David Petersen: Language Creator for HBO's Game of Thrones

David Petersen is an American linguist and language creator. He has studied over 20 "Earth" languages, and created more than 40 artificial languages for tv and movies, including Dothraki and Valyrian for HBO's hit show Game of Thrones, based on George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire.

Additionally, David has created the languages for Thor: The Dark World, Syfy's Defiance, CW's Star-Crossed and The 100, Dominion, Penny Dreadful, The Shannara Chronicles, Warcraft: the Beginning, Doctor Strange, and Emerald City.

He is the author of Living Language Dothraki and The Art of Language Invention, and is the co-founder of the Language Creation Society.

We cover a lot of fascinating topics in this episode including:

• JRR Tolkien's contribution to modern language creation

• The workflow of sound development between himself and Hollywood show creators

• Winning a language creation contest to land his first job with Game of Thrones

• The linguistic rules and framework for creating a "realistic" fake language, and what makes a made-up movie language sound fake

• Why language creation is living art that is never finished

• Why the languages from Star Wars were all "crappily" done

• The process of teaching an actor how to speak a new language

• The Game of Thrones character he thinks speaks the best Valyrian

• And so much more!