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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…

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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

108 Comments

  1. paawian

    May 21, 2019 at 1:35 pm

    2:22 in polish this is how We naturally pronounce “R”

  2. Ludvig Roos

    May 21, 2019 at 1:48 pm

    He looks exactly like I imagined a person who created an entire language to look

  3. Madee van Hulzen

    May 21, 2019 at 5:32 pm

    any linguists here loving this?

  4. AmaiAi

    May 21, 2019 at 6:00 pm

    if you speak more than 1 language you can see the logic in everything he explained.
    Self-taught or not.

    Not saying that ppl who only know 1 language wont get it but there’s a lot of ppl here agreeing they don’t understand xDDD

  5. Martín Varela

    May 21, 2019 at 6:13 pm

    8:07 TRIGGERED

  6. IvanGotYokes

    May 21, 2019 at 7:28 pm

    huh?

  7. IndigoFire

    May 21, 2019 at 7:52 pm

    Whoa.

  8. marine_plant

    May 21, 2019 at 8:15 pm

    I’m starting my first year at university in a few months and I’ll be studying linguistics, so this video was particularly interesting and enjoyable for me. I especially liked the advice about studying unrelated languages since as a native speaker of Russian who is also studying English and Korean I can assure you that this recommendation is really good. Being immersed into these three completely different languages has definitely broadened my horizons!

  9. MrYehaha

    May 21, 2019 at 8:49 pm

    3:11
    sorry

  10. Leonidas666

    May 21, 2019 at 9:11 pm

    Lost effort my friend… Lost effort. #gotbad

  11. Edin Softic

    May 21, 2019 at 10:31 pm

    No

  12. kurochi chan

    May 21, 2019 at 10:50 pm

    Yes! I was so fascinated finding out the Dothraki language that reminded me of persian and arabian was a constructed language, and immediately wanted to know more about David. So cool to see someone that like JRR created a language, but in modern time so I can actually get some tips ? Thanks for this video. I hope someday I can create a language aswell for my future stories.

  13. Hunter Knight

    May 21, 2019 at 10:55 pm

    I could barely follow any of this, but it was interesting nonetheless.

  14. Louis Francisco

    May 22, 2019 at 12:05 am

    5:44 I thought Salishan languages didn’t have noun and verb classes.

  15. Subhaan Ullah

    May 22, 2019 at 1:54 am

    I always thought they talked gibberish and put subtitles on it

  16. Arturo Stojanoff

    May 22, 2019 at 4:34 am

    7:47 How dare he describe me so accurately?

  17. GaiaIsMe

    May 22, 2019 at 8:05 am

    Hes such a nerd and I love it so much

  18. GaiaIsMe

    May 22, 2019 at 8:08 am

    When it sounds like hes gonna be condescending and hes actually very helpful and informative

  19. szorohov85

    May 22, 2019 at 9:21 am

    super interesting. what proffesion you had to study for knowing all of that? litriture? english? or something else?

  20. Vincent Jose Leron

    May 22, 2019 at 1:14 pm

    Does anyone know?? Ferblatin
    ??

  21. zerrin başaran

    May 22, 2019 at 2:26 pm

    8.39 you just created kurdish

  22. Pranav Beeharry

    May 22, 2019 at 2:35 pm

    wtf

  23. Pranav Beeharry

    May 22, 2019 at 2:40 pm

    such a pretentious person wtf

  24. Candace Anderson

    May 22, 2019 at 3:24 pm

    His handss are like werewolf?

  25. 墨玖夜

    May 22, 2019 at 3:51 pm

    But isn’t that Rrrrrr at 2:25 a genetic thing. You either can or cannot.

  26. Bruhh Brahh

    May 22, 2019 at 4:56 pm

    Everytime I’m drunk, I invent a new language

  27. Sansa L.

    May 22, 2019 at 5:56 pm

    I only understand this because I took like 4 classes of linguistic before dropping out. Its just not my thing I’d rather learn a new foreign language before taking another linguistic class.

  28. Shut Up Smiley

    May 22, 2019 at 6:01 pm

    You just have to have an overactive imagination. There, video explained.

