David J. Peterson is the president of the Language Creation Society which specializes in the creation of constructed languages, or "conlangs", from scratch. Peterson has worked in this field since 2000.
Prior to Game of Thrones
Peterson grew up with his mother in Orange County, California, bilingual in both English and Spanish (his family was from Mexico).
At first he showed little interest in language study, but one day in junior high school he woke from a bizarre dream which left him upset that millions of people in the world could speak French but he couldn't. Thus he vowed to learn every language in the world, and threw himself into language studies.
During his first year at UC Berkeley, Peterson took a class on the constructed language Esperanto. While in class he realized there was nothing stopping him from inventing his own language, so he started making one up to share with his girlfriend (though she wasn't interested in learning it).
Working on Game of Thrones
On 12 April 2010 HBO confirmed that Peterson was fleshing out the Dothraki language into a fully-fledged conlang for use in the series, with a vocabulary of over a thousand words.
Starting in Season 3, Peterson began developing the High Valyrian and Low Valyrian languages.
In February 2014, Peterson reached an agreement with Viking Penguin to write a book about conlanging, entitled How to Invent a Language. The book will include material on the Dothraki and Valyrian languages. Peterson will continue to work on Game of Thrones, though he estimates that writing the book will use up most of his free time in 2014.[1]
Constructed languages Peterson has created
Peterson has created over 30 constructed languages since 2000, including several used in TV series and films.
Languages in Game of Thrones
- Dothraki
- High Valyrian
- Ghiscari Low Vayrian (including Astapori and Meereenese dialects)
Peterson also worked out a language for the White Walkers to speak, Skroth, but it was scrapped in the final version of the TV series in favor of using sound effects to portray the inhuman sounds that the White Walkers make. He also did a brief sketch of the Asshai'i language, but it isn't audible in Season 1, and he has said he doesn't feel beholden to his earlier work and if he had to develop prominent Asshai'i dialogue in later seasons he would re-invent the language from scratch.
Languages in other projects
Peterson also developed the separate alien languages for the Syfy Channel TV series Defiance, which premiered in 2013. Peterson developed two full languages, for the Castithans (Kastithanu) and the Irathients (L'Irathi), as well as basic outline sketches of the Indogene and Liberata languages (Indojisnen and Yanga Kayang, respectively).
See also
David J. Peterson on Wikipedia
David J. Peterson on IMDb- The Language Creation Society website.
- David Peterson's personal website.
- The Dothraki language website.
- Interview (audio only) with David J. Peterson, where he explains the process of developing a new language.
- Peterson's blog on Dothraki in the TV series
References
- ↑ "J. Peterson's blog, Dothraki.com, Febraruy 3rd, 2014