David J. Peterson

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David Joshua Peterson (born January 20, 1981) is an American language creator, writer and artist who constructs artificial languages for TV and movies, including Dothraki and Valyrian for the television series Game of Thrones.

Video David J. Peterson

Life

Studying at University of California, Berkeley (1999-2003), Peterson received B.A. degrees in English and in linguistics. He received an M.A. in linguistics from University of California, San Diego (2003-06). According to an interview given to the publication Conlangs Monthly, he had his first contact with constructed languages while still at Berkeley, after attending an Esperanto class in 2000. In 2007, he co-founded the Language Creation Society with nine other language creators and served as its president (2011-2014).

In 2009, the television network HBO needed a fictional language for the Game of Thrones television series and turned to the Language Creation Society for help. This resulted in a contest, which Peterson won.

Peterson has created the Dothraki and Valyrian languages for the HBO series Game of Thrones and the Castithan, Irathient, and Omec languages for the Syfy show Defiance; he has been creating languages since 2000. He also created the language used by the Dark Elves in the movie Thor: The Dark World. Peterson's recent projects include the creation of the Inha and Munja'kin languages for the NBC series Emerald City. He was a featured guest at several Mischief Management events, including GeekyCon and Con of Thrones.

Peterson has also produced a number of videos on YouTube, in a series called "Art of Language Invention". It is mainly designed as a guide for aspiring language creators.

Peterson worked as an executive producer on the 2017 documentary film, Conlanging - The Art of Crafting Tongues.

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Filmography

Hangout with David J. Peterson - YouTube

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Bibliography

Post, Nina; Peterson, David J. (2014). The Zaanics Deceit. Nina Post, LLC. ISBN 978-1-4954-6134-7.
Peterson, David J. (2014). Dothraki. Living Language. ISBN 978-0-8041-6086-5.
---- (2015). The Art of Language Invention. Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-312646-1.
Post, Nina; Peterson, David J. (2017). The Zaanics Pursuit. Nina Post, LLC. ASIN B074LX13H6.