Wait, what?
Ever since Game of Thrones began, Daenerys Targaryen has been known by many titles.
Mother of Dragons. Breaker of Chains. Daenerys Stormborn.
And, of course, Khaleesi.
Many Game of Thrones fans (including us) have been pronouncing Khaleesi as Ka-LEE-see. But it turns out we’re all wrong – according to none other than the guy who invited Dothraki.
David Peterson, the creator of all of the languages on Game of Thrones, explained the real pronunciation on The Allusionist podcast earlier this week.
He said:
“I wanted to make sure if something [in Game of Thrones’ Dothraki] was spelled differently, it was pronounced differently.
“That worked pretty well for everything except the word ‘Khaleesi’. Which is just a real thorn in my side.
“There’s no way it should be pronounced ‘ka-LEE-see’ based on the spelling.”
….say what now?
Peterson 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.
“Changing the spelling to ‘Khalisi’ would have fixed all my problems. ‘EE’ and ‘I’ can’t be pronounced the same because they’re spelled differently.”
According to the language expert, it’s meant to be more like HA-LAY-eh-see, with the ‘K’ being silent.
He also explained that the ‘eesi’ part of the word comes from an “old word that means woman”. So, literally, the world Khaleesi translates to female Khal.
Guess that’s us told.
Game of Thrones returns to Sky Atlantic and NOW TV on April 15.
