Interview with the Dothraki creator

Over at Tor.com, an online interview has been published by one of their resident bloggers, Ellen B. Wright. Who with, you ask? None other than David J. Peterson, who created the Dothraki language for Game of Thrones, and Sai Emrys, the president of the Language Creation Society. They talk in surprising detail about the new conlang and the creative process behind it, as well as other related issues. David is keeping e-mail contact with GRRM, and there is a definite possibility for a Dothraki-English Dictionary. Language geeks, rejoice. Some notable excerpts from the interview:

"SE: The HBO production team was wowed with what we sent; I think they hadn’t quite realized who they were dealing with. :-P"

"EBW: Were you a fan of the books before you got involved with the show?DJP: It’s funny you should ask: Currently, A Clash of Kings is in my bathroom (resting right on top of Orlando Furioso). I had heard of the series before the show (my wife was a huge fan), and now all our copies are marked up with highlighter, a different color for each language."

"EBW: Have you been or will you be on set at all as a dialogue coach?DJP: I haven’t yet, but that may be because the status of a pilot is quite a bit different from the status of a greenlit show. I’m available, though, and so when it comes time to start filming again, we’ll see what happens. Thus far, I’ve provided them with recordings of every bit of dialogue to be used, so the actors have more to go by than just a transcription."

You will of course want to get your hands on the integral text, which offers a very interesting read. Click here for the whole interview, and learn how to say “blood of the dragon” in Dothraki!

Hear Me Roar: It has not quite yet dawned on me how big the move to properly create a whole new language (the first of a number of them?) for the show is. It demonstrates a great attention to details, and a determination to produce a believable, living world to embed the eagerly expected HBO drama series into. I like how David J. Peterson gets quite passionately technical about certain linguistic issues, yet manages to explain everything clearly to the non-expert majority of readers.