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The Man Who Invents Languages For a Living

Posted by samzenpus on from the how-would-you-say-it? dept.

An anonymous reader writes: David J. Peterson is fluent in eight languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Esperanto, Arabic and American Sign Language, but it is the languages he's created that gives him notoriety. He created Dothraki, Giant, and High Valyrian for Game of Thrones, Shiväisith for Thor: The Dark World, and four different languages for the TV show Defiance. Peterson recently sat down with NPR to talk about inventing languages for a living, and offers some advice on how to make your own.

2 of 90 comments (clear)

  1. Vikings has ruined GoT for me and a big part of th by comrade1 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Watching Vikings I was surprised when I heard old English (sounds a lot like German) and old French. I don't know enough about Scandinavian languages to know if they're speaking an old Scandinavian dialectic. Now when I watch GoT and they start up in one of their made-up languages I just cringe. It sounds fake and is usually delivered stiffly. Vikings has made GoT painful to watch for me.

  2. Re:Vikings has ruined GoT for me and a big part of by T.E.D. · · Score: 4, Interesting

    don't know enough about Scandinavian languages to know if they're speaking an old Scandinavian dialectic.

    I haven't seen the show, but the most historically sensible thing for Vikings to be speaking would be Old Norse. According to some folks on Reddit, that is in fact what they are speaking.

    Its not very closely related to English, outside of the fact that they are both Germanic, and their common ancestor language was only 700 years or so in the past at that point.