How to Say "I Love You" in High Valyrian
How to Say "I Love You" in High Valyrian
Quick Answer: The primary phrase for "I love you" in High Valyrian is Avy jorrāelan — avy is the accusative second-person pronoun (you, as the object of the verb), and jorrāelan is the first-person singular present active of jorrāelagon (to love deeply, to cherish). The pronunciation is roughly "AH-vee jor-RAY-eh-lan," with stress on the second syllable of the verb and a clearly held long vowel in jorrā-. Daenerys Targaryen uses this phrase — and variants of it — across Game of Thrones, making it the most recognizable romantic expression in the language.
High Valyrian was built by linguist David J. Peterson for HBO starting in 2012, and it is a fully functioning constructed language with a case system, four grammatical genders, and thousands of attested words. Unlike the fragments of other fictional languages that exist only in glossaries, High Valyrian has enough vocabulary and grammar that you can genuinely construct new sentences from first principles. That includes romantic ones.
This guide covers the phrase itself, its grammatical anatomy, how to pronounce it correctly, additional romantic expressions with verified translations, the cultural context that makes love language so central to the Valyrian tradition, and the scenes from Game of Thrones where these phrases appear.
"Avy Jorrāelan" — The Core Phrase
Avy jorrāelan is the canonical High Valyrian translation of I love you. Every word in it earns its place.
| Word | Role | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Avy | Second-person accusative pronoun | You (as the object — the one being loved) |
| jorrāelan | First-person singular present active | I love |
The verb jorrāelagon is the infinitive — it means to love in the deep, cherishing sense, not casual liking. Peterson chose a distinct root for romantic love rather than repurposing a general-affection word, which gives High Valyrian a precision English lacks: when you say jorrāelagon, the emotional weight is unambiguous.
Notice what is missing: there is no word for I in the sentence. High Valyrian is a pro-drop language, meaning the subject is encoded in the verb ending itself. Jorrāelan already tells you the subject is first-person singular — adding nyke (I) is optional and used only for emphasis. The phrase is complete as two words.
Pronunciation Guide
High Valyrian uses macrons (the bar above vowels like ā, ē, ī, ō, ū) to mark long vowels — they are held approximately twice as long as their short counterparts. This is not an accent mark but a true phonemic distinction. Getting the long vowels right is what separates a recognizable High Valyrian phrase from a muddled approximation.
Syllable Breakdown
| Word | Syllables | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Avy | AH-vee | Short a, short i-sound at the end. Rhymes roughly with "Davey" without the D. |
| jorrāelan | jor-RAY-eh-lan | Four syllables. The rr is a trilled or lightly rolled r. The macron on ā makes the "AY" syllable noticeably long. Final -an is unstressed. |
Full Phrase
Avy jorrāelan — AH-vee jor-RAY-eh-lan
Say it slowly at first: AH-vee (pause) jor-RAY-eh-lan. The natural stress in connected speech falls on RAY, the long-vowel syllable. Once the rhythm is in your ear, the phrase flows naturally.
A note on the j: in High Valyrian, j is pronounced like English y in yet — not like the j in jump. So the verb opens with a soft yor- sound, not a hard jor-. Many learners miss this and it is the most common mispronunciation of the phrase.
The Grammar Behind the Phrase
Understanding why Avy jorrāelan is structured the way it is opens up the rest of High Valyrian grammar for romantic expression.
Why "Avy" and Not "Ao"?
High Valyrian has a full case system, meaning pronouns (and nouns) change their endings depending on their role in the sentence. The second-person pronoun ao is the nominative form — used when you is the subject, the one doing the action. But in I love you, the you is the object of the verb, the one receiving the love. That demands the accusative case, which is avy.
English handles this the same way: we say I love him, not I love he — him is the accusative form of he. High Valyrian is simply more systematic about it, applying this logic across all nouns and pronouns, not just a handful of pronouns.