  29. DrKillJoy

    May 22, 2019 at 6:20 pm

    Learn how to speak the new gen-z language. Thanks Carll.

  30. Sóley Sigfúsdóttir

    May 22, 2019 at 8:35 pm

    If only I had this video when I was 11..

  31. Drea

    May 22, 2019 at 10:05 pm

    ROFL he said scenerio … i hate you D&D

  32. Aaron Myers

    May 22, 2019 at 11:29 pm

    Even thought it’s a very “you are your own worst critic” art, I believe that fictional lanugage construction doesn’t get enough traction as a hobby or a job. You learn a lot of things about logic, human behavior, aestheticism and categorization, among other things.

  33. Krissy Karma

    May 23, 2019 at 2:45 am

    What is a “death-rock-ie”, “Deh-THROK-key”, “Deh-THO-raw-ki?

  34. Cyberspine

    May 23, 2019 at 10:43 am

    Daenerys of Big Wind

  35. MC. Gemstone

    May 23, 2019 at 10:52 am

    This will hopefully help me with the made up language I’m working on for my series. c:

  36. Lew.

    May 23, 2019 at 11:07 am

    Did he just say “Grammar is something we can refer to as morphology” ? uhh. No.

  37. Juliaanoia

    May 23, 2019 at 12:38 pm

    “human beans”

  38. Jacob

    May 23, 2019 at 12:39 pm

    8:07 Feminists triggered.

  39. Alexandra G.

    May 23, 2019 at 12:58 pm

    Thais is so mucho faaannnnn omgg

  40. ligma bowls

    May 23, 2019 at 2:30 pm

    interesting. cuz i tapalk wipith mpy fripiepends lipike thipis, it’s easier when u say it rather than writing it down.

  41. aditya Yadav

    May 23, 2019 at 4:26 pm

    I just wanna know why was he unable to add “Thank you” in Dothraki…. ???

  42. Hannah Butler

    May 23, 2019 at 5:36 pm

    don’t watch GOT but love your Trigedasleng language!!

  43. GeoPlayer123

    May 23, 2019 at 6:12 pm

    6:11″which cases, how many?”
    russian: ill take your entire stock!!

    • Luís Domingos

      May 24, 2019 at 5:48 pm

      Hungarian: **hold my beer**

  44. Guest

    May 24, 2019 at 12:04 am

    11:57 I want to see a dothraki translation of old town road now

  45. S A D - E G G

    May 24, 2019 at 4:39 am

    long thumbs

  46. andreaczeh

    May 24, 2019 at 6:19 am

    Just – wow

  47. Cameron Strommen

    May 24, 2019 at 10:29 am

    Interdum vos have ut videre tenebras quam lucem denuo non potest videre volo ut ante vos

    • Cameron Strommen

      May 24, 2019 at 10:29 am

      Noen ganger må du se hvor mørkt det kan bli før du vil se lyset igjen

  48. Chloris Xu

    May 24, 2019 at 11:05 am

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

    HAHAHAHA

    • Baptiste Faussat

      May 25, 2019 at 1:19 pm

      He’s right, for instance the actors of Firefly speak terrible Mandarin.

  49. TheMrVengeance

    May 24, 2019 at 12:00 pm

    Interesting that a linguist would say Turkish and Japanese are not related. They’re actually very similar. So similar they are/were proposed to be in the same family, Altaic. Both have SOV word order, both are agglutinative languages, both have suffixes/particles for grammatical relations.

    • Baptiste Faussat

      May 25, 2019 at 1:18 pm

      That doesn’t mean they’re related. The word for dog in the extinct Australian language Mbabaram is famously dog, but it’s not a loanword or a cognate, just a coincidence. There are thousands of languages on the planet, coincidental similarities are bound to happen. The Altaic theory has been discredited since the 1960’s.

