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Author
George R. R. Martin is an American who was born to a family of mixed Italian and Irish ancestry
and grew up in Bayonne, New Jersey. He attended college and university at Northwestern in
Evanston, Illinois, and now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, but his accent has been described as
remaining a "gravelly New Jersey" one.[5] While Westeros has regional accents, he only includes
elements of them since "that way lies madness";[6] therefore, his own pronunciations are probably
"wrong".[7] He agrees with those who feel English accents work better for fantasy works: "It is
full of castles and lords and swords and knights and all the other trappings we associate with
England in this country. It seems natural. It would be hard to do with a group of actors who had
thick Southern accents".[8]
Game of Thrones
Within the television show Game of Thrones, accents generally reflect the region and class of the
characters. (A specific class-based difference noted within the show is that the lords themselves
carefully enunciate "my lord" as two words whereas commoners slur them into a monosyllabic
"m'lud".[9]) Westerosi accents generally reflect those of Britain, from Northern among the First
Men of the north and beyond the Wall to Welsh influence in the Vale to posh RP accents among
the Andal nobility and clergy of the westerlands and crownlands. Essos comprises the rest of
Eurasia and characters from its regions have spoken with Mediterranean (Braavos), Germanic
(Lorath), and loosely Arabic accents (Dothraki).[10] The more peculiar accents of the Essos
characters reflect that the Common Tongue (i.e., English) is not their native language.[11] These
general differences have several notable exceptions among the actors: Eddard Stark's children
speak with southern British accents while Samwell Tarly (from Horn Hill, south of Highgarden)
speaks with John Bradley-West's Mancunian dialect. Asshai is nowhere near Lorath but
Melisandre speaks with Carice van Houten's native Dutch accent.[10]
The show hired the linguist David J. Peterson to flesh out Essos's Dothraki language.[12] He then
went on to create Valyrian from only three phrases appearing in the books: dracarys, valar
morghulis, and valar dohaeris. He runs a blog detailing the grammar of the two languages[13] and
provides translations of (and audio files for) Martin's books and the actors' lines[14] but his
pronunciations are not necessarily canonical: showrunners opted against his pronunciation of
khaleesi, actors change phrasings and vocalizations, and editors clip sentences during post-
production.[12]
Audio Books
All of the audiobooks of the series have now been read by Roy Dotrice, OBE, the British actor
who played Hallyne the Pyromancer in season 2 of the television show. Owing to scheduling
issues, A Feast for Crows was also initially read by John Lee, who speaks an Irish-tinged British
English.[15] Martin credited the audiobooks with having consulted him on most of the 'hard'
names and getting them right, but noted that they "then went and got all the easy ones wrong".[7]
Guide
For help understanding the pronunciations, see IPA for English[16] and the pronunciation
respelling key at Wikipedia.[17] For further information on dialectical differences, see IPA for
English dialects.
Given Names
For surnames, see Houses below
The "r" of the Japanese language is of particular interest, ranging between an apical central tap and
a lateral approximant. The "g" is also notable; unless it starts a sentence, it may be pronounced [ŋ],
in the Kanto prestige dialect and in other eastern dialects.