you see" root plus lengthened final vowel Urnes "s/he sees" root plus -s Urnī "we see" root minus vowel plus -ī Urnēt "you (all) see" root plus lengthened final vowel plus -t Urnesi "they see" root plus -si For the second person forms, the final lengthened vowel varies based on the final vowel of the root. Thus idakō is "you attack" and līrī is "you smile".

Regular consonant-final stems display the following behavior:

Rȳban "I hear" root plus -an Rȳbā "you hear" root plus -ā Rȳbas "s/he hears" root plus -as Rȳbi "we hear" root plus -i Rȳbāt "you (all) hear" root plus -āt Rȳbis "they hear" root plus -is The endings you see above will change on occasion depending on the final consonant of the root. For example, words that end in a voiceless stop (p, t, k, or q) will often (but not always) have a third personal singular ending -sa. Roots that end in r or l will take third person endings of -za in the singular and -zi in the plural. Other changes with other consonants are less regular, and should be memorized.

As a final note, take care to distinguish those verb roots that end in a consonant, and those that end in -a. Their endings will be similar in many, but not all, cases. For example, ȳdran "I speak" looks like it could be a consonant-final form, or an a-final form, but ȳdrasi "they speak" could only be an a-final form.

Sizes

This skill is going to teach you a series of new adjectives. Not that bōsa can mean "long" or "tall", depending on the context, and also note that harrenka is a word that doesn't have a direct equivalent in English (or not a simple one, at least). Be sure to pay close attention to the gender and number of the noun each of these adjectives is modifying!

Food

FOOD Food is one of the most important aspects of George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. This skill will give you some vocabulary to get you started. One brief note. Previously, you've known only sȳz to mean "good". While you can use sȳz with food, it generally refers to the quality (i.e. how well made it was), rather than the taste. To describe food as "good" (meaning that you like the taste of it), you should use the word ēngenka instead.

MASS VS. COUNT Something to keep in mind as you explore this section—and throughout your study of High Valyrian—is the distinction between mass nouns and count nouns. Mass nouns are those that refer to large entities as a single, cohesive unit (like rice), whereas count nouns refer to individuable, countable entities (like apples). In general, lunar and solar nouns tend to be count nouns, while terrestrial and aquatic nouns tend to be mass nouns. As a result, a word like havon is best translated as "bread", whereas a word like onjapos is best translated as "the carrot" or "a carrot".

One important type of word you'll be encountering for the first time is a common nominal derivation ending in -illa. These words tend to refer to masses or substances, despite ending with a characteristic lunar -a. Because of that, words ending in -illa are aquatic and not lunar.

As an example, avero you know as the word for "grape". The derivation averilla is the word for "wine". It declines just like vala but takes agreement like lōgor, as shown below:

Ēngenkor averilla "good wine" (Nominative) Ēngenkor averille "good wine" (Accusative) This is one of the oddities of the High Valyrian lexicon, but as -illa words are quite common, it's important to pay special attention to this distinction.