How to Create a Language: Dothraki Inventor Explains | WIRED

David J. Peterson, the language creator for HBO's Game of Thrones, explains how to go about creating a fictional language. David breaks down how he constructed the Dothraki and Valyrian languages, and shows us what you need to think about when creating a language of your own.

Read about Game of Thrones on WIRED.com:

Calculating the Ecological Impact of Game of Thrones' Dragons

What I Learned by Binge-Watching Game of Thrones Backward

Game of Thrones Recap: The Endings We Choose to Believe

David J Peterson created Duolingo's High Valyrian course which you can find here:



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How to Create a Language: Dothraki Inventor Explains | WIRED

[kerovibe]

Meanwhile the guy making languages for guardians of the galaxy. " I am groot".

[ambivalentllamas]

I have an applied linguistics exam in 5 days. watching this doesn’t feel like procrastinating

[Shocktroll]

Met this guy at a convention once, and basically learned he created at least two languages that never even got used. And one of them was for the White Walkers.

[girv]

Some good conlang and linguistics channels for those that are interested:
- Artifexian
- Biblaridion
- Nativlang
- Langfocus
- jan Misali
- Agma Schwa
- Colin Gorrie
- Worldbuilding Notes
- Nakari Speardane
- Xidnaf
- Polymathy
- Simon Roper
- K Klein
- Dr. Geoff Lindsey


David Peterson also has his own channel, as well as the LangTime Studios channel; where he livestreams every Thursday creating conlangs with fellow conlanger Jessie Sams.

[zuko]

The only Dothraki language i know is:

_Alululululululu_

[cecin]

I hope that David make the dothraki on duolingo. I can't believe that you can learn valyrian on duolingo is so amazing.

[cyrusdastoor]

Anyone notice how his thumbs look like normal fingers?

[ZHL]

Wired definitely needs another channel just devoted to linguistics lol

[GabrielMacedo]

Someone needs to teach the Dothraki how to say “I’m outta here this fight ain’t for me chief”. That’s my take

[mariostret]

"and the object is the woman"
just like the Dothraki

[mertensduplooy]

Butterfly in Afrikaans (my first language) is "skoenlapper", which directly translates to "shoe flapper".

[emilykolaja]

As a linguistics student, I am loving all this language-related content lately. I've had the desire to create the basics of my own conlang for a while now, and this really motivated me to get started. I also loved hearing the basics of the subject explained to me again, but in terms of constructing a language rather than studying existing ones. Hoping to see more of David too!

[Mysterialic]

How to say "lol you thought we were all gone pfft" in Dothraki?

[rinhd]

Even after watching I still dont get it how language is made

[ayoubelamrani]

Once you see his thumbs, you can't unsee them.

[Lightologyy]

Here you go guys ♥

1. What is the point?
2. Is it written, spoken, or signed?
3. Sounds.
A. Consonants and Vowels
B. Syllables
C. Stress and Intonation
• Stress Language: English (You have to stress the word by the letters).
• Tone Language: Chinese (The actual pitch that you speak the Vallot is important).
4. Grammer.
- Adjectives
- Adverbs (thee main types)
* Manner, Time, Place
- Prepositions, Postpostitions
- Determiners, Demonstratives
Nouns:-
• Singular vs Plural
• dual or trail
• nothing
• Case
• Gender
• Masculine vs. Feminine
• Big vs. Large
• Living vs. Non-Living
• Natural vs. Non-natural
• Tool vs. Plant
• High Valyrian Nouns
• 4 Numbers
• 8 Cases
• 4 Genders
Verbs
5. Sentence Structure.
“The man [Subject] sees [Verb] the woman [Object].”
Subject + Verb + Object
6. Derivation.
Teach > Teacher
Jelmio [wind] > Jelmazma [big wind]
7. Miscellaneous.
- Writing Systems:-
• Alphabet: Characters for vowels and consonants. [English]
• Abjad: Charactes for consonants only. [Arabic]
• Abugida: Main glyph for a consonant and some sort of a little addition for a vowel. [Hindi]
• Logography: Glyphs that stand for entire word or parts of words or maybe more than one word

depending on how it works [Chinese]
8. Lexicon
The words of the language:-
“Think about riding a horse, starting a fire, and think about what goes into that scenario, what’s happening,

and what will speakers of this language have words for, with respect to that scenario.”
9. Create a reference.
• Grammer and dictionary.

[silentnitedeadlynite]

This guy spent twice the amount of time creating languages used in maybe a couple hundred lines of dialogue, than did Weiss and Benioff creating the whole of season 6.

[JazzyFlo]

"My largest language, Dothraki, has 4, 000 words"

And yet there's no word for "thank you"

I love it 🤣

[mulanfrantic]

"I do syllable mostly because I am not convinced that actors will pull off a tone language correctly."


HAHAHAHA

[dilek]

it was cool to see he recommended to study turkish along with japanese and french because i've realized that dothraki's grammar is similar to turkish. it was a great video!