The Wheel of Time’s Dónal Finn on Learning to Speak the ‘Old Tongue’

If your story’s taking place in a fantasy realm, chances are there are going to be some made-up fantasy languages in the mix. Think Elvish in Lord of the Rings, or High Valyrian in Game of Thrones—important world-building elements that also bring a sense of history and diversity to the setting and characters. The Wheel of Time has its own equivalent fantasy languages, and the upcoming season three sees one of the main characters, Dónal Finn’s Mat Cauthon, realizing he has the ability to speak one of them.

In previous seasons, Mat tangled with a magical dagger that “spoke” to him in a nefarious way. But as Wheel of Time fans will recall, season two’s big climax saw Mat forge a connection with another, more benevolently powerful magical artifact: the Horn of Valere, which summons dead warriors from the past to help turn the tide of important battles. He’s now one of the Heroes of the Horn and is linked to its legacy. As we see in season three, it also means he’s now fluent in the Old Tongue.

Speaking to Finn at a recent Wheel of Time press day, io9 asked what it was like getting to flex his acting skills by speaking lines in an entirely new language.

“I have so much admiration for the team that worked behind the scenes to make a reality,” Finn said. “One of them being Naomi Joy Todd, who is our dialect coach for accent work. She’s also deeply committed to making something real in the language. Just understanding, like, this is the root of the verb—so if you’re stressing what you’re going to do in this new language, that this is the kernel of the sentence. Or, the influences of sound: what accents [that] exist in our worlds would have brought us closer to the sound of that fictional place.”

He continued. “There’s elements of Russian and Bulgarian, kind of, in the tone of it. So listening to that and then listening to that language in practice, but then using something that is completely new—the detail, the amount of commitment to make that feel real [was impressive].”

The Wheel of Time returns to Prime Video March 13.

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