Living Language Dothraki | David Peterson | Talks at Google

M'athchomaroon! David Peterson is the linguist behind Dothraki, as used in HBO's "Game of Thrones." He speaks to Googlers about the process behind inventing languages. Athdavrazar!

David J. Peterson was born in Long Beach, California in 1981. He attended UC Berkeley from 1999 to 2003, and received a B.A. in English and a B.A. in Linguistics. He then attended UC San Diego from 2003 to 2006, where he received an M.A. in Linguistics. He's been creating languages since 2000, and working on the HBO original series Game of Thrones since 2009. In 2011, he became the alien language and culture consultant for the Syfy original series Defiance. In 2013, he joined the crew of the CW's Star-Crossed and also Syfy's Dominion as a language creator. In 2007, he helped to found the Language Creation Society, of which David has remained a proud member. He is also the author of The Art of Language Invention, to be published by Penguin Books in 2015.

[Officialhelpkenet]

How can there be so few in the audience?! This was so interesting.

[mephostopheles]

I could listen to this dude talk about languages and linguistics for *decades.*

[GranColombiaball]

So since you spoke to Google... is the Dothraki Language available in Google Translate now?

[mastermind]

the language he created for the 100 was even better in my opinion us 100 fans love it. It's called Trideslang and David has somehow managed to transform and mutate the English language, It's incredible

[samanthabancroft]

This guy's awesome. Mad respect. I love Game of Thrones. I'm so going to buy that Dothraki book. He should write a book on the Valyrian languages as well. I really want to learn and be fluent in both Dothraki and High Valyrian. =)

[israellai]

This is like the only instance of a linguist achieving star-like status...

[mrrodgers]

Perhaps "kemis" could be used as a euphemism for the scrotum/testicles? (the resemblance is uncanny, after all) If so, I'd imagine the sentence "Anha nithak kemisoon" would be preeety common after a long day's ride.

[Ken]

I'm disappointed that there are no videos of kids speaking Dothraki as a first language. I thought you people were fans.

[Hwyadylaw]

Remember kids, don't do morphemes!

[zexonhairi]

o.o I'm still proud of j.r.r tolkein for making Quenya/elvish by himself.

[DougJackson-gpyq]

As someone who is in the process of creating a conlang for an RPG I've created, your videos have been extremely helpful - Multa pued (many thanks)

[leslieshE]

the reverse order of adj comes after noun is what we do in France ( ex : a STRONG boy in english becomes un garçon FORT in french )

[SaneMillennial]

Wow, very informative speech.  Very cool to hear how you come about the structure of the languages and all the looks you created.  I was wondering how the actors manage to learn new languages and how indepth their learning go, as far as do they only bother to learn their exact lines, or is there an underlying understanding of the words?  Seems like it's the latter.

[kryssimarie]

For me, I take issue with a language that both relies on strict word order but still retains noun declensions. I wonder if he added any homonyms to the language. Very happy to see the full phonological inventory. It's a shame the sounds were restricted to what was explicitly present in the books and not extended via the principles of language change.

[nantenin]

Some of these words are very similar to Arabic and Hebrew

[aarondavenport]

This guy is amazing, but i'm not satisfied with his answer to that man's question about prosody.  I don't think he was trying to ask why the language wasn't intonation based like Mandarin but more of the general cadence/rhythm of the language. Also French being stress timed is likely to be the remnant of the celtic language once spoken in Gaul. Nobody ever seems to make that connection

[MisterSketch]

at 45:19 that's Nick Farmer the language creator for the tv show 'The Expanse'!

[Riurelia]

Interesting talk!
31:12 Fun fact: in Dakota, the word for horse is "šuŋktháŋka" which means big dog.

[oliverchannelle]

I can't believe he had the hairstyle even as a freshman

[RichardDCook]

The first book emphasizes that the Dothraki place importance on doing actions under the open sky. Does the Dothraki language have a verb aspect which divides actions into the categories of actions taking place in the open, and actions taking place inside tents/shelters/buildings?