Khaleesi
Dothraki
Etymology
Source
Coined by George R. R. Martin in the book A Game of Thrones.
Source Spelling
khaleesi
Pronunciation
Noun
khaleesi (nominative singular, animate, plural khaleesisi)
- wife of a khal
Inflection
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| Nominative | khaleesi | khaleesisi |
| Accusative | khaleesies | |
| Genitive | khaleesisi | |
| Allative | khaleesisaan | khaleesisea |
| Ablative | khaleesisoon | khaleesisoa |
Related Terms
Creation and Usage Notes
| This word...
In the beginning, I determined that if George R. R. Martin spelled a word differently, it should have a different pronunciation. Thus the "mh" in mhar should be different from the regular old "m" in Mago. This meant that there was no way that the "ee" and the "i" of khaleesi could be pronounced the same. I took this as a sign and decided that the double "e" would be pronounced like the Spanish word creer—that is doubly. The result is as written above: [ˈxaleesi]. Stress on the first syllable and only the last syllable has the [i] pronunciation. Naturally I assumed that once I made this decision, informed as it was by my analysis of the books, the show would do what I say without questioning it. This proved to be a mistake. Not only was the "ee" not pronounced the right way, but the stress isn't where it should be, and the [x] gets pronounced like a [k]. An absolute mess. Part of this was on the first dialect coach, who told me that the actors were having a hard time with it:
I've since learned to accept the utter nonsense dialect coaches spew, but I was absolutely livid when I read this. Of course this was not acceptable! How about instead of pronouncing it wrong they try pronouncing it right? MAYBE THAT WOULD BE GOOD. Anyway, that was about the level of excellence I could rely on during season one. Turns out things didn't change too much in season two. Or three. Or four. Or five through eight. Or in just about any other show or movie I ever worked on. Nevertheless it was a bit heartbreaking as I was starting out. It wasn't this specific dialect coach's fault (or the faults of any of the successive dialect coaches I've had to work with). The simple fact is that no one knows the language better than the creator, and no one cares about it the way the creator does. There's no oversight, since no one knows any different on set, and it's easy to go with what feels good, because it makes everyone feel like they've accomplished something. It stands to reason that the only way to get a good result is to have the language creator work with the cast and be there on set. I mean, this should be absurdly obvious, but talking to many producers, directors, or show runners, you'd think I was suggesting I should design the costumes. Naturally, the incorrect pronunciation has become well known and has stuck—to the point that when I came out with Living Language Dothraki, HBO forced me to list [xaˈlisi] as an acceptable alternate pronunciation. (In fact, they originally wanted me to list it as the only acceptable pronunciation until I proved to them that a few of the actors had actually pronounced it correctly onscreen.) What burns me is that if I had know that my pronunciation wasn't going to enjoy any success, I could have simply changed the pronunciation, breaking my original rule to honor George R. R. Martin's spelling. I would have spelled that word khalisi, for consistency. I could even have stressed it on the second syllable, reasoning that the stress would be there as a result of the affixation (I do have another affix that always drags stress to an unusual spot). That's on me. I failed to anticipate how infrequently my wishes would be honored and so plowed ahead with [ˈxaleesi], to my eternal shame. The joke, of course, is that George R. R. Martin spelled it "khaleesi" because he pronounces those last two vowels differently—as [kɑˈlisai] (that is kah-LEE-sigh). He may have changed his pronunciation now that the word has become so famous, but that is definitely how he originally pronounced it. No one could've guessed that. Every few months someone raises the fact that a bunch of people are naming their daughters Khaleesi and they want to know how I feel about it, as if I have any personal investment in the matter. The word, of course, is not my word; it's George R. R. Martin's word. Second, it's not even pronounced the way I intended it to be pronounced. And third, it's not even a name! At least not in the original. It's a title. It'd be like honoring Queen Elizabeth or Queen Victoria by naming your daughter Queen. Kind of embarrassing, if you ask me. But, hey, it's cool that people are getting creative with names. I wish people would get more creative with names, in general, and that that creativity were honored. If someone were to take one of the Dothraki words that I actually created and make a name based on it using traditional Dothraki naming strategies, I would be honored. It was why I was so touched when Bryan Cogman named a new Dothraki character Kovarro in season two. That was based on a word I created! I thought that was great. To top things all off, I completely, totally blew this word. I totally blew it. I designed the entire Dothraki case system around this word and simply forgot. In Dothraki, animate plurals are formed with -i if the root ends with a consonant, and -si if ends with a vowel. As you'll note, khaleesi ends with [si], resulting in the ridiculous plural/genitive khaleesisi. That was intentional! I was supposed to delete reduplicated sequences and move the stress, so that the singular would be [ˈxaleesi] and the plural [xaleeˈsi]. It was going to be cool! But then I redid how I was going to do stress, and I completely forgot about it, and so I ended up with khaleesisi. Ugh. What a mess. So yeah. Not my favorite word. Or memory. -David J. Peterson 18:05, 1 April 2020 (PDT) |