W
hen you put a lot of thought into the costumes, weaponry, and hair styles of your invented culture, you had better give it a proper language too. That way motivated fans — and there will be fans this motivated — can figure out the system to it and even learn to speak it themselves. The producers of Game of Thrones did the smart thing when they hired language creator David Peterson to work out realistic languages for the show. This season fans will be getting to know two new languages, High and Low Valyrian. But before you start trying to tackle those, here are seven cool facts about the language from the first two seasons, Dothraki.
1. Peterson got the job to create Dothraki by winning a contest among language inventors.
The Language Creation Society was founded in 2007 as an organization where people who invent languages as an artistic and intellectual hobby (known as "conlangers" from "constructed language") could share their work and promote their craft. When producers approached them asking for help creating Dothraki, the society held an internal contest and selected Peterson's 180-page proposal (along with dictionary and audio files) to present to the producers, who hired him.