How the Verb Works
Jorrāelagon follows a regular conjugation pattern. The present active tense conjugates like this for the relevant persons:
| Person | Form | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| First singular | jorrāelan | I love |
| Second singular | jorrāelā | You love |
| Third singular | jorrāelza | He / she / it loves |
| First plural | jorrāelami | We love |
The ending -an marks first-person singular present active across a large class of High Valyrian verbs. Learning this pattern means you can construct dozens of other sentences: sagon (to be) becomes iksan (I am); belmurtan (to miss someone) follows a similar structure. The verb endings do a lot of work so the sentences can stay lean.
The Pro-Drop Feature
As mentioned above, High Valyrian does not require an explicit subject pronoun. Jorrāelan alone means I love — the -an ending encodes the subject. Avy jorrāelan is therefore a complete, grammatical sentence. If you wanted to add emphasis or contrast — I love you, not him — you could say Nyke avy jorrāelan (with nyke = I), but it sounds slightly emphatic rather than neutral.
Additional Romantic Phrases in High Valyrian
The vocabulary attested by David J. Peterson gives us enough material for a range of romantic expressions. The following phrases use documented words; where a construction is reasonable inference from attested grammar rather than a directly quoted utterance, that is noted.
The Essential Phrases
Avy jorrāelan I love you. The core phrase. Two words, maximum weight.
Avy ōños jorrāelan I love you with my soul / I love you with all my spirit. Ōños means soul or spirit. Adding it intensifies the declaration — you are not just loving with your actions or words but with your deepest self.
Issa ñuha sȳr. You are my joy. Sȳr means joy or happiness, and ñuha is the first-person possessive adjective in the lunar gender form. The verb issa is the third-person singular present of sagon (to be) — meaning this sentence has the structure it-is my-joy, where the subject (you, understood from context) triggers the third-person form. High Valyrian handles this differently from English, but the meaning is direct and warm.
Aōhe blēnon issa. You are my heart. Blēnon is heart in the terrestrial gender. Aōhe is the formal or respectful second-person possessive — here used as a more poetic address rather than strict formality. This phrase appears in contexts of deep devotion; its register is closer to you are my heart in the literary sense than a casual everyday expression.
*Avy belmurtan. I miss you. Belmurtan is the infinitive meaning to miss someone — the ache of absence. Conjugated to first-person singular present, the phrase becomes the natural companion to Avy jorrāelan for expressing love across distance. Daenerys's arc across the seasons of Game of Thrones is defined as much by absence and loss as by presence, and this verb captures that emotional register.
Ñuha dāria. My queen. An address, not a full sentence. Dāria is queen in the lunar gender. Paired with the possessive ñuha, it becomes one of the most charged forms of address in the High Valyrian vocabulary — used by devoted followers, lovers, and those who have pledged themselves entirely. When characters address Daenerys as their queen in High Valyrian, the emotional weight carries both political allegiance and personal devotion.
Kirimvose, ñuha sȳr. Thank you, my joy. Kirimvose is the standard High Valyrian word for thank you — direct and attested widely. Combined with the affectionate ñuha sȳr, it becomes a tender expression that mixes gratitude with endearment. The kind of thing said quietly after someone has done something kind.
Avy jorrāelan ao sȳrī. I love you truly / I love you well. Sȳrī is the adverb form of sȳr (good, well). This construction adds the adverb to the base phrase for emphasis — a declaration that the love is genuine rather than polite. The word order follows High Valyrian convention of placing adverbs after the verb phrase.
Cultural Context — Why High Valyrian Has Rich Love Vocabulary
The richness of High Valyrian romantic vocabulary is not accidental. It reflects the world Peterson built the language into.
The Valyrian Freehold and Its Culture
Before the Doom of Valyria, the Valyrian Freehold was the dominant civilization in the known world — a culture built on dragonlords, vast magical knowledge, and a deeply aristocratic social structure. The Freehold valued rhetoric, philosophy, and linguistic precision. High Valyrian was the language of that civilization, the tongue of ceremony, of command, and of intimate exchange between equals. A language used for formal dragon commands and for ruling empires had to be capable of nuance. Its love vocabulary reflects that capacity.
The distinction between casual liking and deep romantic devotion — a distinction High Valyrian encodes explicitly with jorrāelagon — maps onto a culture where love among the dragonlord families was entangled with dynastic politics, magical bonds, and the intimacy of sharing a dragon. The Targaryens, the last surviving dragonlord family, carried both the language and this cultural DNA into Westeros.
