Linguist who created 'Game of Thrones' languages will explain it all at Duquesne University
When it comes to the final season of HBO's smash hit “Game of Thrones,” linguist David Peterson is as tight-lipped as the rest of the cast and crew.
He's not giving up any spoilers, but the man who created the Dothraki and Valyrian languages spoken by characters like Khal Drogo and Daenaerys Targaryen will give some insight into how he developed their words and grammar Feb. 22 at Duquesne University.
“When it comes to the sound of those two languages in particular, the sound was entirely guided by the material that appears in George R.R. Martin's books,” said Peterson, 37, who lives in California. “Everything I do is just a continuation of that logical idea.”
In addition to Dothraki and both the “high” and “low” forms of Valyrian, Peterson — who earned his master's degree in linguistics at U.C. San Diego — also created the language spoken by Wun Wun the giant, along with two other languages that did not make it into the show.
The most important consideration? Grammar.
“You have to create every bit of grammar you'd need to translate something,” he said. “Whatever I'm translating, there's a good chance that it'll need some sort of grammatical creation.”
Words and phrases are much simpler, and can be created and dropped in on the fly. In creating the languages, Peterson said he didn't need to draw on any existing language.
“I just do what I want,” he said. “The sound of the language has nothing to do with the grammar. A lot of the time, I do what seems like fun to me, because I'm the one doing the translation. So it needs to be something I want to use or something I feel will be a challenge.”
Peterson said Valryian translation is becoming easier for him, particularly since launching a DuoLingo focused on the language last summer.
Peterson has been creating languages since 2000, and they include Shiväisith, the language of the villains in Marvel's “Thor: The Dark World”; the language of the orcs in the 2016 film “Warcraft: The Beginning; as well as two languages for characters in the recent Will Smith Netflix film “Bright.”
He estimated he has created 50 unique languages over the years. When it comes to “Game of Thrones,” he's partial to the guttural rumbling of Dothraki.
“I've spent more with with it than the others,” he said.
Peterson will appear at the Bayer School's Pappert Lecture Hall at 7 p.m. He will discuss how understanding the history of language helps to emulate realistic linguistic evolution.
“The way you produce realistic inflections and realistic grammatical constructions is by evolving the grammar, much in the way that our languages have evolved over the years,” Peterson said.
Duquesne University is at 600 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh.