    • TheMrVengeance

      May 25, 2019 at 1:47 pm

      +Baptiste Faussat – For someone talking about linguistics you sure have trouble reading. I never said they ARE related.
      I said they’re very similar. (In many more ways than similar words, so go away with your straw man.)
      They’re so similar linguistics for a long time thought they WERE related.
      His advice was to learn very different languages, to broaden your knowledge.
      My point was that Japanese and Turkish aren’t that.

    • Baptiste Faussat

      May 25, 2019 at 4:07 pm

      +TheMrVengeance I saw several people in the comments of this video claiming they are related, often quite rudely, so I preferred to immediately make it clear for anyone reading the comments that they aren’t.

      Japanese doesn’t have vowel harmony, plural, person and possessive suffixes or definiteness, and doesn’t allow non-verb-final word orders, while Turkish doesn’t have honorific prefixes, polite forms for adjectives, or respectful verbs. They still differ quite a lot.

  50. Nick

    May 24, 2019 at 2:33 pm

    He forgot step number one, get a masters in linguistics

  51. sammy3212321

    May 24, 2019 at 4:43 pm

    This guy took a hodgepodge of vocabulary and fabricated a rich and holistic conlang that remained true to the culture and tells a story of civilisation all on its own. Astounding dude.

  52. Ananya Sairaj

    May 24, 2019 at 4:45 pm

    Tolkien did it himself. Just saying

  53. Sanjana Singh

    May 24, 2019 at 6:45 pm

    Valyrian language structure and determiners is similar to the Korean one.

  54. moonlight 0102

    May 24, 2019 at 7:38 pm

    i
    don’t
    get
    it

    but i think I can create my own language…

  55. Esther

    May 24, 2019 at 9:11 pm

    Last year, Peterson was a speaker at an event in Belgium which I attended. His talk was so interesting and inspiring. Fascinating stuff, linguistics and conlanging!

  56. Michelle Stella

    May 25, 2019 at 12:13 am

    Wow this is a lot more complicated than I thought it would be ?

  57. Melih Aksoy

    May 25, 2019 at 3:51 am

    I would like to help anyone who wants to learn Turkish)

  58. Dinah Alifa

    May 25, 2019 at 4:54 am

    He must be fun at parties

  59. eslam essam

    May 25, 2019 at 7:50 am

    Languages that are totally unrelated
    *mentions Turkish and Japanese that are both Turkic languages*

  60. Dan Phillips

    May 25, 2019 at 11:22 am

    This is a really interesting video, you can tell the person knows there topic well and is passionate about it.

  61. Grace Saunders

    May 25, 2019 at 3:19 pm

    When it says German has 330000 words, a LOT of them are compound

  62. Shardul Khatiwada

    May 25, 2019 at 4:17 pm

    Sanskrit is the language of the Gods. Greatest language ever created. Unmatched by any language in the history and will never be matched by anything in the future.

  63. Brandon Key

    May 25, 2019 at 8:23 pm

    Should have done this video with Arrival as well

  64. Music Lover

    May 25, 2019 at 10:05 pm

    I have to write an exam on English on Tuesday and I haven’t started studying yet because I’m writing Chemistry on Monday….I guess this counts as procrastination and revision? ?

  65. DoubleM

    May 25, 2019 at 11:37 pm

    Butterfly
    German: Schmetterling :)))))))))))))))))))))))))))

  66. Tomi Famadewa

    May 26, 2019 at 1:33 am

    Omg He mentioned Hausa! I’m Nigerian we speak it here

  67. Andrew Ye

    May 26, 2019 at 3:25 am

    8:07 feminists: ?

  68. Akif Aiman

    May 26, 2019 at 5:08 am

    Can he review sims language?

    • Baptiste Faussat

      May 26, 2019 at 11:52 am

      That’s not a consistent language, that’s random gibberish. Nothing to review.

  69. Draven Maes

    May 26, 2019 at 7:29 am

    Нигорчигас мои тоже my own Slavic language

  70. gam mal

    May 26, 2019 at 12:57 pm

    This is why we need nerds. To make fantasy. Which is sad.

