content: 
  ==Derivative languages==
  In the world of the novel and TV series, the Nine Free Cities of Essos speak variants of High Valyrian, described by the character Tyrion in ''A Dance with Dragons'' as "not so much a dialect as nine dialects on the way to becoming separate tongues". The cities of Slaver's Bay speak related languages, descended from High Valyrian with the substrate of the local Ghiscari languages. Peterson noted that with regard to the vocabulary of the derived languages, "If it’s got a j in an odd place, it’s probably Ghiscari in origin."
  Peterson described the relationship between High Valyrian and the Free Cities languages as being similar to that between classical Latin and the Romance languages, or more accurately between Classical Arabic and the modern varieties of Arabic, in that High Valyrian is intelligible, with some difficulty, to a speaker of a local Essoan language.