Astapori Valyrian Grammar

Astapori Valyrian Language Navigation: Home, Phonology, Grammar, Vocabulary, Dictionary, Dialogue

David J. Peterson has not revealed as much about Astapori Valyrian as he has High Valyrian. Therefore much of the information here will be speculative.

Unlike High Valyrian, nouns belong to one of only two genders (celestial and terrestrial) that have no relationship to sexual gender. Most humans are of the celestial gender, however they can be either feminine or masculine. E.g. both vala "man" and abra "woman" are of celestial gender. They can inflect for one of two grammatical numbers (singular and plural).

Vocabulary

Main article: Astapori Valyrian Vocabulary

Main article: Astapori Valyrian Dictionary

Phonology

Main article: Astapori Valyrian Phonology

Consonants

		Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Nasal		m [m]		n [n]	(n [n̠ ~ ŋ ~ ɴ])
Plosive	voiceless	p [p]		t [t]		k [k]	q [q]
Plosive	voiced	b [b]		d [d]		g [g]
Fricative	voiceless		(th [θ])	s [s]		(kh [x ~ χ])?		h [h]
Fricative	voiced	v [v]	dh [ð]	z [z]	j [ʒ]	gh [ɣ ~ ʁ]
Lateral				l [l]
Rhotic				r [ɾ]

Notes:

[n̠], [ŋ] and [ɴ] are in parentheses because they are not phonemes, but allophones of /n/. The phoneme /n/ assimilates to a following velar, uvular, or possibly even palatal consonant.
[θ] is in parentheses because it occurs only in words of foreign origin, e.g. Dothraki [ˈdoθraki] "Dothraki."
[x ~ χ] is in parentheses because if it occurs at all (we have no certain attestations) it is only in loanwords. However, if Kraznys mo Nakloz and Missandei are any indication, some speakers may realize /ɣ/ as [x].

Vowels

Astapori Valyrian has 6 phonetically distinct vowels:

	Front	Back
Close	i [i], y [y]	u [u]
Mid	e [e]	o [o]
Open	a [a]

Diphthongs

Unlike High Valyrian, Astapori Valyrian has few diphthongs, and such as there are occur rarely. High Valyrian diphthongs generally smoothed out into single vowels, for example HV hae "as" → AV he. However, it appears that HV āe becomes AV ae, as in āeksio → aeske (on the other hand, it does smoothe in dāerves → derve). The diphthong ao is attested in the word vaovaori (the meaning of which is uncertain: it may be "mewling"), and it is likely that at least in some cases this is the outcome of HV āo. Aeske also shows that short "rising diphthongs" regularly smooth out at the end of a word, but it is not clear if this happens in all positions, or how rising diphthongs with a long vowel are affected.

Gender

There are two genders in Astapori Valyrian:

Celestial
Terrestrial

As a general principle, most nouns end in a vowel, with most of the rest ending in -r.

There is no exact equivalence between the genders and semantic categories, but there are some general tendencies:

Celestial mostly words for humans vala "man," abra "woman," animals atruske "owl," zaldrize "dragon," occupations azanty "soldier," voktys "priest," and body parts pungo "nose".
Terrestrial is mostly used for foodstuffs havor "food," liquids jedhor "water," and plants and metals braedhe "copper".