The Targaryens and High Valyrian Intimacy
The Targaryens maintained High Valyrian as a private family language across centuries in Westeros. The Andal kingdoms spoke the Common Tongue; within the walls of Dragonstone and the Red Keep, High Valyrian was how Targaryens spoke to each other, to their dragons, and in moments they did not want others to understand.
This makes High Valyrian intimate by structural position in the world. When Daenerys speaks High Valyrian to Khal Drogo — a man who is not Valyrian but who she is trying to reach across every possible cultural and linguistic barrier — the choice of language signals her most private self. She is not addressing him as a queen or a foreigner. She is speaking in the tongue reserved for her closest circle.
House of the Dragon deepens this dynamic. The Targaryen civil war is conducted almost entirely in the Common Tongue, with High Valyrian reserved for dragon commands, private confessions, and moments of genuine emotional honesty. The language functions as a register shift: when a character switches into High Valyrian, something real is being said.
David J. Peterson's Design Philosophy
Peterson has spoken publicly about building emotional register into conlangs. He created High Valyrian knowing it would be used for drama — for commands to dragons, for public speeches, for intimate moments. He gave it a sound palette that feels ancient and aristocratic: the long vowels, the rolled consonants, the case system that rewards careful construction. When you say Avy jorrāelan correctly, the phrase feels earned. The grammar makes you think about who is loving whom and in what way. That is a design choice.
Peterson designed the language to be learnable, not just speakable by actors. This is why High Valyrian has a Duolingo course with millions of active learners, why there are active lexicography communities cataloguing every utterance from both shows, and why the attested vocabulary now runs into the thousands of entries. The love vocabulary exists because Peterson gave the language the architecture for it to exist.
Daenerys Romantic Scenes — The Language in Context
Daenerys Targaryen is the character most associated with High Valyrian emotional expression across Game of Thrones. Her arc involves using the language to bridge impossible distances — between cultures, between species, between her sense of self and the world's expectations of her.
Daenerys and Khal Drogo
The early seasons of Game of Thrones establish Daenerys and Drogo's relationship as one defined by barriers: of language, of culture, of power. Daenerys begins the series speaking no Dothraki and relying on translation. She also begins as someone whose High Valyrian has been kept in her head as an inheritance but not yet tested in the world.
As Daenerys and Drogo develop genuine intimacy, the linguistic dynamic shifts. She begins learning Dothraki — meeting him in his language — while he hears her High Valyrian not as the speech of a foreign queen but as the private language of the woman he loves. The phrase Avy jorrāelan carries the weight of this entire arc when it appears. It is not a ceremonial declaration but a private one, said in the language her ancestors reserved for their innermost circle.
Drogo's death in Season 1 is one of the most linguistically marked grief moments in the series. Daenerys speaks to him in High Valyrian in his final scenes — returning to the language of inheritance when the Dothraki world has failed to protect what she loved.
Daenerys as the Speaker of the Language
What makes Daenerys's High Valyrian distinctive as a dramatic device is that she uses it across registers: for dragon commands (Dracarys), for public liberation speeches (Astapor, Meereen), and for private emotional disclosure. The same language does all three things. When she says Avy jorrāelan, it sits in the same linguistic home as Dracarys — the language of her blood, her dragons, and her most essential self.
House of the Dragon extends this by showing High Valyrian love language in the generation before Daenerys. Rhaenyra Targaryen's intimate scenes use the language in similar ways — as the register of genuine feeling within a world of political speech. The love vocabulary is not decoration. It is the signal that something true is being said.
How to Use These Phrases in Context
Knowing the words is one layer. Using them naturally requires understanding when each phrase fits.
Avy jorrāelan is a declaration — the equivalent of a serious, sincere I love you in English. It is not a casual endearment. If you are writing a High Valyrian love letter, carving something for a tattoo, or memorizing a phrase to say to someone who shares your passion for these languages, this is the phrase.
Ñuha dāria or ñuha vala (my queen / my man) work as forms of address — what you call someone, not a statement about your feelings. They function like darling or my love in English: everyday endearments that carry affection without the gravity of a full declaration.
