David J. Peterson

• 1. Introduction

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  David J. Peterson built languages for worlds that do not exist. In 2009, HBO needed a language for the Dothraki people in Game of Thrones, and they turned to an organization Peterson had co-founded just two years earlier: the Language Creation Society. He entered the contest to create that language. He won. That victory set in motion a career unlike almost any other in entertainment, with Peterson eventually crafting tongues for creatures, elves, angels, witches, vampires, Santa Claus, aliens, and Kryptonians. How does someone become a professional language inventor? And what does it actually take to build a language from nothing?

• 2. From Berkeley to Dothraki

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  Peterson was born in Long Beach, California, on the 20th of January 1981. His father was of German descent and his mother of Mexican descent. At the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied from 1999 to 2003, he earned bachelor's degrees in both English and linguistics. It was during those Berkeley years, in 2000, that he first encountered constructed languages by attending an Esperanto class. He then pursued a master's degree in linguistics at the University of California, San Diego, completing it in 2006. By 2007, he and nine fellow language creators had co-founded the Language Creation Society. He would serve as its president from 2011 to 2014. When HBO came to that society in 2009 looking for someone to invent Dothraki, Peterson entered and won the competition.

• 3. The Game of Thrones Catalogue

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  Peterson's work on Game of Thrones ran from 2011 to 2019 and produced far more languages than most viewers ever heard. Beyond Dothraki itself, he built High Valyrian, a literary language once spoken in Valyria, and two regional descendants of it: Astapori Valyrian and Meereenese Valyrian. He invented Mag Nuk, the language of giants, though it appeared in only a single line. Several languages he created for the series were never actually used on screen, among them Skroth for the White Walkers, Asshai for the Asshai'i, Lhazareen as a sister tongue to Dothraki, and Gerna Mohr for the Children of the Forest. In 2019, he expanded the Valyrian world further by creating a free High Valyrian course on Duolingo. When House of the Dragon premiered in August 2022, he expanded that Duolingo course again and introduced a new logoconsonantal script called Nekesse Valyrio for the language.

• 4. Writing Systems by the Dozen

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  One of the less obvious dimensions of Peterson's craft is the volume of original writing systems he has designed alongside the languages themselves. For the science fiction series Defiance, which ran from 2013 to 2015, he built four alien languages and gave three of them their own writing systems: an abugida for Castithan called Fajizwalino, one for Irathient called Izra, a syllabary for Indogenes called Hazugimari, and an alphabet for the Omec called Zaduusel. The 2014 series Star-Crossed added Sondiv, with its own abjad called Kwandon. For Bright in 2017, he designed an abugida for the elvish language Ovusi, plus a separate abjad called Vukht and a Cyrillic alphabet for the orcish language Bodzvokhan. The Dune films brought Chakobsa, the language of the Fremen, along with its own abugida named Dinlih and a corresponding sign language. Peterson also created a sign language for House Atreides in those films.

• 5. Breadth Across Genres

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  Peterson's client list spans every genre imaginable. For the Syfy series Dominion in 2014 and 2015, he invented Lishepus, a language the angels designed specifically to exclude humans, built on Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Afroasiatic roots; he also translated lines into the real ancient language Akkadian for one episode. For The 100, which ran from 2015 to 2020, he created Trigedasleng, a Grounder language descended from a cryptolect rooted in American English, and a modified variant of it called Ripasleng for the Reapers. Penny Dreadful in 2015 required Verbis Diablo, the language of witches and demons, drawing vocabulary from Classical Arabic, Akkadian, Middle Egyptian, Attic Greek, Latin, Persian, and Turkish. By contrast, The Christmas Chronicles called for Yulish, the language of Santa Claus and his elves. The 2023 Pixar film Elemental led to Firish for the fire elements, with its own syllabary, Ká Khìkhùftò.

• 6. Collaboration and Family

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  Jessie Peterson, a linguist and fellow conlanger whom David Peterson married in 2023, became a significant creative partner across a wide range of his later projects. Together they created Méníshè for the series Motherland: Fort Salem, along with a derived language used by Camarilla members and an ancient form of the same tongue. For Shadow and Bone they co-created Zemeni and Shu, the latter with a writing system by Christian Thalmann. For the 2021 film Raya and the Last Dragon they built Kumandran. For Superman in 2025 they created Suh Ankripton, the Kryptonian language, with its own abugida called Gwazaks Ankripton. For the upcoming Project Hail Mary, slated for 2026, they created Eridian, described in the source as a musical language used by the Eridians. Peterson previously had a daughter from an earlier marriage to Erin Peterson.

• 7. The Art of Language Invention

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  Alongside his screen work, Peterson built a public-facing body of work about the practice of language construction itself. He produced a series of YouTube videos under the title The Art of Language Invention, and in 2015 published a book of the same name. In 2017 he served as executive producer on the documentary film Conlanging: The Art of Crafting Tongues. He also co-created the constructed language Væyne Zaanics for a two-novel fantasy series, The Zaanics Deceit and The Zaanics Pursuit, working with author Nina Post; the language's name means either "God's gift" or "God's curse", and it has its own cipher alphabet called Yesuþoh. Among his more unusual credits, Peterson created languages for two operas composed by Eduardo Reck Miranda: Vōv, which premiered in 2017 and returned in 2019, and Lampedusa, also in 2019. The word Vōv means "love" in the language he invented for Ariel's island.