  71. Fiene Van Dijk

    May 26, 2019 at 1:20 pm

    11:38 Hahahha theoretically, Dutch has infinte. (You’re allowed to combine words infinitely)

  72. Diana M

    May 26, 2019 at 2:00 pm

    5:22 *”In dŒeThrAki ?”*

  73. Vincenzo Lantino

    May 26, 2019 at 4:01 pm

    I am an Italian linguist. I have studied English, Spanish, French and Japanese. I think I have enjoyed this video too much.

  74. M Candy

    May 26, 2019 at 4:09 pm

    That’s also a way to learn another language

  75. ffs gus

    May 26, 2019 at 4:18 pm

    “languages that are totally unrelated”

    “mentions japanese and turkish”

    …. are you… sure they have no similarities…?

    when i studied japanese a little bit i saw so many similarities lol

    • Hha Haha

      May 27, 2019 at 5:02 pm

      Yeah, I thought so too

    • Baptiste Faussat

      May 27, 2019 at 7:13 pm

      They have some things in common, but they’re not related, the Altaic theory has been discredited since the 1960’s.

  76. Ron Com

    May 26, 2019 at 7:11 pm

    Youtube Algorithm: *Hey, I know you’ve never watched anything GOT related here on youtube, but hey! I’mma shove this in your recommended anyway :)*

  77. Krishna the conlanger

    May 26, 2019 at 8:07 pm

    6:21 Big versus large?

  78. Leonardo Kenji Kawashita

    May 26, 2019 at 10:43 pm

    Valirian is basically Japanese Language

    • Baptiste Faussat

      May 27, 2019 at 7:12 pm

      It’s more akin to Latin. Lots of languages are SOV and use postpositions, but Peterson deliberately made Valyrian reminiscent of Latin because that’s what Martin had in mind.

  79. A Kc

    May 27, 2019 at 2:06 am

    Huge respect ??

  80. Khaled

    May 27, 2019 at 3:38 am

    Genius

  81. Mason Guarino

    May 27, 2019 at 3:53 am

    He looks like Dwight

  82. small luigi

    May 27, 2019 at 3:57 am

    3:10 that’s the sound you make when somebody asks you a question you don’t know the answer to

  83. green bird3

    May 27, 2019 at 7:46 am

    Is anyone else looking at his thumbs

  84. Zhen Rizen

    May 27, 2019 at 8:16 am

    So basically the tentacle monster just throwing out gang sign

  85. Maddie Martin

    May 27, 2019 at 11:58 am

    Didn’t this guy create trigedasleng as well? I may be wrong

    • Baptiste Faussat

      May 27, 2019 at 6:25 pm

      He did, there are many translations on his former Tumblr:

  86. h

    May 27, 2019 at 10:20 pm

    I don’t care what anyone says, he is one of the most interesting people alive

  87. Robert R

    May 28, 2019 at 2:47 am

    What natural languages don’t use base 10? I thought all humans did that because we have 10 fingers.

  88. Ali Fawaz

    May 28, 2019 at 4:51 am

    8:07 what if some feminazi skipped grammar class

  89. oofbreanna /

    May 28, 2019 at 7:22 am

    i have a headache

  90. oofbreanna /

    May 28, 2019 at 7:22 am

    and i– oop

  91. Sara Miele

    May 28, 2019 at 8:56 am

    This dude will help me pass my linguistics exam he made me review all the program in just 13 minutes

  92. Rebecca Mather

    May 28, 2019 at 10:18 am

    I made one to help me with French in high school. I still know it today, my boyfriend is also learning it, so we have our own communication between each other. Secret conversations in an English speaking country.

  93. Julia Lester

    May 28, 2019 at 12:07 pm

    Honestly a lot of the grammar just seems like Japanese ?

  94. Nilay Msharmonia

    May 28, 2019 at 2:57 pm

    I think Dothraki grammar is same as Korean grammar

  95. burak ayan

    May 28, 2019 at 3:44 pm

    as bayrakları as as as

  96. luna romance

    May 28, 2019 at 3:58 pm

    It’s like my native language and I felt it

  97. Messi Goat

    May 28, 2019 at 4:33 pm

    I can create a new language when I’m with my crush ?‍♂️

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