Avy belmurtan — I miss you — is for absence. High Valyrian has a dedicated verb for missing someone, which says something about the culture: separation was a real and documented emotional state worth naming precisely. Use this one in writing, in messages, in the gap between meetings.
Kirimvose (thank you) followed by an affectionate address — Kirimvose, ñuha sȳr — is the warm-but-not-overwhelming option. Gratitude plus endearment: the register of a long relationship that has settled into ease.
For those interested in how these phrases look written out, the Valyrian script used in the show's production design (not to be confused with Tengwar, Tolkien's Elvish script) has a distinctive aesthetic that has become popular for tattoos and calligraphy. If you are considering a High Valyrian tattoo, always verify the phrase with a primary source before committing it to skin — there are many inaccurate "translations" circulating online.
A Note on Attestation
High Valyrian is an active, growing language with a living creator. David J. Peterson updates the vocabulary, answers questions through the Living Language resources he created, and maintains canonical authority over the language. The phrases in this article are drawn from attested vocabulary — words Peterson has confirmed and which appear in the shows or in his published resources.
Where a phrase involves combining attested words in a new construction (rather than quoting a directly shown utterance), this guide notes that. The grammar is stable enough and the vocabulary rich enough that such constructions are reliable, but they are distinct from a line Emilia Clarke actually spoke on camera.
If you are doing serious study of High Valyrian, the Dothraki Wiki's High Valyrian lexicon and Peterson's own records are the primary sources. Tengwar's AI tutor can help you explore the language interactively and will flag uncertainty rather than invent words.
Practice the language of dragons with Tengwar's AI tutor at /learn.
People Also Ask
How do you say "my queen" in High Valyrian?
Ñuha dāria means "my queen" in High Valyrian. Dāria is the word for queen (lunar gender) and ñuha is the first-person possessive adjective in the matching gender form. This is one of the most charged forms of address in High Valyrian — used both for political devotion and personal love by characters throughout Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon.
What does "jorrāelagon" mean in High Valyrian?
Jorrāelagon is the High Valyrian infinitive meaning "to love" — specifically in the deep, devoted, romantic sense rather than casual affection. The root jorrāel- carries this weight consistently. When conjugated to first-person singular present, it becomes jorrāelan (I love), as in Avy jorrāelan (I love you).
Is High Valyrian hard to learn?
High Valyrian has real grammatical complexity — a four-gender noun system, a full case system with eight cases, and verb conjugations that encode person and number. However, the sound system is accessible to English speakers, the vocabulary is learnable in manageable chunks, and David J. Peterson designed the language to be studyable as well as speakable. Many learners find the Duolingo High Valyrian course a solid starting point.
How do you say "thank you" in High Valyrian?
Kirimvose is the standard High Valyrian word for "thank you." It appears throughout Game of Thrones in contexts both formal and informal, and it is one of the most immediately usable words in the language. Pronunciation: kee-RIM-voh-seh, with stress on the second syllable.
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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
How do you say "I love you" in High Valyrian?
The primary phrase is "Avy jorrāelan" — literally "I love you" with avy as the accusative second-person pronoun and jorrāelan as the first-person singular present of jorrāelagon (to love). Daenerys says a variant of this to Drogo in Game of Thrones.
What does "Avy jorrāelan" mean?
Avy jorrāelan means "I love you" in High Valyrian. Avy is the accusative form of the second-person pronoun (you, as the object), and jorrāelan is the verb "to love" conjugated in the first-person singular present active. The verb root jorrāel- carries the meaning of loving with deep affection.
Are there other romantic phrases in High Valyrian?
Yes — "Avy ōños jorrāelan" (I love you with all my heart/soul), "Issa ñuha sȳr" (you are my joy), and "Aōhe blēnon issa" (you are my heart). Daenerys Targaryen uses several loving phrases across Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon.
Did Daenerys say "I love you" in High Valyrian on Game of Thrones?
Yes. Daenerys speaks High Valyrian throughout Game of Thrones, and several of her intimate exchanges with Khal Drogo and later romantic partners include loving phrases. While the exact wording varies across scripts and subtitles, the phrase "Avy jorrāelan" is attested as the canonical "I love you" in David J. Peterson's High Valyrian.
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