I ' m not sure if anyone actually knows . <| sep |> Yeah , I study history , so change over time is a pretty important detail that I look for in books . I don ' t expect every fantasy author to be like JRR Tolkien and create dozens of languages for the world for the sake of realism , but I do wish more writers would be cognizant of the fact that nothing stays static and everything in the world is constantly changing , especially on the scale of a continent like Westeros . A way GRRM could have gotten around this problem is by having the Targaryens after the Conquest promote a single language , possibly one spoken around King ' s Landing , among the nobles . So all the nobles would speak this common tongue , much like how Latin and later French operated among the European nobles and elites . A Stark would be able to communicate with a Lannister , but probably would not be able to talk with an illiterate peasant in the Westerlands . Or GRRM could have made Westeros a lot smaller , so a common tongue could exist .