I’m questioning the coherence of the thread title here in CS. For reasons that I won’t go into unless asked, I don’t consider Game of Thrones threads suitable for me to bother with.
Still, I’ve been confused about the title of that thread for quite some time. To the best of my knowledge, Valar was the word for the angelic powers/entities who played a role in the development of Middle Earth to make it suitable for habitation, and was invented by Tolkien.
Did George R. R. Martin appropriate the word for his Song of Ice and Fire books? It just seems weird to me that a discussion of non-Tolkien works should be employing the word.
While it is impossible to avoid ripping off Tolkien, or to avoid getting accused of such, the same work is allowed to exist in two languages. I trust that GRRM is familiar with the LOTR backstory, but it seems premature to assume a ripoff. It means “all men,” or “all men must” and is usually finished with morghulis “(must) die” or dohaeris “(must) serve.”
Yes. But just the fictional word, not its definition. In Martin’s world the phrase ‘valar morghulis’ is frequently mentioned, which in book terms just translates into ‘all men must die.’ The almost as frequently mentioned common response phrase is ‘valar dohaeris’ - ‘all men must serve.’ It has nothing to do with Tolkienesque Valar, but rather derives from a culture and language called Valyrian, which itself presumably translates into some approximation of ‘the people.’
Valar Hiatus is just a jokey and perfectly appropriate title to discuss behind the scenes goings on like new casting between seasons of the TV show.
It’s coming from the idea that the “-is” suffix in morghulis and dohaeris is an indicator of an imperative mood. It’s a little silly to try to apply it to the thread title in question since the thread title was never intended to be an actual snippet of Valyrian or whatever language the Free Cities speak.
